Calisthenics Beginner Moves: The 4 Main Foundational Exercises Every Beginner Must Master

Let’s face it, fitness can be quite an expensive endeavor. It is a lifelong commitment that, while beneficial for your health and self-esteem, could put a strain on your finances.

If you’ve ever wanted to get stronger or build the physique of your dreams without spending hours at the gym or investing in at-home equipment, a calisthenics beginner routine is a great place to start. The best part is that you already have everything you need to achieve your goals, i.e., your body.

With a few calisthenics beginner moves at home, you can build strength, improve balance, and boost your fitness one step at a time. Think of these exercises as the building blocks that set you up for bigger fitness challenges later on. 

In this article, we’ll walk you through some of the most critical beginner calisthenics moves so you can start exercising with confidence and enjoy this new journey!

What Are Foundational Calisthenics Beginner Moves?

Foundational calisthenics beginner moves are those that focus on the 5 major movement patterns, namely: (1)

1. Push: These are exercises that help target the muscles that help us perform any pushing movements, and they include the chest, shoulders, and triceps muscles.
2. Pull: They are the opposite of the push exercises, as they help us target pulling muscles, which, as the name suggests, allow us to perform all pulling movements. These muscles involved in this are the back, biceps, and rear deltoids.
3. Hinge: These exercises train the hips as well as your glutes, hamstrings, and lower back, and are essential in helping improve your daily movements like lifting and bending.
4. Squats: These exercises help train your lower body, primarily targeting the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and glutes.
5. Oftentimes, hinge and squat exercises exist in the same category.
6. Core: These movements target and help strengthen the muscles in your abdomen (aka abdominal muscles) as well as the lower back.

So, the foundational calisthenics beginner moves no equipment are those that target your push, pull, legs, and core muscles.

What Calisthenics Move Should I Learn First?

For beginners, we recommend learning exercises that use all 5 of the listed movement patterns rather than just one singular exercise. 

These fundamental beginner calisthenics moves are considered compound movements, i.e., exercises that engage multiple large muscle groups and involve two or more primary joints at once – also sometimes referred to as multi-joint exercises (2, 3).

Thus, to get the most out of your beginner’s calisthenics program, we highly recommend learning at least one exercise from each of the foundational movement patterns. 

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What Is The Best Calisthenic Workout For Beginners?

Here are some calisthenic exercises that most beginners can add to their routine. These exercises create a solid foundation for building strength and muscle by using body weight.

• Squats

Bodyweight squats are a fantastic all-around lower body/legs calisthenics workout that targets your glutes, hip flexors, quadriceps, adductors, hamstrings, and calves.

Research shows that squats offer numerous benefits, including improving functional fitness, which is crucial for daily activities, enhancing athletic performance, and promoting injury prevention, reducing injury severity, and facilitating rehabilitation (4, 5).

How To Perform Bodyweight Squats

1. Stand with your feet just wider than shoulder-width apart, with your toes pointed slightly out to the side.
2. Keep your gaze straight ahead to maintain a neutral spine and brace your core by pulling your belly button towards your spine. Remember to keep breathing.
3. Push your butt back slightly to begin the movement, then bend at the knees and lower yourself down, opening up your knees.
4. Keep your torso upright and maintain core tension. You can hold your arms by your sides, in front of your chest, or extended out in front of you, for balance.
5. Lower down until your butt is below your knees, keeping your weight in your heels. You can stop here or drop further. It all varies per individual, so do what feels most comfortable for you without losing your posture or balance.
6. Stand up by pushing through your whole foot (not just the knees) and squeeze your butt at the top to move your hips forward.

• Push-Ups

Like the name suggests, pushups target your pushing muscles, which are the major and minor pectorals, triceps, anterior deltoids, as well as the core muscles. 

Push-ups help you build upper body and core strength, but research also shows that the exercise can help reduce your risk of cardiovascular diseases (6).

How To Perform A Standard Pushup

1. Get on the floor or mat in a plank position. Place your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, and your body, from head to heels, should be in a straight line. Do not sag at the waist or arch your back.
2. Lower your body until your chest nearly touches the floor while keeping the elbows pointing back and at a 45-degree angle to your body.
3. Just before the chest touches the ground, push through the palms back up to the starting position.
4. Make sure to keep your core engaged throughout the movement.
5. If doing the standard push-up is too hard for you, try the following two options.

• The knee push-up is where you do the movement on your hands and knees rather than hands and toes.
• Wall pushups, where instead of getting into plank position on the floor, you do the pushing movement on the wall

• Pull-Ups

This exercise targets your latissimus dorsi (lats), biceps, and trapezius muscles, as well as the rhomboids, deltoids (especially the posterior deltoids), teres major, pectoralis major, forearms, and core muscles.

Studies show that engaging in pull-up exercises can help improve arm muscle power and endurance, body coordination, as well as shoulder and grip strength; all factors that aid in daily activities and can enhance athletic performance (7, 8).

How To Do A Standard Pull-Up

When it comes to pull-up calisthenic poses for beginners, there are many variations of this exercise.

However, the standard pushup is the easiest to master. It is best to learn this version before moving on to more advanced variations.

