One of the situations that can slow down our progress in training are “involuntary” breaks, for example when we go onvacationand we do not have access to our usual training place,when we have to studyand we do not have much time to train or when we havedifficult work schedulesor other responsibilities. Most of the time these situations are a relatively valid excuse for not training, and few people will reply to you about your decision. But if we analyze it carefully we will see that it is an excuse and thatyou could really continue training quite effectively, managing to at least lose very little of your progress, sometimes even improving or continuing to progress towards your goals.

Normally when you start calisthenics, in the first few months, you usually see rapid and constant progress. But, from there, it is no longer so simple and there may be stages of stagnation for different reasons. The most common way to try to overcome these plateaus is to improve training, changing exercises, trying to improve your planning, dedicate more days, try other routines, etc.But there are other reasons that can affect and to which you may not be paying as much attention. So in this article we are going to see those ignored reasons and how to solve them so that you can continue moving forward without problems. Your calisthenics plateau may be due to your own body weight One of the most limiting factors for progress in calisthenics is the body weight of the person practicing it. This is obvious, since it is the weight that you have to move in the different exercises. But in my experience there are people who refuse to see it or have a very biased view of reality. For example, it has happened to me several times to try to make a person understand that if they want to progress they must reduce their body fat percentage, since this is extra weight that contributes nothing. Upon hearing this, the person seems like they don't want to talk about that topic, they try to change the conversation to training topics, or they refuse to accept that reality, implying that "I don't really have that much fat either" or making excuses like “My legs are very heavy”. No, it is not your legs that weigh you down a lot, it is the accumulated fat that you have in your body that weighs you down.

Why train dips and weighted pull-ups One of the branches of calisthenics that is growing more widely in recent years isStreetLifting. Consisting of doing basic calisthenics exercises such as pull-ups, dips, muscle ups or squats with added weight. In my opinion, Street Lifting seems like an incredible sport, sinceit combines aspects of calisthenics and Powerlifting creating a spectacular result. Starting from the basis of body weight control exercises such as basic calisthenics movements,we add the factor of maximum strength when using added weight, but, to obtain the best results, you are obliged not to have excess body fat since this It would worsen your performancein all exercises except the squat. Therefore,we get incredibly strong athletes who maintain Streetlifter demigod physiques and lift brutal weights. In the case of the best in the world, it is normal for them to lift significantly more than their own body weight in pull-ups and several times their body weight in dips. We even already have cases of athletes who lift a good part of their own body weight in muscle up.

One of the biggest problems in the career of every person who wants to train, whether for aesthetics, performance, health or any other reasons, is the issue of injuries. You are progressing, everything seems to be going well, you are having perseverance and, suddenly, an injury arrives that truncates your aspirations. At this moment, when you have just been injured, you have the perfect opportunity to give up, you have the best excuse to stop training. You can go back to being a lazy person who doesn't train, deep down you may even feel some relief. You go to the doctor and, with his characteristic “prudence,” he tells you to take 2 months of complete rest, you already have your excuse. To everyone who asks you:“Hey, haven't you started training? How are you doing?”You can tell them your sad story about how you were injured and have to rest for two months. But, deep down, even if you don't even want to think about it, even if you try to avoid bringing that idea to the forefront, you know that in reality you could continue training without a problem, you have an injured shoulder, not all of your joints, you can train legs, abs, and if you care enough, you may be able to train your chest, back and maybe even your shoulder itself. The question is: will you have the necessary strength to continue training? Or will you use the excuse of the poor injured guy who can't do anything? If you want to avoid falling into that trap, if you want to do things well and achieve your goals no matter what, I recommend following the action protocol that I am going to explain to you below: First of all,if it is a traumatic injury, such as a possible sprain or break, you should go to the doctor so that they can perform the necessary tests and give you a correct diagnosis. I recommend that you do not trust 100% of what they tell you in the emergency room, since, in my experience, they often give you a quick diagnosis without sufficient tests.If you suspect that it may have been something more serious, for example a tendon or ligament tear, make an appointment with your family doctor or traumatologist to find out for sure.Once this is done, or in cases where it is not a traumatic injury, but rather a discomfort, pulled muscle or possible tendinitis, I recommend going to the physiotherapist. Doctors tend to be excessively cautious in their recommendations, giving you complete rest for months. When the current scientific consensus agrees that this is not optimal.The physio will know how to treat your problem so that it heals faster, he will know how to tell you what exercises you can do to improve the injury and prevent it from recurring and he will also be able to advise you on what exercises that involve other muscle groups or joints you can trainso that you do not have to keep absolute rest. Both in my personal experience, and based on current evidence, I believe that a visit to the physio is enough, in most cases you do not need to continue going week after week. I would only recommend continued visits in cases of old injuries that have become chronic and in specific cases of rehabilitation.

Movement analysis and technique The one-hand push-up is an advanced movement that requires a lot of strength in the pectoral and triceps, with some collaboration from the anterior deltoid. In addition, it requires good propioception to position yourself and control the movement andprior adaptation work to prevent injuries in your wrist, elbow or shoulder. To begin, we are going to analyze the technique of this movement. From my point of view, the key is tofind an adequate leg spread distance, since it is what makes the execution easier. By only having 3 support points, you must form a well-positioned triangle that has good stability so that you don't lose your balance. There are people who are able to do it with their legs closer together and there are people who need to do it with their legs spread really far.

What is muscular failure? To begin, let's define what muscle failure is. There is no fully agreed upon definition currently, but it is understood that muscle failure isthe moment in which, during a certain exercise, your muscles do not allow you to complete one more repetition. Even if you try with all your might. This is usually technically called momentary muscle failure or volitional failure. Although, as good calisthenics athletes that we are, it is worth clarifying the issue of technique. It is true that sometimes, by completely sacrificing the exercise technique, using kipping, inertia, swings and so on, we can get some extra repetitions. But this is not recommended since it would involve other muscles that are not the main ones in the exercise and poses a high risk of injury. It is very typical that at that moment of trying to scratch one more repetition you make some bad movement with your neck or back and it causes you to pull a muscle, in addition to the fact that you are simply cheating the movement. Therefore, it is recommended that if we reach failure, it is always trying to maintain the correct technique in the exercise. This is commonly known as a technical failure.The clearest way to identify muscle failure is by looking at the speed of the concentric part, that is, the speed of the part of the repetition where you have to contract the muscles involved and they shorten. If you record a video in which you do a set to failure, you will be able to see that the speed of the negative remains more or less stable, butthe concentric slows down little by little, slower and slower, to the point that you cannot even move. You can't take it anymore and you fail.