Calisthenics Chest Workout

Have you been trying to do a calisthenics chest workout routine but find that you are unable to see results?

The chest is one of the most important muscles to develop a lean and strong physique, and even though genetics plays an important role in the chest’s appearance, everyone can develop it.

But how can you achieve this by only using your body weight?

Can you really build a chest with calisthenics?

Here is where you can start getting creative with different angles and positions, so you are able to increase the load on the workout and keep generating muscle overload.

By the way, for this workout routine, we will only be using push-ups, in case you were wondering.

So what are we actually trying to accomplish when structuring a chest workout routine?

What are we trying to avoid?

• For Men – Man Boobs.
• For Women – Fat around the chest area.

Everything is possible, but it’s important to understand a few things.

Nutrition

First and foremost, your body fat percentage needs to come down! If you develop an incredible chest, but that amazing muscle is being covered by fat, it’s still going to look… well, saying it politely, not good.

Then, you have protein intake.

Make sure you are eating the ideal protein intake for your goals. If you exercise and don’t give your body the nutrients you need, then, no progress.

Volume For Your Workout

Once you have a clear understanding that nutrition will play a big role, then comes the volume.

What exactly is the volume?

• Reps
• Sets
• Weight

Let’s break this down into a simple example.

Let’s begin with weight.

According to Caloriebee, when doing a push-up, you are “carrying 55 percent of your weight in a push-up.”

This will be crucial since calisthenics or bodyweight exercises depend on your body weight (unless doing weighted calisthenics).

How to adjust your weight?

The 2 most important factors are angles and isolation. This means you can incline or decline a push-up or you can try to gradually work to use only one arm.

Here is a chart with “estimates” of how much weight you are carrying with each progression.

So we will use 160 lbs as a reference, and we will use 50% to be on the safe side.

This will give us 80lbs.

Now that we have our first variable let’s define how many sets we need.

What is a set?

The research says that to optimize a set to achieve strength, muscle, or hypertrophy, you should be doing between 6 – 12 reps for each set.

Additionally, you should be working out your muscles close to failure; this means that when doing your set, you should finish one or two reps before reaching failure.

This is where the term Reps In Reserve (RIR) plays an important role.

This means that if you are doing 10 reps per set, but you have the strength to do 15 each set, you will not be creating enough muscle tear and you will not optimize the set.

What happens if you can do 20 reps in one set?

You need to add weight or do a more complicated version of your exercises to stay in the 6-12 rep range.

What happens If you can’t do 6 reps?

Then the recommendation is that you need to find a progression or regression to stay in the rep range suggested.

Then comes the frequency.

How many sets per workout and how many times per week should you train?

A 2017 meta-analysis found that the optimal amount of sets per week per muscle group is between 10 -20 sets. This applies better if you are doing weight training. But if you are doing calisthenics you should probably try to stay on the higher end of the spectrum.

Additionally, a 2010 meta-analysis found that the optimum amount of sets per workout per muscle group is 4-6 sets.

So the way to split your workout in a week to optimize both studies will be doing 3 days with 6 sets per workout.

What to consider with reps?

The most important factor with reps is posture and time under tension.

Regarding Posture

Just make sure you keep your back straight and that your elbows don’t flare out. This is one of the most common mistakes that could hurt your joints.

Regarding Time Under Tension

Make sure not to do the repetitions too fast. You should at least try to do 1 second up, 1 second down. Eventually, you can try to slow down or do isometrics. Try and hold the bottom position for 5 seconds and then pushing to your up position.

How Can You Make It More Intersting?

Change Arm Width

• Hits the inner chest
• Targets the triceps muscles

Shoulder Width – Regular Push Up

• Best balance for triceps, chest and shoulder development.
• To improve range of motion you can add paralletts.

Wide Width

• Hits the outer chest.
• Targets more chest development.

Change Momentum Or Time Under Tension

Add Explosiveness

• Push yourself so the hands separate from the ground.
• Try to clap in the up position.
• You can use your hands or fists.

Add Time Under Tension

• Helps to overcome plateaus.
• Provides additional muslce tear.

How To Structure Your Calisthenics Chest Workout Routine

Step 1

Define what progression you will do from the first chart. Find a progression you can stay in the 6 – 12 repetition range. Remember to keep your (RIR) as low as possible.

Step 2

Add Volume! Next week add more reps, add more sets or add weight. Just remember to stay in the 20 set a week and 12 rep max.

Here are two options.

Option 1 – Add Reps

In this option, we added 2 reps on each set of regular push-ups. We could´ve tried and added 2 reps on decline push up but that is harder. We didn’t add reps to incline push-ups because we would pass the 12 rep range.

This is why we included a second version in which we add another set of regular push up and eliminate a set of incline push up.

Option 2 – Add Weight

If you notice, this one has a higher volume. The added weight surpasses the reps on the previous version.

But as far as adding strength and muscle, you just need to keep adding volume.

Doing all sets with 8 reps of one-arm push-up is a volume of 23,000. This is a goal that probably will take you at least a year if you are consistent.

So don’t think for a second you are unable to build muscle with calisthenics. As you can see, it is possible! You just need to structure it in a way that lines up with your goals.

Adding it all up

• Find the inclination that challenges you.
• Stay in the 6 – 12 reps per set.
• Keep good posture and shoot to increase time under tension.
• Split the workout 3 times a week with 6 sets per day for a total of 18 sets per week.
• Add volume every week.
• Eat enough protein.