I’m not the only person that works out in Mannheim. We organize our training through Facebook and Whatsapp. Everybody is welcome to join.

I met Matthias at one of those meetings back in 2014. He is one of the most dedicated people to sport and a well-balanced diet, in my proximity.

This is Matthias’ story:

Starting out with Bodyweight Training

In 2006 I started training in the gym. It was a good start in the world of fitness, but it became boring after a while. Due to a stomach illness in 2013, I lost 17kg of weight. To get back into working out, after the illness, I “re”-started with bodyweight exercises like Pull-ups and TRX© in the gym in winter of 2013. In spring 2014, as the weather got nicer, I thought to myself: “why do I workout at the gym when I purely use my bodyweight, anyway; hence I started training outside in the sun. During this time, I saw some Freeletics videos on YouTube and tried a 12-week workout plan for beginners. A smartphone app managed my Freeletics training. It was all well and good to get basic fitness, but I was not very happy with the intensity and the focus on fat burning. The exercises like pull-ups, pushups and burpees just weren’t challenging enough for me. Hence, I was looking for something more challenging. I saw videos from Hannibal for King on Youtube, which inspired me to seek out a wider range of exercises like muscle ups, and the front and back lever.

My start with Calisthenics in Fall 2014

As you can see in the following video, I tried several advanced exercises at the beginning and struggled totally. I realized that my muscles, especially the core and the shoulders, were not strong enough for this kind of training, yet. During my training in the gym, I trained each muscle group in isolation without any combined exercises. I only worked on the advanced exercises for half a year. However, in the end, I had totally forgotten the very basics. From my experience, I would recommend to work on the basics such as squats, dips, pull-ups and pushups and focus roughly one-third of your training solely on practicing more demanding exercises, like skin the cat, pistols, front lever raises, handstand, diamond pushups, and windshield wipers. After you have already been training for a while, you should begin to implement the advanced exercises in your basic training. For all advanced exercises, there are varied options available, depending on your skill level. You will find some variations and the step up to more advanced exercises in one of my future articles.

Now I look back upon the last two years, and I can truly say that I have learned an incredible amount about my body and, much more important, that you can do things with it I never even thought I would be capable of. Furthermore, my illness of 2013 also taught me a lot about the importance of proper nutrition. Ultimately, about how to gain muscle mass without lifting steel. Some people think that training only with your bodyweight is not enough to gain muscle mass, but trust me, this theory is wrong. From my weight increase of 12 kg, I built 5 kg of muscle mass in only 3 Months simply by eating a balanced diet in combination with calisthenics training.
As Jens described in a previous article, to build up body mass, you need to eat roughly 500 kcal more than your body necessarily needs. This mass can then be “transformed” into muscle through the workout. A key factor is to eat less sugar and eat clean with a varied diet consisting of vegetables and some meat or fish. As a simple example, when all of my colleagues go to the canteen and eat “unhealthy” food for 8€, I eat my pre-prepared meal for less than 3€ per meal from the day before.