---
title: 'How to Start Calisthenics at Home For Beginners (No Equipment)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=8gQbgyTlS-8'
video_id: '8gQbgyTlS-8'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 410
---

# How to Start Calisthenics at Home For Beginners (No Equipment)

> Source: [How to Start Calisthenics at Home For Beginners (No Equipment)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=8gQbgyTlS-8)

## Summary

The video is a comprehensive beginner's guide to calisthenics, demonstrating how to train every major muscle group at home with no equipment (except optionally a pull-up bar). It covers exercises ranging from basic to advanced, emphasising progressive overload and the compound nature of bodyweight training.

### Key Points

- **Chest Exercises** [00:25] — The video introduces push-ups as the staple chest exercise, with modifications: knee push-ups (easy), regular push-ups (medium), archer push-ups and pseudo push-ups (advanced, replicating planche).
- **Triceps Exercises** [01:29] — Triceps can be worked with skull crushers, tricep extensions, diamond pushups (elbows tucked), and tricep dips using a chair.
- **Shoulder Exercises** [02:09] — Shoulder exercises include pike pushups, elevated pike pushups (feet on chair for more weight), and wall handstand pushups (advanced).
- **Core Strength** [02:56] — Core exercises: V-ups (full range of motion), tuck V-ups (easier), L-sit (advanced, also works triceps/shoulders). Progression: tucked L-sit, then extend one leg at a time.
- **Back Exercises (Floor)** [04:08] — Back is tricky because it requires pulling. Floor options: reverse flies (easy), reverse flies with legs raised (harder), drags (raise whole body by pressing into floor). For more effectiveness, a pull-up bar is recommended.
- **Biceps Exercises** [05:33] — For biceps, a pull-up bar is best (chin-ups, headbangers, side-to-side holds, behind-the-head chin-ups). Without a bar: sit on a towel, lean back, and curl your legs as resistance.
- **Leg Exercises** [06:11] — Leg exercises: bodyweight squats (easy), lateral squats, explosive squats, alternating lunges, single-leg pistol squats (advanced).
- **Forearm Exercises** [06:35] — Forearms: fingertip holds and wall extensions.

