6’1” male 230lbs in his 30’s here.

Ever since I was little, my dream was to be able to crank out one solid pull up.

I saw my peers in elementary school cranking them out like nothing, while I could barely move an inch from a dead hang.

Fast forward a few decades and my desire to achieve one pull up has been burning and I’ve been training for the past 2 months

Currently:

I can do 90% of a neutral grip pull up (pull up bar up to nose level), 80% of a chin up, and 50% of a wide grip pull up (elbows at 90 degrees)

I’m plateau’d and don’t know what else to do (other than lose more weight).

I’ve been mixing up inverted ring rows, negatives (I drop down fairly quickly), australian pull ups, dead hangs, scapular pull ups, etc

I do these every single day but my strength hasn’t improved much for the past couple months

I sleep 7-8 hours and my diet includes high quality animal protein like whey, yogurt, beef, chicken, and good carbs like rice, sourdough, fruits, etc.

I am not here looking for an excuse, but a solution.

It’s confusing because online advice is mixed with some saying avoid bands like the plague and others praising them.

I need help and advice.

I’ve (25M) been working out from home since around February but have recently been ill so have lost the routine for the past few weeks. I want to get back into it though.

I noticed that whilst I was doing body weight exercises (squats, ab crunches, glute bridges and curls with resistance bands as some examples), I felt that my physique was not changing too much. I can see visual differences but not as much as I thought there would be after around 5 months of training.

I definitely need to work on adding more protein to my diet so that is a certainty, but my question is if using powders such as creatine or protein are entirely necessary?

My physique goal is to be relatively lean all year. To have the health benefits and the physique of someone who you can tell works out, but nothing too extreme.

Hopefully this all makes sense!

EDIT: Thanks so much for the help!

Been doing the RR since December (I'm very grateful to all the help from this sub) and have recently started adding weight to most of the exercises.

Pushups and pull ups were always a big part of my fitness routine, even before finding the RR and, for no real reason, I always just did five sets of each with a four minute break in between sets. I've sort of carried this mentality into the broader RR, doing five sets of each of the upper body exercises (I'm a serious runner so I take things a little lighter on the lower body so as not to compete with my miles) rather than the recommended three.

Am I wasting my time with these last two sets of each exercise? Am I actively hurting my growth or putting dangerous strain on my body? Or is there some tradeoff value I'm gaining by taking each exercise to five sets? Obviously, I'd love to hear that those extra two sets are dumb; it would save me a lot of time to cut them. But I also feel like I'm progressing nicely as I'm currently organizing the routine and I worry about a drop-off.

Thanks, as always, for taking the time to read this and all of the thoughtful posts that have been helpful to me over the past 6+ months.

let's say you eat 3000 calories a day, that is like one Arbys meal per day, maybe with some other unhealthy stuff.

but then you run 20 miles, dead lift 100 kilogram 50 times, do 500 pushups, do 500 pullups, and run another 20 miles on foot.

of course the numbers i am using are humorously exaggerated and extreme, maybe impossible, but i hope i am getting my idea across, you get my idea anyway, with enough exercise, can you outrun, or in this case "out-workout" a bad diet such is the one i am giving as an example.

Today I tried pike push-ups with full range of motion (going all the way down until my hands are around shoulder level), and honestly… it felt way harder than I expected.

What surprised me the most is that it actually felt harder than wall HSPU for me. I didn’t expect that at all. The increased ROM completely changes the difficulty in a way that’s kind of shocking. My shoulders were literally on fire from the very first rep.

It really made me realize how much range of motion matters in vertical pushing movements. This variation feels like it forces way more control and strength through the shoulders.

What I find weird is that most HSPU tutorials don’t really recommend this exercise, even though it seems super useful for building strength.

Has anyone else felt the same about full ROM pike push-ups?

Hello, I'm not an athletic person but by no means am I a lazy person either. I work out sometimes doing bodyweight exercises including pushups, sit ups, crunches, leg raises, planks. Additionally, I cycle on a weekly basis.

I've started doing pushups a few months ago and I've progressed from being able to do about 21 (7x3) in total to 35-40 (15-18 * 3) in total.

There is no issue there, the issue is I'm baffled at how people say that doing 100 pushups a day is the bare minimum for being fit. I find it highly unlikely that someone who is able to do 100 pushups would be barely fit. am I missing something ? or is this benchmark completely unrealistic ? I can't even do 100 knee pushups, yet I believe I am moderately fit. What do you think ?

What ever I try I don't feel the pull up in the back only the biceps and a little bit shouders, i retracted my shoulder blades, opened my chest, tried everything the second I'm in air my back isn't even trying.

I have rounded shoulders and tied chest muscles but I'm trying my best and it's nothing I don't know what to do.

I probably never worked my back muscles properly in my life so I understand why this is so hard but I see the group of muscles that's supposed to work with pull ups it's a huge part of the back and I feel like 5% of it.

Please help.

Hi everyone. I've been lurking here for a while and finally want to commit to bodyweight training. My situation: I work from home, have basically zero equipment, and my current fitness level is pretty low. I can maybe do 5 push-ups with questionable form and can't do a single pull-up.

