Calisthenics Series: Why sculpture of the David has small dicks
Contrary to the abundance of content on Youtube, I am surprised to find little content of or discussion on calisthenics, or body weight exercise in general on Medium. To get some noise on my lovely hobby, I would give a brief introduction of this stream of exercise and it’s benefits.
Calisthenics comes from an ancient Greeks which is combined from kalos(beauty) and sthenos(strength). It is a school of training which focuses on body weight exercise. It aims to maximise one’s mobility, agility, muscle strength and explosive power by developing one’s physique.
You may find this word old and weird but the emphasis of bodily aesthetics, was a popular culture among ancient Greeks, in addition to their logics. The sculpture of David for example, has sharp cuts of muscles to represent beauty and strength. Contrasting this is the small dicks which represent a minimum of lust, intellect and ration. Combining these two qualities make a perfect human.
The convention Calisthenics involves no equipment at all, so it implies a minimalistic style, with unlimited ways to create your own moves once you master the basics. It is almost like a studio where you create your own routines:
Some of the basics:





Once you master the above:




Truly the sky is your limit.
Calisthenics routines activate and strengthen the core muscle groups by combination of dynamic movements. Since you need to actively apply stress on your muscles in order to train, Your can only contract your muscle as strongly as your tendon can withstand. As you get accustomed to your own body weight, you would become stronger, faster and more resistant to fatigue in daily life.
Talking about tendons, it is the sole area where calisthenics excels weight lifting. Weight lifting improves muscle strength by tearing the tissue apart, overload it so the muscle tissue repairs and grows bigger. While muscle repairs itself within a few days, even faster given enough proteins and fast circulation, tendons do not. Tenders are ligaments made of collagen, protein for bones and cartilage as well. It can transmit tons of force from muscle to bones, moving your limbs with inches of leveraging length. To trade off with this performance, the strands of collagen are packed in a condense way with little blood flows through. That’s why it would take week or even months to recover if tendons are overloaded.
Weight lifting itself would bring muscle growth, at the expense of overloading the tendons. That in turns sacrifices mobility, explosive force and active force. If you measure a body builder’s push or pull strength, without any weight applying on him, his performance may probably be no different from an untrained, healthy person. The reason is that he is not trained for applying active force, instead he is trained for withstanding pressure on his muscles, and eating chicken thigh.
I have done weight lifting for two years in the past, but given it up mainly because the lifestyle is not sustainable. Consuming a lot of meat, drinking whey proteins and lifting heavier weights simply do not fit for my concept of fitness. Fitness should be aesthetic, powerful, effortless and kick-ass.
I hope you would aspire to try calisthenics after reading this article. Once you get comfortable with calisthenics, you can do exercise literally anywhere. Exercise would become a self-discovery journey where you make progress, know yourself and have fun.
You body is your gym.