## Transcript

Can you get in shape without weight? Of course you can, as long as you have this much room and a floor, then you can get in shape by only doing calisthenics exercises. And that's exactly where I'm gonna show you in this video.
I'm gonna be going through each muscle group and showing you beginner to advanced calisthenics exercises that you can do literally in your bedroom and your living room absolutely anywhere. And trust me, you can get amazing results from this. So first, subscribe to stay tuned for more content.
And second, let's get right into it. So starting off with our chest. One of the staple of calisthenics exercises are pushups and you definitely know this exercise. But depending on your strength levels, there's different modifications that you can do
to make it easier or harder. So to make it easier, you can go on your knees and do knee pushups. As you get stronger, you can do the regular pushup. But then, as you get even stronger, there's different variations you can do, such as archer pushups,
which is basically doing a chest fly with one hand while doing a press with the other hand. Sudo pushups, one of my favorite pushups because this replicates the planche and it targets your front delts, your triceps and your chest significantly at the same time.
So start with your fingers pointing outwards like this, lean forward until your hands are aligned with your hips and press down, keeping that lean throughout the whole motion. And this exercise is also great to eventually progress
into more advanced exercises such as the plan. Also, I'm sure you can find an elevated surface such as a chair. So here, I got a chair and you can do decline pushups to target your upper chest and incline pushups
to target your lower chest. Now, getting into our triceps. Skull crushers are great for this. At the top, you want to squeeze your triceps, come back down slowly and repeat. You can also do tricep extensions like this and a more advanced variations are diamond pushups.
So place your hands in this form, put a red below your chest, go down slowly with your elbows tucked in, come back up and repeat. Personally, diamond pushups alongside the pseudo pushups are one of my favorites. Also, let's bring the chair back
because you can do tricep dips. Simply grab the chair behind you. You're gonna press up, squeeze your triceps, come back down and repeat. Next, I know you want to get some bigger shoulders or here are a few exercises you can do for that. Again, one of these staples of calisthenics exercises
for your shoulders are pike pushups. You want to place your hands slightly wider than shoulder with a part. Go into this triangle position like this, lean your weight onto your shoulders, press down
and come back up. And to make this harder, we can bring the chair back. A little bit our feet so that more weight is on our shoulders and do the exact same thing. And if you want to make it even harder, I'm sure you've got a wall that you can get access to and you can do wall handstand pushup.
This is an advanced exercise, but again, once you build up to it, it's amazing to build mass and strength into your shoulders. Till this day as I am an advanced calisthenics athlete, I do handstand pushups all the time. So simply walk up onto the wall.
Same thing, place your hands slightly wider than shoulder with a part and perform the handstand pushup. And that's it for shoulders. Next, let's get into our abs and our core strength. V-ups are great for this
because it's a full range of motion exercise, targeting both your lower and your upper abs. But if you want to make it easier, you can do tuck the V-ups. Tuck your legs and come this way. If you feel like those two are too easy, then try doing the L-sit,
another staple for calisthenics exercise. Simply place your hands beside you and you want to raise your legs up, squeezing your core like this. To make it easier, you can do a tucked variation like this
and progressively extend one leg as a time as you get stronger. See, I'm already out of breath because the thing with calisthenics is that it's all compound exercises. So although the L-sit, for example, is mainly targeting my core, there's so many other muscle groups getting involved
to stabilize myself, such as my triceps, my shoulders, my chest, my back, my leg. Next, we're gonna get into our back. But before doing so, I wanna let you know about my training app. By joining it, you'll get access to all my workout programs from beginner
intermediate all the way to advanced. I also have my nutrition guides there as well, depending on your goal, whether you wanna build muscle or lose fat because if you didn't know, nutrition is literally 80% of your result. And I do one-on-one coaching there as well.
So you can ask me questions personally about your fitness journey and I'll be there to help you out along the way. So if you wanna join it, check out the link in my description down below and I'll see you on my app. All right, next, let's get into our back. Now the back is kinda tricky because the only muscle group that you need to be able
to pull something in order to target it effectively. Because your chest, for example, all you gotta do is push and you can push yourself off the ground. But in order to pull, you need to either have some sort of equipment such as a pullable. But there are easier variations to target your bag
that you can do with simply using a floor. So let me show you a down flat on the ground like this and you can do reverse flies this way. Squeezing your back at the top, bringing it back down slowly and repeating. Now that might be too easy for you.
So if you wanna make it harder, you can also raise your legs at the same time engaging your lower back. So up, squeeze, bring it back down slowly and repeat. Now using the floor and doing a harder variation or drag and it raises.
This one looks a little tricky, but it is effective. Which you wanna do is lay down on the ground like this. Place your hands by your hips and you're gonna basically raise your whole body by pushing down on the ground. So push, raise, squeeze my back, bring it back down slowly.
Now if you wanna target your back even more effectively, I suggest that you get a pull-of-bar, doorway pull-of-bar, whatever that is. You can get them on Amazon, Walmart, any nearby store really. And once you have this, then it opens so many more opportunities for what you can do to target your back.
Such as pull-ups, chin-ups, typewriters, and front levers. Now for your biceps, again, you need to be able to pull something.
Compared to your triceps where all you can do is simply push off the ground. To target your biceps, you need to pull something such as dumbbells. Or again, get a pull-of-bar and you can do chin-ups, headbangers, side to side holds,
and behind the head chin-ups. But here, what if I don't have a pull-of-bar and I want to target my biceps? Well, here's a life hack. Grab a towel that won't rip. Place it under your knees like this. Get a good grip on it. Lean back and you're basically going to be curling your leg.
So without using the assistance of your legs, you're going to pull with your arms, squeeze your biceps, bring it back down slowly, and repeat. And you can actually make this pretty challenging because you can push your legs down to build more resistance for your biceps.
So pushing down my legs and fighting it with my biceps, you'll definitely get a good bicep working on this. Next, for our legs, you can do body weight squats as an easy variation, lateral squat as a more advanced variation,
explosive squats to build that explosive strength in your legs and the same thing with alternating lunges. And for an advanced leg exercise, you can do single leg pistol squat.
So this takes a lot more mobility, but going down on one leg, stabilizing yourself and pressing back up. And finally, for our forearms, you can do finger tip holds like this, and you can also do wall extensions like this.
And that's how you can get in shape with calisthenics from home, make sure to subscribe.