I've seen the recommended routine mentioned a lot but I'm honestly a bit overwhelmed by it. For those of you who started from absolute scratch at home with nothing:

How did you structure your first few weeks? Did you jump straight into a full routine or ease into it? How did you handle exercises you couldn't do yet, especially pulling movements without a bar? Did you do full-body sessions or split things up?

I have about 30-40 minutes per session, 3-4 times per week. I really want to build a sustainable habit rather than burn out after a week like I have with past attempts.

Any perspective on how you navigated those early days would be really appreciated.

Hi, ive never really exercised at all for the 20 years ive been alive, but last night I spontaneously decided I wanna be able to do pushups, so I looked up what kind of progression there is to being able to do that. I did a few minutes of wall pushups last night (somewhat incorrectly i found out, my elbows were flared out to the side instead of parallel)
and today I'm sore in some places i don't think I should be? when i looked up what muscles pushups worked on, the sides weren't included, and thats where a lot of the soreness is. Are my sides sore because my arms were in the incorrect position? or something else that im doing wrong?

Basically, I’ve been doing my pushups with my arms at a 90 degree angle from my torso so my body looks like a T. After doing 100-150 pushups twice a week for several weeks (started at 5 sets of 20 and worked my way up to 5 sets of 30) I was starting to wonder why my chest wasn’t getting any bigger or stronger, and payed attention to my form and comparing it to how other people do pushups. Apparently I’ve just been letting my delts do all the work this whole time.

I finally learned the correct way to do pushups in a way that works my pecs. I can only do ten now. I feel like I’m starting over from scratch here. I know I just need to grind them out ten at a time for a few months, but it’s still super demoralizing to go from being able to do 30 pushups to only 10.

Anyone else ever had similar fitness fails where they accidentally worked the wrong muscle?

Hi all, I have been doing calisthenics on a PPL split for a few months and I love it, however I can never find the time to do core / balance (the cool shit like handstands) as I am too tired to do them. Either I do it in the middle of my leg days and im too tired to finish my legs or i finish my legs and am too tired to do anything for my core outside of maybe 3 sets of something, so I have been thinking of incorporating a core exercise into my split.
I do [Push/Pull - Pull/Push - Rest - Legs - Push/Pull - Rest - Rest].
Perhaps a dedicated day on one of my rest days for the core? Or is that too much work on the core and I'm overthinking it?

Thank you

Edit, to elaborate on my routine, the [Push/Pull] parts is because since i do an odd amount of them throughout the week, I end up either doing one or the other on the first or second week

Hello,

I’m 1.80 m tall and weigh 100 kg. I’m trying to do my first pull-up, but I can’t because of my weight. I have some body fat (of course), but overall I’m pretty athletic—I play a lot of racquet sports and run from time to time (once a week). I can do 3 sets of 5 negative pull-ups, but I can’t do a full pull-up. It’s most likely a strength issue, so in addition to continuing the negatives, I’ve started a diet to lose weight and make the exercise a little easier for myself, lol.

Do you have any recommendations to help me achieve my goal faster?

Hi all. I have a very weak core. I’ve recently been getting back into fitness but I’ve spent years just gaming and not really exercising at all. Used to be a volleyball player in my teens but as an adult (now 22) my college years were just gaming and studying.

I’ve been doing hollow body holds to work on my core, but keep feeling them in my lower back even though I make sure to drive it into the floor and it isn’t lifting. I stop lowering my legs when I feel even the slightest lift off the ground. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong… please help! How can I improve my technique?

Question in the title. I wanna know what the long term impacts of calisthenics and bodyweight is.

How has it affected your bone strength?

Your ability to recover from injuries?

Your ability to do life tasks?

Impact on aging?

Impact on your lifestyle?

Etc etc.

People with slightly less obviously welcome and I'm super curious for any people slightly older who have been practicing lifelong.

The biggest motivation for me to do bodyweight is when I see people who are so fit and able to still hike, climb, and recover gracefully from falls and injuries when they are older. Weak bones run in the family and I'm particularly scared of it, which is why I wanna strengthen my muscles and ability to carry myself.

Thank you in advance!!

My upper chest is still underdeveloped compared to the rest of my chest and shoulders, especially when I'm at a low body fat percentage. I also don't seem to be making any progress growing it, even though I tried with decline push-ups and kept adding weight. I'm pretty sure my form is correct as I kept looking it up and trying.

I also read online that chest is hard to develop using bodyweight exercises.

Does anyone else have the same problem? Are there any better exercises or small equipment to hit it better? Tips or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Hello all! I'm looking for feedback on my current workout routine and whether it's worth getting a gym membership at this stage. Otherwise, I have a basic home gym that has a bench press with weights and dumbells. Also, I found out about calisthenics recently and have been enjoying my progress on it so far.

