Calisthenic guys have been memed as the people who skip leg day, but why does it
seem that we have the smallest legs as compared to all the other athletes? Let me explain why.
Okay, let me first explain the three different types of calisthenic athletes.
We have the freestylers, the people who generally focus on freestyle calisthenics.
So, for example 360 muscle ups, 360 skills. Usually exercises that transition from one move
to another. And then we have the bodybuilder types like Austin Dunham. People who generally
use calisthenics as a form to get in shape and to build muscle like myself. And lastly we have the
gymnasts like calisthenic people who generally focus on skills. So front levers, back levers, and
usually these type of people do correlate with freestyle as well. Now the reason why these three
different type of calisthenic people matter is because of priority. A lot of these athletes have
different goals, right? Not all of us are trying to build muscle, not all of us are trying to freestyle,
and not all of us are trying to be a master at skills like front levers. And that's the biggest
reason of why a lot of us don't have huge legs. Because generally, the people that freestyle
most of them don't really do legs. None of them are prioritizing squats, or if at the most they're
only doing bodyweight squats. The intensity is not near enough to even stimulate any kind of muscle
hypertrophy. In comparison though, the bodybuilder types, the people who actually program exercises
to maximize muscle hypertrophy through the use of external resistance, right. Or the people that
hybrid training, those are the people that are actually trying to maximize muscle hypertrophy
for their legs. But of course, for the gymnasts those guys are jacked as sh*t, they do
everything. Their Olympian style training- they do everything. They're like gods to us.
So the first reason just comes down to priority. A lot of us aren't trying to get huge legs.
Our style of training is very different to traditional weightlifting. The variables that
we manipulate in our training is kind of different to weightlifting. Though we still manipulate tempo,
we do progressive overload, we change the amount of weight that we lift. But the style of training
that we do is different. Many of our training exercises are not the same, unless we're hybrid-ing.
If you're not going to the gym and doing BB back squats, you're not maximizing
the potential for yourself to actually build muscle for your legs. But let's get into the
second point. As I mentioned previously, the workout intensity for a lot of these calisthenic guys are
just way too low. Either we're working with weight that is just way too low- you can't expect to build
big legs with body weight exercises. The intensity and the difficulty of the session as a whole is
not near enough to stimulate any kind of growth. It's too easy. Unless you're doing a whole ton
of volume, right. You're doing 50, 100 reps. Even by doing that amount of reps, it's still very difficult
to build muscle doing it that way. That's why a lot of us turn to heavy weight. For one, high reps
for low weight is extremely fatiguing, mentally. But when we change it up and switch it entirely,
once we start using heavy weight for low reps, that becomes a lot more manageable. There are still
mental fatigue there, but it's a lot easier to do than high reps. High reps you get to a certain
point where you're like, "Okay I can keep going." But your mind is playing tricks on you. You can actually do
more than you actually think. With heavy weight, there's a certain limitation there. You get to
a point where you're like, "Maybe I can squeeze in a little bit more reps." But you're not really sure.
And that's where you just go completely berserk, and you squeeze out as much reps as
you can. You train to failure. And that's why people say hybrid-ing is probably the best
form of exercise. You do calisthenics, and then you do weighted calisthenics, and also some form
of weight lifting in that program as a whole as well. That will create the perfect structure
for building the perfect you. And that's with me personally, as I've gotten more experienced with
calisthenics, I'm creating more sessions with more weightlifting exercises, and more sessions
with heavier weight. Now that leads me to my second point, is the fact that a lot of people that train
weighted calisthenics for their upper body is not matching the same amount of weight for their legs.
For example, I was watching a Bar Brothers video- and this is no disrespect to Bar Brothers. I love
those guys. They're the reason why I actually started trying calisthenics. But, one big thing is
that we're not using the same amount of weight for our legs. So you'll see in a clip of even myself,
where I'm dipping like 75 kg, but we're not using the same amount of weight for our legs. In fact, we
should actually be using more weight for our legs, right, to keep up. If you guys watch a lot of anime,
I think the anime is called the mightiest disciple- the world's strongest disciple (Kenichi). I can't
remember who, but one of the masters mentioned that the legs are three times stronger than your arms (*or upper body*).
