Calisthenics

About this plan

How the week works

The same moderate week repeats every week: four short workouts of about 20 to 30 minutes, one easy cardio day, and two days of rest or stretching. There’s no equipment, just the floor and a wall.

  • Sunday: rest
  • Monday: upper body
  • Tuesday: easy cardio
  • Wednesday: legs
  • Thursday: rest, or stretching
  • Friday: core
  • Saturday: a full-body circuit

Start every workout with the warm-up and finish with the stretching routine, about 5 minutes each.

Reading the numbers

  • 3 × 8 means 3 sets of 8 reps. Rest about 60 seconds between sets.
  • 3 × 20 s means 3 holds of 20 seconds each.
  • per side or per leg means do that many on each side.
  • A circuit is one set of each exercise in a row, with no rest in between. Rest after the last one, then repeat for the number of rounds.

Beginner or Intermediate

Both tabs follow the same pattern. Intermediate uses harder versions of the exercises and more reps. Start with Beginner, and move up when the whole week feels easy, with good form on every rep. There’s no set date for it. The site remembers which tab you used last.

Every exercise page has an easier and a harder version, so you can adjust a single exercise without changing tabs.

Safety

  • Warm up first, every time.
  • Stop if anything hurts. Muscle effort is fine; sharp or joint pain is not.
  • Good form matters more than reps. Do fewer, or switch to the easier version.
  • Breathe steadily, and don’t hold your breath during holds.
  • If you have an injury or a health condition, or haven’t exercised in a long time, check with a doctor first.

Illustrations

The exercise, warm-up and stretching illustrations are by DAREBEE, a non-profit fitness resource, © DAREBEE, used under their terms of use and the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. They are shown unedited, only scaled to fit. The stretches are shown on DAREBEE’s own stretching posters, with a note on which figure to look at. Every illustration links to the DAREBEE page it comes from. If this plan is useful to you, DAREBEE is worth a visit, and a donation.

The pike push-up illustration is from wger, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This site is for personal use and isn’t medical advice.