How to Create a Calisthenics Workout Plan for Hypertrophy

Discover how to build impressive muscle using only your body weight! As a calisthenics enthusiast, I’ll guide you through creating an effective hypertrophy workout plan without gym equipment. Whether you’re new to bodyweight training or looking to level up, this guide will help you maximize muscle growth with calisthenics. Let’s transform your physique!

Why Choose Calisthenics for Muscle Growth?

Contrary to popular belief, you can build significant muscle mass with bodyweight exercises alone. Calisthenics offers several advantages:

• Cost-effective: Minimal equipment needed
• Versatile: Can be done anywhere
• Efficient: Engages multiple muscle groups simultaneously
• Scalable: Easily adjustable for all fitness levels

The Key Principles of a Calisthenics Hypertrophy Workout Plan

There are a few key principles to be mindful of when creating a calisthenics hypertrophy plan. These include:

Progressive Overload 

Just like training with weights, you will need to continually challenge your muscles to grow. In calisthenics. You can do this in various ways such as:

• Adding repetitions
• Increasing to a more difficult variation (eg. knee push ups to a regular push up)
• Decreasing the amount of leverage you have during the exercise
• Adding weight in the form of a weighted vest, dipping belt or backpack with weight in there
• Slowing the tempo of the exercise

These can all be used in conjunction to provide you with a varied workout. My preference is to keep it simple and just add repetitions until I hit my repetition threshold (more on this later), and then add more weight.

Have a progression plan in place before you start your next workout, so you have a clear picture of how you will be making the exercise harder than it was last time to ensure you are progressively overloading the muscle.

Volume & Intensity

To stimulate hypertrophy, you’ll need to perform at a high enough intensity (difficulty of exercises) to stimulate the growth while balancing the volume (number of sets and reps) you perform.

While there are many different studies that seem to be rather conflicting with each other. You will need to find the amount of volume and intensity that works best for you.

Volume and intensity will generally have an inverse effect. So that the more intense your workout session is, the less volume or sets and reps you will be able to perform adequately enough. 

When first starting out it may be more advantageous to have a higher volume workout as your intensity may not be as high. This could look like 3 sets of 10-12 reps and have 3-5 exercises in the same muscle group. If you train various muscle groups within the same workout, eg. a full body workout, you may be able to perform more exercises as the each muscle group won’t have more than 3-5 exercises within that single workout.

As you get more experienced overtime and have tracked your workouts. You may find that a higher intensity, lower volume workout has substantially higher results as each workout stimulates muscle growth to a high degree.

Proper Form and Mind-Muscle Connection

Focusing on perfect form and really feeling the target muscles working is crucial for maximizing growth.

If you are unable to perform the exercise correctly, start on an easier progression and work your way up. If you try difficult progressions too soon without proper form, this could cause injury and impede your progress over the long term. It is imperative to perform the exercise with correct form not only to minimize injury, but also to effectively stimulate the target muscle for growth.

You can also record your exercises to critique your own form and self compare how you can perform the exercise better next time.

Adequate Rest and Recovery

Muscles grow during rest, not during the workout itself. Ensure you’re getting enough sleep and recovery time between sessions. This will help to keep your hormones in peak condition. As a lack of sleep can cause your testosterone levels to drop by 10-15% according to this study.

Your rest days between workouts can also be dictated by the level of intensity and volume. If you are performing very high intensity workouts to complete failure then you may want to workout only 3 times per week total to allow not only the muscles to recover and grow but also your central nervous system as pushing to and or beyond failure on compound exercises can cause general body fatigue.

Likewise if you are doing a higher volume workout program with a lower intensity, you may find that you will be able to workout more often.

Having done calisthenics for over a decade the style of training that works best for me now is training just 3 days per week with the other days for rest or active recovery. Each exercise will be performed to failure and I will only train each body part once per week. Eg. Pull session Monday, push on Wednesday and legs on Friday.

For a beginner I would recommend either 3 days per week or more to start with, each with a full body session.

Creating Your Calisthenics Hypertrophy Workout Plan

Now, let’s break down how to structure your workout plan:

Frequency

Aim for 3-4 full-body workouts per week, allowing at least one day of rest between sessions to allow for rest.

Exercise Selection

Include exercises that target all major muscle groups:

• Push exercises: Push-ups, dips, handstand push-ups
• Pull exercises: Pull-ups, chin-ups, inverted rows
• Leg exercises: Squats, lunges, pistol squats
• Core exercises: Planks, L-sits, hanging leg raises

Sets and Reps

For hypertrophy, aim for 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps for each exercise. If you can easily do more than 12 reps, it’s time to progress to a more challenging variation.

If you are a complete beginner, I recommend starting between the rep range of 12-20 reps for each exercise as this will help build the muscle memory to perform the exercise with perfect form.

Rest Periods

Keep rest periods between sets relatively short, around 60-90 seconds, to maintain metabolic stress. This will also help to increase how many calories you burn during your workout as your heart rate will stay elevated for the duration.

Sample Calisthenics Hypertrophy Workout Plan

Here’s a sample full-body workout that you can perform 3-4 times per week:

• Push-ups: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Pull-ups: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Hip Hinges: 3 sets of 8-12
• Hanging Leg Raises: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Pike Push-ups: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Inverted Rows: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Pistol Squats: 3 sets of 8-12 reps per leg
• Supermans: 3 sets of 8-12 reps

Remember to warm up properly before each workout and cool down afterward. As you progress, you can increase the difficulty of each exercise by using more challenging variations or adding weight (e.g., weighted vest).

Nutrition for Calisthenics Hypertrophy

Don’t forget that nutrition plays a crucial role in muscle growth. Ensure you’re eating enough calories to support muscle growth, with a focus on lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats. In general terms a well balanced diet.

Typically a 200-300 calorie surplus will be enough to fuel muscle growth while preventing excess weight gain. Aim for around 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily to support muscle recovery and growth.

However, if your primary goal is to trim down and lose bodyfat, then you can start with a calorie deficit of 200-500 calories per day. You can use our calorie adjustment table to find out based on your weight changes, what your maintenance calories are.

Tracking Progress and Making Adjustments

Keep a workout log to track your progress. If you’re not seeing the muscle growth you desire after a few weeks, consider:

• Increasing the volume (more sets or reps)
• Progressing to more challenging exercise variations
• Ensuring you’re eating enough to support muscle growth
• Getting adequate sleep and recovery

In my experience when I am not progressing, it could be for a few reasons. This may include; lack of sleep and recovery, not pushing hard enough during the exercise and or I need to change up the exercise selection or routine to provide a new stimulus for the body to adapt to again.

Conclusion

Creating an effective calisthenics hypertrophy workout plan is all about applying the principles of progressive overload, proper form, and adequate intensity to bodyweight exercises. With consistency and dedication, you can build impressive muscle mass using nothing but your own body weight. Remember, the key to success is patience and persistence. Stick with your plan, push yourself to progress, and you’ll be amazed at the results you can achieve with calisthenics!

Now get out there and start building that muscle!