Ditch the Gym!

I have been going to the gym for the last 5 years and its time for me to let it go.

You should too, here is why.

My fitness journey started from going to a nearby gym near my house. The gym was tiny but enough to help me kickstart my passion for fitness. I would come to the gym and workout daily to a point where people find it odd. But that didn’t matter, gym became my second home.

Eventually I moved to a different city and I still look around for gyms, because that is the only place, I can get that “body”. I always associate healthiness to a gym at that time. For years and years that was my point of view to what a gym is.

When I finished with University, I was still confuse as to where I will end up, so I actually didn’t go to the gym as often. This uncertainty made me question myself, “is gym the only place where I can chisel my body?”

I ended up moving from places to places, which made it ten times harder to settle to a gym. Then I decided to find another option, I mean there needs to be a better way to be “healthy”.

As time goes on, I was exposed to lots of calisthenic workouts on Instagram or Youtube. For you that don’t know what that is, it is basically working out using your own bodyweight instead of the weights in the gym. One thing I can say is that, it is an interesting way of working out.

At first, I didn’t really like it because it takes a lot of time to progress unlike using weights, which was rather quickly. But eventually I joined the calisthenic movement and ditched going to the gym altogether.

Look, you are always traveling with your body on you, so calisthenic allows you to be able to get a good workout in, anywhere! No gym pass and you can do it anywhere.

When training with weights, it is very rare for you to train all your body parts. Am I right? You either train your chest,back, or legs. You never train all of them together. If you do train all of them together, you still break it into different parts. You won’t sit on the chest press machine and at the same time train your legs. Right?

Its different in calisthenic, it makes your body to work as an integrated unit. For instance, if you are doing the right way of pull up, you will feel your abs contracting too. Hence, calisthenic helps develop balance, synergy, coordination, agility, flexibility, and mental focus.

Face it that, doing a proper pull up is way cooler than doing a lat pull down in the gym. There is something that people are amazed at when looking at someone who has the ability to master their bodyweight.

Also, most bodyweight athlete looks way better than most body builders out there.

I have been doing calisthenic for a solid five weeks and my feedback is that it is way different than lifting weights, way different.

First, I feel a lot better after the workouts, my lower back doesn’t feel as painful as when I train with weights (back problem history). Second, I feel a lot stronger, once I improved my basic movements. Lastly, I am able to do the things I thought I never could, such as a headstand!

However the drawback of calisthenic that I felt is the progress it requires. It takes a very long time to get better in a movement. For instance, I am able to increase my pull up reps from 6 x 4 sets to 8 x 4 sets in two weeks. Compare to lifting weights, I could increase in Lat Pull Down rather quickly (with the right program of course). This can break you mentally, because you feel like you are not improving in anything.

So which should you do?

Well if you are a beginner try calisthenic first, because it trains your whole entire body. It helps you synchronize your body in working out, meaning one muscle doesn’t work more than the other.

Also, if you travel a lot, its better to get started on Calisthenic, because there will be no excuse to not train ;)

hope this helps you!

If you are still confuse, just do cardio I guess…….

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