Join the tribe of Movement & Calisthenics Athletes – people just like you that are working with their own body weight to get strength, lose fat build muscle, recover from injuries and live their best lives!

“I’m 37. I’d say, professional athlete. I own my own gym, as well.”

Meet Ross, a master of Jiu-Jitsu and a gym owner. Given his occupation, you’ll know that he’s very physically active and conditioned. 

Jiu-Jitsu, like most martial arts, is very taxing physically and mentally. It requires good strength for grappling and body control for his defensive maneuvers.

In order to stay strong, Ross relied on weight lifting alongside Jiu-Jitsu. That’s when his problems started.

When he starts his training session with weight lifting, his Jiu-Jitsu performance suffers, too much. He ends up being too sore to move. He can’t just brush it off or postpone his training because his martial arts skill training is still vital.

So he looked in other alternatives to gain strength that’s friendly to his joints than weightlifting. He found about calisthenics and accidentally stumbled upon The Movement Athlete Academy. His fitness journey drastically changed for the good.

He thought a few of the moves involved in calisthenics looked really impressive. He thought, 

“If you can do a one-arm pushup, you have true strength, real strength, functional strength, as opposed to “gym strength.”

Ross finds that he’s feeling a lot stronger and that he’s recovering much faster for his Jiu-Jitsu sessions. He’s gained about 10 pounds of muscle.

He feels like he can trust the app – he just turns it on and follows the moves.

Here’s Ross’ journey with The Movement Athlete.

As a professional athlete, Ross needs to be in peak form all the time. He needs to keep getting stronger and better. He first started his strengthening and conditioning workouts with weight lifting.

Too sore, too tiring, too much

“Before, doing weights, I felt like my ability to do that plus my jiu-jitsu would be comprised because I would be too sore, or my performance for one or the other would start to suffer.”

Weightlifting is a very taxing form of exercise. This exceptionally holds true if you’re interested in getting stronger. Strength training with weights needs heavy weights to be efficient. This puts a lot of stress in your muscles, joints, and nervous system.

Nothing much wrong about that if your aim is purely to get stronger in weightlifting, but in Ross’ situation, that’s not the case.

Ross, as a Jiu-Jitsu master, needs to train regularly for his skills while also improving his strength. In his experience, weight lifting puts too much stress on his body that his skill training suffers. He needs to only choose one when he trains, weightlifting or Jiu-Jitsu, but that wouldn’t be optimal for his goals and sure ain’t going to be that much fun for him.

This would also be the case if you’re interested in other exercises, too, not only Jiu-Jitsu. 

Weight lifting, as said earlier, exerts much stress on your body. If you’re planning to train weights and another sport or exercise for a single day, expect to suffer in performance in one or both exercise.

It’s also going to be difficult to alternate weightlifting and another activity because of Delayed On-set Muscle Sores or DOMS that you’ll be experiencing from lifting weights. 

DOMS is the temporary muscle aches and stiffness you’ll feel the next day after a session with weights. This could last from 2 to 3 days.

So instead of training your skills or sport the next day after lifting weights, you’ll probably be lying in bed, in pain, and thinking what could you have done better.

Ross, on the other hand, found an alternative that enables him to condition and strengthen his body, while providing ample recovery for his body so that he can still train Jiu-Jitsu!

“It’s just kind of an eye-opener when you think, ‘There’s true strength.” 

Ross went on a quest in the vast world of Youtube and looked for another approach to train that would compliment his Jiu-Jitsu sessions. 

He saw videos of calisthenics athletes performing advanced calisthenics skills. That’s when he realized a new perception of strength.

“That, to me, was literal strength, so that was kind of the switch. I just don’t see a lot of people doing any of those movements, or a planche, so that kind of opened my mind to maybe what functional strength is over just, say, gym strength.”

It’s no longer answering the question of how much you bench. It’s about how much can you control your body in space.

A stroke of serendipity

When Ross was looking for random calisthenics videos, he stumbled upon The Movement Athlete Academy.

He thought it looked good and gave it a chance. And that instance became one of the most important decisions he made in his fitness journey.

The switch from weight lifting to calisthenics with The Movement Athlete Academy

“Great recovery”

“I actually find that I can train my strength and conditioning more. Usually, what I do is I set the workout to a 45-minute duration, and I feel like it’s very challenging but, at the same time, I’m not spent, so my ability to just make the conditioning is actually more, plus my jiu-jitsu training.

It’s like a match made in heaven for Ross when he combined Jiu-Jitsu and calisthenics in his training. 

He solved his major issue with weightlifting. Gone are the days of soreness and downfall of his martial arts training performance. Calisthenics provided enough challenge to his body to get stronger and better.

With the app, the stimulus is just enough so that he won’t feel too sore after his strengthening and conditioning phase. 

“Strong in the real world”

“My overall feeling of strength is actually higher, even though, if I was probably to go back to the gym, yeah, maybe I can’t bench press as much anymore but, in my actual grappling, I just feel stronger and my performance has gone up.”

Ross experienced a very applicable strength benefit. This is thanks to calisthenics’ training approach. It’s still a type of resistance training that makes use of your bodyweight. So The Movement Athlete Academy app manipulates other factors in order for you to get stronger even if you think you’ve already mastered your bodyweight. 

There’s always room for growth when training with calisthenics.

Ross’ grappling became so much stronger even though his bench press numbers went down. Ross’ strength now isn’t only contained inside the room full of iron and ego lifting. He’s now stronger where strength truly matters.