1. Stand in front of a pull-up bar and grab it with your hands slightly further than shoulder-width apart, using an overhand grip – i.e., with your palms facing away from you.
2. Hang from the bar, with your legs suspended, allowing your hands to hold all your weight. If you are too tall to hang from the bar, you may cross your legs together so they don’t touch the floor. Crossing your legs also helps evenly distribute your weight.
3. Engage your core and squeeze your shoulder blades together, then pull yourself up. Keep pulling your body up until your chin is over the bar. Hold this position for a moment.
4. Slowly and carefully, lower yourself back to the starting position.

Do not drop your body weight, as it could hurt your arms and shoulders and also negate the eccentric phase of the workout.

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• Planks

They are primarily a core workout targeting your rectus abdominis, obliques, and transversus abdominis. Still, they also work your shoulders, chest, back, glutes, and legs – which essentially makes them a full-body exercise.

Studies on plank exercises have shown that they can help (9, 10, 11):

• Balance
• Improve muscle mass
• Improve abdominal muscle strength
• Improve overall strength and endurance
• Decrease body weight, fat mass, body mass index, and waist-to-hip ratio
• Enhance respiratory function, etc.

How To Perform An Elbow Plank

There are many variations of planks, but the more traditional one would be the elbow plank.

1. Start by lying face down on a mat and then prop yourself up on your forearms.
2. Your elbows should be directly under your shoulders, and your body from head to heels should be in a straight line.
3. Inhale through your chest and exhale out through the stomach to engage your core. Try to hold this position for 30 seconds to a minute and remember to breathe steadily throughout.
4. Avoid sagging your hips or arching your waist.

Points To Note

1. Try doing each of the exercises mentioned above (aside from planks) or 8-10 reps per set and 3 sets per exercise.
2. Rest as much as you need between each set. You haven’t built up your endurance yet, so you may get winded frequently before completing the workout.

What Are The Easiest Calisthenic Beginner Moves?

The ease of these movements will vary from person to person, but these 4 exercises are ideal movements to start with. They serve as an entry point to calisthenics exercises, and it is best to master these movements before progressing to more advanced exercise variants.

Remember that just because they are considered the easiest, it doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily be easy to do and master.

All new things have a learning curve, so if you are struggling to do them correctly, do not be disheartened. Be patient with yourself and keep practicing.

Read more: The Ultimate 1-Hour Calisthenics Workout Guide

Can Calisthenics Be Self-Taught?

Yes, calisthenics can be self-taught. You can do so by using online resources such as articles like this one, fitness apps like the BetterMe App, video tutorials on any of the many social media platforms, or even community forums.

As you learn, ensure to master proper form, start with basic exercises, and gradually increase difficulty. However, if you find it hard to learn on your own, there is no shame in seeking out help through professional fitness calisthenics coaches.

Read more: Beginner’s Calisthenics Workout: Your No-Excuse Guide to Getting Strong Anywhere

How Should I Start My Calisthenics Journey?

• Find a space that allows you to practice your skills.

This space could be a corner in the bedroom, living room, garage, or even the backyard. As long as you can move freely, you are good to go.

• Set achievable goals

Do you want to lose weight, build strength, increase muscle mass, or all of the above? 

Set your goals so you can have a clear plan moving forward.

• Find a warm-up and cool-down routine.

Warm-ups help prime your body and muscles for the upcoming workout, and a cool-down routine helps lower your body temperature and heart rate after your workout.

Find 1-2 routines of each and do them religiously before and after the main calisthenics routine.

• Practice the above calisthenics movements using proper form

Proper form reduces the risk of injury. Ensure that you closely follow the steps above to not only do the workout with proper form but also to avoid injury.

• Progress gradually

Tempting as it may be to try out new exercise variations, it is best to take things slowly. 

Once you’ve learnt the proper form of the exercises, give yourself about 4 weeks of doing the same moves weekly before trying a more difficult variation. 

Focus instead on increasing the amount of repetitions or even the speed of each exercise, as this will help you develop strength before tackling more complex movements. 

• Rest

Allow yourself at least 24-48 full hours of rest per week to allow your body and muscles to recover and repair from the workout. Failure to do so can lead to overtraining (12).

• Increase your protein intake.

Exercise demands more protein intake, specifically for muscle growth and repair. 

Increase your daily protein intake to 1.2-1.6 g per kg of body weight (13).

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is calisthenics alone enough?

Yes, it is. Research shows that calisthenics can help build and improve flexibility, strength, agility, muscular endurance, cardiovascular fitness, balance, coordination, and overall well-being (14, 15).

• Can I start calisthenics alone?

Yes, you can. As previously mentioned, numerous accessible online resources can help you start and train in calisthenics on your own.

• Can I get ripped with calisthenics?

Yes, you can. Calisthenics is a resistance exercise that can contribute to both fat loss and muscle gain. But to get a ripped physique, you will need to pay close attention to your food intake. Calisthenics is a great calorie burner, but to lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn. A low body fat percentage and high skeletal muscle mass will give you that ripped physique. Just be sure to train using progressive overload so that you are continuously challenging your muscles and helping them grow bigger and stronger.

• What is the 80/20 rule in calisthenics?

Also known as the Pareto Principle, it is a rule that states that 20% of your effort or exercise produces 80% of your progress. Regarding beginner calisthenics poses, you will achieve most of your desired results by focusing your effort primarily on the foundational basics.

The Bottom Line

Beginner calisthenics moves help create a good foundation that, over time, will help you elevate your workouts and see success and improvement in your calisthenics beginner routine. If you want long-term success and to remain injury-free, learn and master these basics before moving on to advanced moves.