Calisthenics or "bodyweight exercises"

I plan on doing a post soon showing the exercises the physical therapist gave me and that seem to have my shoulder pretty much fully mended up by now. There are some technical issues involved, such as how to graphically or pictorially show the exercises: photos, a video uploaded to youtube, some diagrams? Anyway, once I get those resolved I'll publish that post. But in this posting, I just want to make brief note of a little web research I did on calisthenics.

I've already noted in previous posts that I intend to do calisthenics--in place of the weight lifting I now do for strength conditioning--for at least part of the year. Actually, as I write this I even think to myself that I could foresee replacing weight lifting entirely with a good calisthenics program. Since I'm still in the fairly early planning stages of my exercise regime, though, I don't want to make any binding decisions about that now.

Anyway, as I speak of calisthenics what I mean is essentially exercises that use only your body's own weight as resistance--as opposed to using a barbell, dumbbells, or, say, rubber resistance bands. So I have in mind things like push-ups--which are much the same as doing bench presses--chin-ups, sit-ups, dips, and the like. Throughout my life I've always referred to these sorts of exercises as calisthenics.

Some recent web searching revealed to me that such exercises are now sometimes referred to as "bodyweight exercises." That makes some sense since, as I mentioned, when doing them you're using your body's weight as the resistance against which you work to build strength. I have to admit, though, that I'm a little suspicious of the new terminology I've discovered--suspicious that it was invented to turn what has always been common knowledge in fitness circles, i.e., types of calisthenics and what muscles they strengthen, into something that can be marketed. A sort of bait-and-switch maneuver.

There are at least two sites trying to sell books and exercise routines under the "bodyweight exercise" label. One also uses the phrase "combat conditioning," while the other tries to purvey its products as the discovery of "coach so-and-so." I'll let you find those for yourself if you're interested, since I don't wish to make this blog into a promotion of those sites. The bottom line is that they, like the P90X people, are in the business of marketing fitness.

The problem with the main sites I found for those bodyweight exercise or calisthenics sites do a pretty hard sell. They don't want to give you much in the way of information unless you pay them. But I'm sure there are plenty of sites on the net where at least the basic information they're trying to market (e.g., types of exercises and what muscles they strengthen) are freely available. I hope one of the things I can do on this blog is to create something of a repository for that type of information.

So, to begin with, here's a link to a site that explains a fairly simple calisthnics or bodyweight exercise routine: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mahler19.htm . Another similar site can be seen here: http://www.cbass.com/Furey.htm . Be aware that at both sites you're going to find links to one of the sites that tries to sell books and other materials connected with the "combat conditioning" calisthenics marketing ploy. Another similar page the provides a video can be viewed here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Quick-Bodyweight-Exercise-Routines .

Despite the marketing on some of these pages they do have at least one virtue: they provide a really basic set of calisthenics that, practiced for 15 to 30 minutes daily or a few times per week should really help develop one's strength and conditioning--presuming, of course, that one follows a healthy diet in addition.

I hope to be able to provide more such links to sites that, without trying to goad the maximum amount of money out of you, provide good information on bodyweight or calisthenic exercise routines.

UPDATE: here's a link for a page with a lot of links to bodyweight exercising: http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode2/Workouts . There's plenty of advertising there too, but there's enough useful information at the links that it seemed worthwhile to include the link.