His performance in Jiu-Jitsu also improve not only because he got stronger, but he also got better body control thanks to calisthenics. Martial arts rely, of course, heavily on the use of our bodies so body control is such an important aspect of the sport.

Where did he get his program? From The Movement Athlete Academy, of course!

“It’s very easy to use.“

“I think The Movement Athlete is compelling because, visually, it looks good, but it’s also easy to use. I don’t see it as something difficult to use.”

When Ross was starting out with calisthenics, he tried creating his program on his own. He found it difficult and there were too many conflicting ideas. He’s also just a beginner with calisthenics so he wasn’t able to verify the best program for him.

When he found out about The Movement Athlete app, it was smooth sailing from there.

Aside from being visually appealing (It’s a lot better if it’s easy on the eyes, right?), the app is very user-friendly. 

You don’t have to be a techie to understand and maneuver through the app. Instructions are very clear and short. There are clear, high definition videos, too. Nothing complicated for your usage.

“Say, an actual workout program such as Movement Athlete, where I don’t need high-quality video to see the movement. I can click the movement, it’s broken down and it’ll only be a ten-second video. That’s more than enough, but the actual programming is there in front of you. You can put how well you did. There’s a sense of reward, as well, or that sense of, maybe, failure, where you want to be determined to try harder.” 

“I love the fact that it is an app.”

“I’d say that has been the downfall of other programs, where you have to log onto your computer or your browser. Some of those were not really mobile-friendly, either, so it is convenient to just bring your phone with you. I do see it as a course because the progression … you can see what your potential to unlock is, and the only way to get there is by moving forward.”

Contrary to other programs online or other “apps”, The Movement Athlete is actually an app. It’s not just a compilation of random exercises and pre-made workout programs that gets you nowhere. 

Other online courses, you would have to use your computer and sometimes there isn’t a mobile version. That’s not so handy. 

With The Movement Athlete app, you have easy access to your course at a tap of your finger. Your workout program made simple yet still very effective.

Ross thinks it also great that in the app format, it’s less intimidating for accommodating for beginners. He says,

“I always try to look at that just because, for example, I run boot camp classes. If there’s some guy there and he’s killing it, and someone’s like “Oh, shit, I can’t do that,” I think the likelihood of the others coming back is actually deterred.”

With your workout program and coach in your app, you can workout without having getting anxious about your environment. 

“The Movement Athlete adapts to you.”

“I like the fact that I can be honest and say, ‘Okay, that was actually very hard,’ rather than it trying to progress me too quickly. So, I actually find what they do, as well, is they’ll lower reps, which is actually smart because, then, my ability to downplay is there.”

Talking about effectiveness, the app can deliver because of its ability to adapt to you. Like in Ross’ case, you just have to be honest in your training.

Your progress would depend solely on you. The app adjusts to your current situation and needs.

Everybody is unique and different. Everybody’s ability to grow, recovery period, learning capacity and current skill level is different, too. The app doesn’t disregard this fact and creates a program that best fit only you.

The app doesn’t randomly impose when you need to progress. Not it does view your progress and growth as linear, which it totally isn’t, by the way. 

Each day, you feel different and your schedule is different. The Movement Athlete also takes this into consideration so each workout will adapt to your current situation.

Making a strict schedule for your workout is ideal, but let’s be realistic. We can’t religiously stick to a strict workout schedule and deliver consistent results. There are days that you might be too busy or too tired. This will result in poor performance or you just skipping the workout. Then sooner or later you’ll just quit altogether.  

Training with The Movement Athlete will get you to stick to your training religiously at your own pace and comfortability. This way, like Ross, you get to train consistently and reap the benefits of calisthenics. 

Plus, there isn’t an intimidating hulk-physique “motivational” coach, showing off how the exercises and reps are should be done.

“It’s actually pretty rewarding.”

“I wanted to be able to walk on my hands and do handstands. I’ve messed around with that before. It actually only took me two weeks to, probably, walk ten feet on my hands. Prior to that, I was able to stand up for a second. So, that was kind of like ‘Oh, shit, this actually works quite well’”. 

Because of the consistent training through The Movement Athlete Academy, Ross was able to achieve a skill he has been wanting to do in just 2 weeks! That’s quite fast when learning a complex skill such as walking handstands.

This is thanks to the excellent list of progressions, video-progressions, and programming in the app.

“Mobility are gains, too.”

“Yeah. Actually, I had my business partner… he purchased the app, as well. He’s using it. He’s liking it quite a bit, too. He’s very stiff, very immobile, but he’s already noticing big changes. I would say he’s been using it probably six weeks, quite a bit, and he’s already noticing changes in movement.”

Ross loved the app that he shared it with his business partner. Now, his business partner is now, too, loving the app and getting gains; mobility gains!

There’s the biggest difference in calisthenics compared to other resistance exercises such as weightlifting. Calisthenics is excellent in improving your mobility.

Having good mobility means good, free movement without limitations or restrictions. You can move, however, whenever you want. And this benefit expands to your everyday life also whatever sport you’re taking up. Nobody wants to be stiff and aching all the time.

Calisthenics does this by:

• Providing less stress on your joints 
• Yet having enough stimulation for your muscles and joints to get stronger
• Eliminating the risks of excessive force on joints
• Nature of calisthenics exercises good range of motion

Be free to move as the years go by when you train calisthenics.