Calisthenics Unity

I am 34 years old, from switzerland and i startet calisthenics about 7 month ago. To start i did the Bar Brother Groningen free beginners program until i could do my first sloppy muscle up. It took me about 3 month.

I then felt ready for the official BB-System, because i love to work out every day. I normally finnish everything i start, but after 10 of 12 weeks, the high reps and the short breaks during the workout just didnt feel right anymore. until then, i didnt miss a single workout and did every rep and max. sets with a little extra breaks (ok, maybe a lot of extra breaks). if i look back now, it was more of a fight against fatigue and gaining will power, than building muscle und strength.

2 weeks ago i found this full body program and it made a lot more sense to me (the reason i stoped doing the system). i started yesterday, doing level 4. i think i will skip level 5 and do 6 next. after that i will work my way through to level 13/14 (in 3 weeks) until i fail the first time. but i rather take it a bit slower first, when trying something new.

but i already love this living forum! lots of friendly helpers and no unanswered threads. thumbs up!

i already have a first question. if it says 2-6 sets 2-8 reps, is 2/2 enough to pass a level, but i just continue doing as many sets and unbroken reps as i can?

yes if u do 2 sets with good form u pass

Glad you like the workout program and the forum! Don't wanna sound competitive to bar brothers, but I really heard a lot of bad things about the system. Glad mine makes sense for you.
Thanks to yam & svetrrs for answering your question!
- Chris

Welcome to the community💪🏼

thank you all! time for beast mode!

Hey Manuel,
great that you joined us!

i do not want to start any hate against the system, i am pretty sure it works fine for a lot people out there, however for me it did not. if you look very neutral at it, it is kind of funny, because they require for example a specific amount of reps and sets for every week, however you can simply not do this in my eyes. everyone adapts in a indivual way, so it is not really possible to achieve all the requirements they want you to pass (sets and reps) for each new week. i realised it that the jump to higher reps and sets was way to fast for my progression, so going with a level system is much better! thanks chris!

Did level 6 today and it felt really good! did real muscle ups and the slow negatives on the way down. switched the leg excercises to weighted pistols and walking lunges (12kg kettlebell). found a crossfit gym nearby where i could use all equipment 24/7 for the next 3 cold month. i love their pullup bars!

Level 7 seems still a bit easy. Looking forward for the levels above 10 :)

The gym is near my working place so i will only use it monday till friday. i decided to do a leg-day every sunday and only upper body on mondays.

mo: upper body
we: full body
fr: full body
su: lower body

i think that will work out well in the long term.

did the level 8 leg part today as a combined workout:
30 jump squats
60 sec break
50 squats
90 seconds break
repeat 6 times

all reps unbroken and followed by the leg burnout. i can hardly walk now and dont even want to think about tomorrow :D

level 8 was a lot harder than i thought! pullups were ok, only missing 1 rep in the last round for max sets/reps. dips were also no problem, but the 7 seconds up downs after that, killed me totally :-O
i only just passed the level. could do 6 reps in the first set and the minimal 4 reps after that. and the push burnout: well there was not much left to burn :D

took me 2 hours for pull/push/core. but i feel like i have done a lot of work today and gave it my all!

looking forward for level 9 on wednesday. i think 8 reps of wide pull ups will show me my pulling limit.

Felt really strong today and looked forward on getting level 9 done. and i pretty much killed it :)

wide pull ups went a lot better than i thought and i did them very wide! 8-8-8-7-6-5 reps

did max reps/sets on all other excercises. but only negative muscle ups were possible after my last pulling power got killed in the burnout before.

now i am looking forward to level 10 on friday. doesn't look too hard. did lots of diamond pushups in the bb system before... but level 11 after that seems like fun!

Level 10 is done. diamond pushups were easy as expected, but i couldn't do the full 20 reps on all sets of the normal pushups after that.

now the intermediate levels start! not too sure about level 11 yet. i can do all excercises, but its hard to predict if i will be able to do the amount of reps.

level 11 done. muscle ups an tiger bend push ups went very well. but the shuttle pushups were very tiring! and i really hit a limit at the chinups. it always gets hard, when i do the push before pull excercises.

so its level 12 tomorrow. i did the typewriter pullups before and they are not that hard for me. so i am looking forward on passing this level too.

no that was yesterday. but the log in the diary had to wait until today. christmas time is busy ;)