Many people who want to train calisthenics look to combine it with some other sport. The most common cases in my experience tend to be martial arts, athletics and ball sports such as soccer or basketball.

Whether because that sport is their main occupation and goal or because they simply like it and don't want to stop practicing it, these people want to know how to correctly combine both disciplines and get better results, so that is what we are going to analyze in this article.

First the goals

First of all, what we must be clear about is what goals we want to achieve with our combined training. For example, it could be that your main objective is to be a great basketball player and with calisthenics you want to get a little more muscle and gain explosiveness or power. Or it could be that your goal is to be a great calisthenics athlete but be able to continue playing football on your neighborhood team on the weekends.

There are objectives that can be synergistic or complementary. For example, if your sport is football and your goal with calisthenics is to have more strength and explosiveness in your legs, these are goals that complement each other very well. Or if your sport is martial arts and with calisthenics you are looking to gain some muscle mass and flexibility, they also combine perfectly. But there are also goals and sports that are contrary and do not complement each other as well.

You must clearly define what you want to give greater priority to, whether it is your sport or calisthenics, since most of the time it is not viable or may not even be compatible to go to the maximum in both.

For example, to put an extreme case, if your goal is to gain the maximum amount of muscle mass possible with calisthenics, and at the same time you want to be a great marathon runner, it would not be viable.

We have also seen cases of bodybuilders who have wanted to combine it with soccer and, as I said, they have had to choose what to give priority to, since trying to be at the highest level in both was not possible.

Think of a general outline of your planning

Once we are clear about what we want to give priority to and what our goals are, it is time to be honest with ourselves and define how much time we have for each thing and how realistic it would be to carry out our planning.

Normally, if you train a sport such as martial arts, soccer, basketball, etc. you already have a number of weekly training sessions and games planned, so we would start from that point.

Knowing the weekly training sessions for your sport, how many calisthenics sessions could you do per week? How long could each session be? How realistic would it be to carry them out?

That is where you will have to make a decision, taking into account the priority you want to give to each thing and the time you have available.

For example, let's say you train martial arts 3 times a week. If your main priority is this sport, you could simply add two one-hour, medium-intensity calisthenics sessions on some of your free days, and that would be good enough to meet your goals.

But, if your real priority was to improve in calisthenics, you would have to try to fit in at least 3 or 4 calisthenics workouts, either using all of your free days, or some days training before or after your main sport and at a higher intensity.

If I train both on the same day, in what order do I do it?

Getting into the subject of whether to train before or after your sport, this would again depend on your goals and priorities, and the characteristics of both your sport and the calisthenics training you want to do.

Consider whether it is better for you to be fresher in your sport training or in calisthenics training, how tired you are after each, how this relates to your goals and priorities, and, taking all of this into account, decide.

Establish a concrete planning scheme

Now that we have everything better reasoned, it is time to make your concrete planning. Define which days you are going to train both your sport and your calisthenics routines and, based on your objectives, define what you are going to train on each of the days.

For calisthenics goals secondary to the sport, such as the case of the athlete who only wants to gain a little muscle and be more agile, powerful, etc., I would recommend a general approach with full body routines, or a torso-leg division, or push-pull-leg. For more information on this and for more specific calisthenics objectives, you can review my other articles or be guided by the training programs that we have available on Calisteniapp.

Finally, define a starting point for the calisthenics routines, which exercises and repetitions you are going to train at the beginning, based on your current level. If you have doubts about this, again, you can use the routines we have in Calisteniapp as a starting point.

Remember that when you advance in your training you must apply progressive overload, so that you add reps, series, more difficult exercises, etc. and you don't always get stuck at the same point doing series of 10 pull-ups forever.

Also remember to regulate the intensity based on your priorities. For example, if your priority is basketball, you don't want to do calisthenics routines so intense that you arrive very tired or with very loaded muscles to your training or matches. And, on the contrary, if your priority is to improve in calisthenics, you can't do routines so soft that they don't generate an optimal stimulus for improvement.

Adherence

Another important point is the issue of adherence. As I was saying before, you have to be realistic about the time you will have available to train, the days of the week you will be able to do it, and the desire and discipline you will have to do it. The more you adjust your training to these factors, the more likely you are to succeed.

With all these key points you should already have a defined program to combine your sport with calisthenics and achieve your goals. I hope it will be very helpful.

By Yerai Alonso