Now if that fact is true, then that means that our legs should be trained harder, right? At a more
difficult intensity than our upper body, in order to stimulate the same amount of hypertrophy. Our
legs should be pushed harder, we use them every single day. With my training for example, on a
good hypertrophy day, my range for dips is probably around 45 to 50 kg for 6 to 12 reps, and that's me
actually pushing, working towards- close to failure, right. I have to do that same amount of weight for
my legs (to stimulate growth). Now of course that same amount of weight for my legs is relatively easy. That's why a lot
of people push more weight with their legs- that's just common knowledge. So that's another reason why.
We aren't matching the intensity for our legs. The amount of weight that we use for our upper
body is much more than what we use for our legs. And that's a big thing as well. But, of course it
makes sense we don't go to the gym, and we don't have a barbell that we're able to place on our
back, or place on our front, and place a ton of plates on each side and to do a squat.
For many of us, we don't prefer that style of training. And that's completely okay.
But that is another reason of why our legs just aren't as optimal as they could be. In our form
of training. Now, the next reason is because either our frequency or our volume is just way too low.
Either the amount of times that we train our legs throughout the week is just not enough.
Some of us are still sticking to one leg workout throughout the week. Or the leg workouts
that we do, we're not doing enough sets- we're not doing enough, pretty much. And to add on to this,
the selection of leg exercises that we're doing are just way too easy as well. Body weight squats
for 50 reps, are not going to cut it. No matter how strong you get, trying to progressively
overload leg exercises are extremely difficult, especially if their body weight. Let's say for
example, that I am able to build my legs at first as a beginner. I do 50 reps of squats as one set,
then as I get stronger throughout the weeks, I increase that eventually to 100. What are
you going to do? You're going to build that all the way to a thousand reps? That is not optimal.
That is not the best way to build your legs. For my current split right now, I've changed between
one leg workout a week, and two leg workouts a week. When I do upper body/ lower split, I do
legs twice. When I do push/pull/legs, I don't do legs twice. And that's because my singular leg
session has a ton of volume. I do at least 15 to 20 sets within that single session. It is possible
to maximize muscle hypertrophy through just one leg workout. Now let's talk a bit about calves. Calf
development has a lot to do with genetics. Simply, the insertions of your muscles of your calves are
going to be different from person to person. Some people tend to have high insertions, some people
tend to have low insertions. And then generally we also see big people have big calves even though
they don't train calves at all. But that's another thing, when people say, "Oh man you have small calves."
But they don't factor in that genetics does play a role to a certain extent. Though it shouldn't
deter or demotivate you from training calves. But that's another thing that people don't factor
in as well, is that a lot of people with big calves don't really train calves. We see rugby players,
we see sprinters, marathon runners, they're not actively doing calf exercises to build big calves.
That's just a by-product of their daily training. People need to understand that simply doing
squats targets the calves. How do we actually train the hamstrings? We do so by eccentrically
overloading the muscle, by stretching the muscle. The same thing is with calves. Though there is some
benefit to training calves through isolation, i.e calf raises or the machines. But overall people
who have big calves, don't really train calves. Now the last one isn't a factor of why we have small
legs, but the last one is that people need to stay in their own lanes. People tend to care way too
much about what other people think of them. We on social media, as a community, browse through
all these videos, these Instagram posts, and we see and we comment- or people comment on us and they're
like bro, "where your calves? Bro your belly's big." No one really cares. Everyone always has something
to say about you if you're doing something. So at the end of the day continue working on yourself
man. If you don't want to train legs, you don't want to train legs. Okay, now this doesn't mean
that I'm encouraging your behaviour to skip legs or to avoid legs entirely, but I'm just saying...
People will always have something to say about you. Your height, the way you look, the way you feel...
Everything. A lot of us won't have the same goals, a lot of us tend to want to look a different kind
of way, a lot of us just don't want to do the same things as other people. But, I digress. At
the end of the day stick to your own goals, stick to what you want to do, and as long as you're happy...
nothing else really matters, right? But yea, if you guys have any concerns of anything that
I've said in this video, or you want to debate anything that I've said. Let me know in the
comments. I'm always keen to talk about something with you guys. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the
video, hopefully you found some type of value or usefulness in this video. Subscribe to the channel
if you're new, like the video if you enjoyed it. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace out...