Hi there, at the moment i am playing soccer (english football like beckham and owen etc...) so i dont really need to be too muscular.

I have had a look at calisthenics and i notice that they are used by the navy and seals etc...

Do they work, at the moment i am looking to mainly sort my man boobage out, so i though that calisthenics such as push ups could help me to stretch the skin and make them look less saggy, i think i am about 14/15% body fat at the moment and i weight 145 pounds, im 17 and about 5 ft 10 inches.

Any advice.

Many thanks

Gaz.

I'm an advocate of calisthenics, but I would caution you in several points.

Calisthenics are great for overall strength and health. Most calisthenics exercises are compound exercises that work major muscle groups, and most calisthenics exercises activate some sort of stabilizer or core muscle as part of the movement.

What calisthenics are great for is warding off injury. Especially if you're new to resistence training, lifting weights or using machines without working your stabilizers and core muscles makes it more likely you'll sustain injury. Also, if you really get dead-on with your form and use the right exercises, they can be just as intense a work-out as weights for most of your training needs, unless you're a very serious athlete.

What calisthenics don't do is change basic the way resistence training affects your body.

If you do not want to gain weight, don't eat over your maintenance calories, period. You can definitely gain mass from doing calisthenics, provided you do them at a high intensity, properly recover, and eat enough good food.

If you want to get rid of your "man boobs," lower your body fat and then increase your muscle mass. Using light calisthenics to "tone" will not get rid of fat deposits on your chest. Even gaining muscle mass probably won't get rid of your "man boobs" unless you get rid of some body fat. It's your diet, not doing push-ups, that will help you in that area.

My biggest tips for calisthenics are do them slowly and do them to failure. The most convenient thing about calisthenics is that if you drop your body weight in exhaustion, it often hurts a lot less than if you drop a big piece of iron on your body in exhaustion. Ripping off 20 push ups in 25 seconds won't do you an ounce of good.

Use the same techniques you'd use in high-intensity weight lifting, and you'll reap similar benefits, just with a trade off - it's easier to work large, useful muscle groups to failure, it's easier to work your core, and it's harder to progress in intensity.

Hi there, at the moment i am playing soccer (english football like beckham and owen etc...) so i dont really need to be too muscular.

I have had a look at calisthenics and i notice that they are used by the navy and seals etc...

Do they work, at the moment i am looking to mainly sort my man boobage out, so i though that calisthenics such as push ups could help me to stretch the skin and make them look less saggy, i think i am about 14/15% body fat at the moment and i weight 145 pounds, im 17 and about 5 ft 10 inches.

Any advice.

Many thanks

Gaz.

Check out www.CrossFit.com

I disagree with worthiness of being able to do 25 push-ups in 20 seconds. Being able to do such a feat, or something similar, is a sign of advanced fitness.

Pure strength and muscle mass is not the end-game for most. In fact, for a soccer player being able to do 30 box jumps in 30 seconds is probably more valuable a skill than being able to do box jumps at a moderate pace until failure.

Calisthenics on their own may not do much for your man boobs. But combined with proper diet and supplemental cardio training it can certainly help increase the required calorie deficit to lose fat.

in the past month or so i have noticed that i have put on extra fat, and i would like to think that it is just extra fat around my chest, but i do have two pea-sized lumps under each nipple, i hate thinking it could be gyno, should i be worried? ? ?

I disagree with worthiness of being able to do 25 push-ups in 20 seconds. Being able to do such a feat, or something similar, is a sign of advanced fitness.

It's certainly a sign of advanced fitness, I apologize if I implied it wasn't. It isn't a good way to train your muscles and get stronger, or, at least, not as good as taking at least 8 seconds, concentric and eccentric combined, for each push-up. The physics of muscles are such that the amount of time your muscle bears the load is significant to its fatigue and failure, which is in turn significant to strength gain hypertrophy. It's also a lot harder to use good form when you go too fast.

It's sort of like running a marathon. Running a marathon is definitely a sign of advanced fitness, but I wouldn't recommend running marathons in order to get in shape.

Calisthenics on their own may not do much for your man boobs. But combined with proper diet and supplemental cardio training it can certainly help increase the required calorie deficit to lose fat.

I second that!

in the past month or so i have noticed that i have put on extra fat, and i would like to think that it is just extra fat around my chest, but i do have two pea-sized lumps under each nipple, i hate thinking it could be gyno, should i be worried? ? ?

Nah. Don't worry about it. Gyno is no fun, but a lot of people worry about it who really shouldn't. It's very unlikely you have gyno, unless you've been juicing, have been very overweight, or have had hormone problems recently. Most people who think they have gyno just need to lose a little bit of body fat.

thanks for the reply buddy, do you think a diet of around 1700 cals a day 40/40/20 would be ok for fat loss.

If you are actively playing soccer and plan on training outside it which it sounds like you are id say 1700 is too low for 145 lbs. Id say start at 2000 and see if you start to make progress and adjust from there. Too low of calories will make your body respond by going into starvation mode basically.