The word “calisthenics” comes from the ancient Greek words kalós, which means "beautiful”, and sthenos, meaning "strength". It is the art to control our own body “to defeat the gravity laws” and consists in several bodyweight exercises.
It dates back to the 19th century, when gymnasts brought their movement out from their gyms, but it started spreading in 2010 in America, with Hannibal for King’s YouTube videos. In Italy in 2013, people already practised calisthenics (known as street workout); so many calisthenics were born.
In 2015, a new organization called “Burningate”, organized the first Italian championship, which took place at the Rimini Wellness Fair. There, many Italian athletes became famous and identified as calisthenics’ pioneers. Some of them were Gaggi Yatarov, Matteo Spinazzola (who won that competition) and Andrea Larosa. During these years Burningate developed a lot, making new championships (international too) so far today.
Andrea Larosa is the athlete who made the Italian calisthenics respected
and known in every part of the world. He started being famous when he uploaded
his videos on Facebook and YouTube, but with the 2015’s Italian championship
became well known in Italy. He won many national prizes, he also participated in
and won the SWUB (a famous international championship in Spain) in 2017 and
2018 (in 2019, he participated as a referee), in those years, he won also the
International Burningate Cup and the national championship, then he decided to retire.
Calisthenics, is defined as a
sport for everyone, because you can do it everywhere you want, you only need
little things (a bar and a pavement), and there are different stages for the
exercises, from the easiest to the hardest.
The main exercises (called basics) are: pushups, pullups, dips, hollow
body position and for pro athletes the handstand pushups.
In calisthenics, there are three
different competition categories: Endurance, which consists in a hard set made
of many “basics”, to complete in less time possible, Strength, consists in
ballasted basics, and the last one are the Skills, the best
one, in my opinion. It consists in a set, made of hard movements of strength
and agility, similar to gymnastics figures.
The main movements are the
planche, the front lever and the back lever, then there are harder movements
that come from these three (planche push up, front lever pull up, back lever
touch etc. The hardest movements in skills are the
“maltese” and the “Victorian”, then their dynamic movements (maltese press, Victorian
pulls, etc.).
In the latest 10 months,
Calisthenics has become one of the best known fitness sports and it will probably
grow in the next years. I hope, it will
reach the same notoriety and respect as body building.
FRANCESCO P., 4sc
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