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So, you want to know what the drawbacks of calisthenics are? Well, you have come to the right place. In this article, we will discuss the key disadvantages of calisthenics.
Table of Contents
The Drawbacks of Calisthenics
Although calisthenics is an excellent way to exercise and show off your skills as a calisthenics athlete, it comes with a few cons you should be aware of.
Difficult To Isolate Certain Muscle Groups
The first main negative of calisthenics is that it is difficult for an individual to isolate specific muscle groups during their training.
Calisthenics is made up of mostly compound movements (exercises that engage multiple muscle groups at once, such as push-ups or pull-ups). This makes it challenging for a calisthenics athlete to target specific muscle groups in order to grow them as there aren't many calisthenics exercises that isolate certain muscles.
This results in potential muscle imbalances since athletes cannot train particular muscle groups that need more attention than others.
Limitations in Leg Training
The next major disadvantage of calisthenics is that there are a limited amount of exercises designed for the leg muscles, making it extremely difficult for calisthenics athletes to strengthen their legs.
There are very few bodyweight exercises for your legs, the only decent ones being bodyweight squats, lunges, pistol squats, calf raises and glute bridges. Aside from this, it is difficult to target and train the leg muscles as well as it is the upper body. This could lead to a clear difference in muscle strength and size between the upper and lower body, which may cause athletes to dislike their body.
Despite this, it is still possible to get a good workout in with your legs, as long as you train them enough and don't neglect them.
Challenging To Measure Progress
Calisthenics can be extremely difficult when it comes to measuring some bodyweight exercises. This leads to two additional drawbacks.
Firstly, people give up with calisthenis as they cannot figure out how to progress towards harder moves. It isn't as simple as weightlifting where you just add more weight to the bar - in calisthenics, you have to gradually move towards more advanced moves.
Secondly, it is hard to reflect on your progress in calisthenics since you can only see how far you've moved towards a new skill or how many reps you can do. Due to not being able to accurately track your progress, athletes will tend to lose motivation and give up.
Hard to Build Muscle Mass
The final setback of calisthenics that we will go over is that it is harder to build muscle mass.
Many bodyweight exercises do not isolate specific muscle groups and are performed with momentum, incorporating elements of acrobatics and gymnastics. Therefore, calisthenics is not as effective for muscle gain compared to exercises such as the barbell bench press that are specifically designed for resistance training and to build muscle.
Summary
In this article, we have discussed what the primary cons of calisthenics are. These negatives included:
I hope you have found the information in this article useful and I hope any questions you had have been answered. Thank you for reading, please come back soon.
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