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!
This is the story of Timo – The Movement Athlete
Timo joined The Movement Athlete shortly after the online platform was created, and his life story is one of challenges, injuries, and familial responsibility, being a husband and the father of an 8-year-old girl and a 4-year-old son.
“You don’t have to lift weights to be bad arse.”
From a fit kid to an overweight dad
Timo was active as a child, but playing field hockey for most of his life had wrecked his knees and ankles. He couldn’t play without braces, and the pain just killed any enjoyment he gained from the sport.
His life became more sedentary, full of self-indulgent living.
“I quickly gained weight. No longer was I the 50kg 17 year-old.”
“Soon I was the 85kg 39 year-old with two kids.”
“If I had known about calisthenics, and the awesome tricks you can learn…I’m sure I would have reached handstand push-ups and maybe even a human flag had I started back then.”
3 ways Timo has benefited from joining The Movement Athlete
“While before joining The Movement Athlete I had strength, I now have control”
Since starting, he’s retaken the introductory assessment, and although he’s progressed immensely, Timo realized that his form was off in some of the exercises.
“I reset that progression to allow better form and control, but I keep pushing and progressing in the other areas.”
“You don’t have to lift the heaviest weights to be bad arse.”
Like many calisthenics athletes, Timo acknowledges that muscle gain simply isn’t the same as you might expect with weightlifting. However, you’ll experience many benefits that go above and beyond the physical appearance of your muscles.
He’s now working on unlocking and achieving the handstand push-up by his 44th birthday in June this year. “I’m 84% there now!”
“Take it slow, and listen to your body. Aches and pains are there for a reason”
He’s learning to pace himself and autoregulate his training.
This doesn’t come quite naturally to him yet, but calisthenics is the safest training method he’s found where he can push his body without hurting himself.
“I need to remember I’m not 18 anymore.”
“I’m also back at doing assisted single leg pistol squats. This time I am injury-free doing it, which I attribute to a longer progression cycle than the calisthenics book I was following.”
Losing weight to get his life back
It started with calorie control. After losing 15kg (33lbs), he changed his focus to “30-day challenges” every morning. It was an easy way to get moving again and see tangible progress from the get-go. “I was quickly hooked to these, and felt the need to increase my exercise time.”
“I joined the local gym and got given a very generic workout by the local PT. I followed this for a few weeks, adding weight pretty randomly to keep from getting bored.”
He developed strength, but not in any structured way. Six months later, and he needed a change.
“After a while I got so bored, I started looking for random exercises online.”
“This feeling of progress, even in small steps, and ability to see it motivates me to keep on going every day”
Calisthenics inspired Philippe to start climbing again
“What I liked was the ‘science’ of [the] approach., the way you created small steps to make progress.”
“In my work, we talk about silos, which means departments that don’t collaborate. Due to that, a lot of energy is wasted, a lot of frustration is created and a lot of potential is untapped. The link with calisthenics is clear to us. Body-building for example is more oriented on training isolated muscles. Due to that, the interplay or coordination between muscles isn’t trained, which makes a bodybuilder look very strong but at the same time not that mobile, agile, flexible…Calisthenics is more oriented on the interplay between muscles and body parts.” – Philippe, athlete of The Movement Athlete
“We use calisthenics as a metaphor for our work with companies” Read Philippe’s full story:
“I liked the way the progressions were built and I like the easy way to connect with the people developing the program. This gives a feeling of connection or community.”
