CALISTHENICS
are exercises consisting of a variety of gross motor movements—running, standing, grasping, pushing, etc. — often performed rhythmically and with minimal equipment, so essentially, bodyweight exercises. They are intended to increase body strength, body fitness, and flexibility, through movements such as pulling or pushing oneself up, bending, jumping, or swinging, using only one's body weight for resistance; usually conducted in concert with stretches. When performed vigorously and with variety, calisthenics can provide the benefits of muscular and aerobic conditioning, in addition to improving psychomotor skills such as balance, agility and coordination. Many consider calisthenics as "movement through space", meaning you can move freely without any restriction blocking your full strength.
I had reconstructive knee surgery 2 weeks ago. Isometric and calisthenics exercises are a god send. It's supported me in increasing my mobility way beyond any initial expectations in my rehab recovery and strength training process.
I was warned that I would likely not really be able to walk without assistance for up to a month. I started the process of walking slowly after 5days. The first days after surgery mostly all I did was isometric like squeeze exercises where I would flex my quadriceps and calves. Also just simply standing was an exercise in and of itself. And moving myself into stances. All of these things came quite naturally to me - like my body just wanted to move and heal itself.
The timing is perfect as there's so much work one can do on strength training the body by focusing on Holding and Releasing. There's so much posture play available and ways to play with our form. In some ways I've always kind of had a natural inclination for this kind of thing.
It's fun in a lot of ways because it's very much a point of back to basics with body movements and awareness and really playing with the isolation of points/focus.
Like with the knee rehab it's sort of going way back into my early childhood and learning how to walk all over again. I realized I had a tendency to swing my one leg like a gate coming around...would only do that on my one size. I talked to my folks about this and asked them if they remembered anything like this from my childhood...and they said, 'oh you've always walked kind of funny"...and I was like, "huh"?. Anyways so I am back in my infancy and I am integrating my awareness as what does it mean to walk as me within each and every little movement of myself as body. What's kind of fun about this is that I am getting on the ground and into other positions, movement patterns that wouldn't be so typical and or regular - like crawling and just a lot more movements where I play with how I am connected to the ground.
The journey is really just beginning into the possibilities and ways to play with body movement exercises and patterns.
Before I had surgery I had got myself a chin up bar as a point I considered to be a very basic way in which I could support my body and just overall go spinal health and strength.
Here's a beginner video I came across for calisthenics that I think is pretty cool and a real good entry exposure into this whole world of body awareness.
When you think about it - it's kind of in a way bizarre that every single person isn't like a real master within their body - just completely aware of their parts and their abilities to move. Like so many of these 'natural movements' seem to become 'unnatural' as we age in this world of a sedentary lifestyle to some degree or another...and or perhaps focusing to much on superficial workouts where it's more about presenting a picture than it is about being strong as fuck.
Breathing awareness, I'm really exploring the pressure play within the isometric and calisthenics exercises - because it's like we are always all ways posture positioning ourselves no matter what the fuck we are doing wherever the fuck we are. So - in this awareness there's no excuse really to not be tuning, fine tuning the body as really strength training daily. I mean if we allow ourselves to work properly, to participate effectively - we just grow stronger. For myself it's really exposing to me how many moments in my living where I have taken a sort of back where I pressed on myself really hard with pressure positions to the point where it was mostly unconscious actions and not really so balanced in a way where I honor the care for my whole body 100%
CHEERS TO EXTRAORDINARY GAINS OF STRENGTH IN ALL WAYS POSSIBLE THROUGHOUT 2018
FREE - UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME - WEEKLY CRYPTOCURRENCY PAYOUT