I'm 21M, 5'9", 142 lb. My estimated body fat is 9.4% (using the https://www.calculator.net/body-fat-calculator.html body fat calculator, so I know it may not be perfectly accurate since that doesn't sound right). I'm currently trying to bulk, and the only supplement I use is whey protein. I sleep well, don't smoke or drink alcohol, and I eat a balanced diet.

I work out 5–6 days per week.

for mobility I do everyday in the morning:

1. Cat Cow

   - 60 seconds

2. World's Greatest Stretch

   - 30 seconds per side

3. Asian Squat

   - 30 second hold

   - 30 seconds rocking side to side for each leg

4. Half-Kneeling Thoracic Rotations

   - 30 seconds per side

5. Wall Slides

- 60 seconds

I follow a structured PPL program that I put together with the help of ChatGPT lol. It's been working well so far as I have been consistent doing this for 3 weeks so far, but I'm looking for feedback on whether I should add or replace any exercises, or change the sets/reps.

I also got gym rings this week but not sure what to add for those besides just doing pull ups, dead hangs, rows, dips, and knee raises.

PUSH DAY

1. Bench Press — 3x5 40kg
2. Push-ups — 3 x 4 diamond push ups (can do 10 pushups now)
3. Plank — 3 sets of 1:30

PULL DAY

1. Pull-ups — 5x3
2. Dips — 3x6
3. Rows — 3x8
4. Hanging Knee Raises — 3x8

LEG DAY

1. Calf Raises — 3x15 14kg
2. Lunges — 3x9 14kg
3. goblet Squats — 3x25 14kg
4. Pistol squats 3x4 (just unlocked yesterday on my leg day yay :D )

For cardio:

I do light cardio every day biking.

Every week or 2 I do a 11 mile run for heavy intensity to build upon my endurance.

Goals I am trying to reach currently

Bench press 100 kg | benching 47 kg so far

Hand stand push ups | 4 diamond push ups so far

10 pull ups -> weighted pull ups | 3 pull ups so far

15 dips -> weighted dips | 6 dips so far

Keeping it simple on goals right now but could be expended for sure.

Hello guys I am new here I need advice for how to gain muscle and weight consistently, right now I am very week that can't even handle the steering wheel of scooty and bike and i know it's my fault because there was a chance to grow myself during Covid but I caught to lazyness that i could not take care of my self and now I am 21 old and my height is 5:11 and weight is 56kg and I believe that I have no strength left in my body because I was so lazy. I can't even do more than 2 push ups because of my very thin body where no muscle mass is there please give me advice of how I can do consistently work on my self

Thank you..

Hi all! So I just recently started my weight loss journey. For context, I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and I am considered severe according to my providers. I say that to say I have to do low impact exercises. The complicated part is that my EDS caused a rare complication in my spine called cauda equina syndrome where a herniated disc slips backwards into your spinal cord. I had emergency back surgery in August and have been in and out of home and regular PT since. It left me with partial paralysis and a lot of complications that had me hospitalized on and off and bed bound for months.

Just for an extra kick I guess my autonomic disorder (POTS) worsened greatly. It makes even sitting up hard bc my heart rate jumps up and makes a whole mess of symptoms. The POTS decided that wasn’t enough and triggered non-epileptic seizures and an infection got me hospitalized and diagnosed with ME/CFS which means if I expel too much energy, I get flu like symptoms and when I’m in a flare I can’t even have a little light.

Long story short, I’m a fucking mess but I’m trying to fix what I can and do what I can. I am working in PT to gain my mobility back but I want to start with a little exercise even if it’s five minutes. I just don’t know what to do. The limitations I have are using too much energy, one leg paralyzed (I have braces that help tho and I’m getting small movements back), and too many positional changes (from low to high) triggering symptoms.

I know that’s a lot but if anyone understands, also has a mobility related or chronic illness related disability, I would love to hear from you what your story is or any advice! Any advice is welcome tho from anyone

I have been going to the gym doing calisthenics for a few months now and love it, however with how busy it is being a student and working my part time night shifts, I find it difficult to go as often as I used to (used to be 5-6x a week).

Currently, I do a [Push/Pull - Pull/Push - Leg/Rest - Push/Pull - Rest - Rest] split.
The upper body days are essentially inverse of each other, so if i do Push - Pull - Push in the week, the next week ill do Pull - Push - Pull.
The legs/rest day in the middle is essentially me going "can i be arsed going to the gym right now or no?". I work as a night cleaner 3 nights a week and finish pretty late at night (10pm typically), and if I got class on that day as well the last I want to do after a whole day of studying and then going to work is going to the gym to get sweatier, but if it's the holidays or I'm feeling motivated I'll go. Optimal? No, but having a flex day keeps me sane.

Anyway, I have had a couple of people say on my previous post this isnt ideal due to how much upper body i focus on rather vs legs, however it's really the only split I know and am comfortable with. I want to go as hard as I can on these muscle groups to grow them as well as I can.

However, if there are better suggestions out there for different splits i would love to hear out, as I want to optimise my routine more and not miss any bases.

PS: I was also thinking of turning one of the rest days into a core day, as I find doing core on leg days to exhaust me too much.