Meet the beefcakes of Instagram
INSTAGRAM has been giving more visibility to a group of buff guys who can do things like balance while inverted on a narrow pole. Here’s why.
INSTAGRAM, long a source for fitness inspiration, has lately been giving more visibility to a group of buff guys who can do things like balance while inverted on a narrow pole.
Search #progressivecalisthenics or #barstarzz and you’ll find fit (and often shirtless) guys performing handstands and one-handed planks — and making it look easy. The style is a hybrid of yoga, acrobatics and callisthenics, traditional exercises typically done without equipment and incorporating the whole body. (Think squat-thrusts, jumping jacks and other exercises you did in gym class.)
Workouts start with a fundamental base of push-ups, pullups and squats, then progresses into more advanced moves. Some practitioners execute flowing sequences that borrow from yoga, or perform exercises on playground bars. The style is interpreted differently from person to person. Superhuman variations of planks, performed with legs levitating off the ground, are common, as is the human flag, a move in which someone holds onto a vertical pole with both hands and lifts his body parallel to the ground.
Al Kavadlo, a trainer and progressive-callisthenics early adopter, started doing callisthenics as a kid. Five years ago he began training solely with body weight, eventually adding tricks and difficulty. He partnered up with fitness company Dragon Door; together they published a series of books and in 2013 launched Progressive Calisthenics Certification instructor trainings. NYC-based Kavadlo also leads informal groups in Tompkins Square Park when he’s in town.
Kavadlo, 36, notes that interest in body-weight workouts has spiked in the last few years due to social media. “I don’t think what I’m doing would have been possible without [it]. Most of those people found out what I’m doing through the internet,” he notes. In 2013, he offered three certification courses; this year he’s already done 12.
Nicholas Coolridge, a Santa Barbara Californian known as @ModernTarzan on Instagram, has appeared on “American Ninja Warrior” and has a background in parkour, a style of running using objects in the environment to do tricks off of, and acroyoga, usually done with a partner and involving elaborate lifts and holds. “When people ask me who I am, I just call myself a movement artist,” says Coolridge, 27, who has worked as a handyman and is hoping to turn his Instagram persona into a fulltime career.
Eduard Checo, a Washington Heights native, also started doing callisthenics as a kid when he saw his brother, a college-football player at the time, doing push-ups and pullups around the house. Checo, 27, has trained in the Jacob K Javits Playground in Fort Tryon Park for years, performing elaborate swinging routines on the bars with a group of up to 50 other guys. “Once I started understanding you could have fun while exercising, it was something I wanted to bring to other people,” he says. Spectators routinely gather and take pictures.
In 2009 Checo started Barstarzz, a workout team for “creative callisthenics.” The company sponsors free youth programs, sells workout plans and gear, and just launched an app. Barstarzz’s Instagram page boasts over 328,000 followers.
No gym is required. “It costs me nothing and I have nowhere to travel to,” Checo says. “As a teen, I remember working out at a street corner, just doing pullups on a lamp post.”
You need to put in a lot of time before you’ll be able to do the flashy moves, though. Coolridge trains three to four times a week for four to eight hours, plus three-hour stretching and massage sessions. Checo says he works out one to two hours per day and longer on Saturdays. “Everyone starts out learning the fundamentals and sometimes that takes a lot longer than some people are willing to do,” he warns.
The reward is a ripped physique and Instagram adoration. “There’s definitely a show-off element. Sex sells!” says Kavadlo. “Ultimately, the message we’re promoting is to take good care of your body, exercise, and don’t make excuses that you don’t have any equipment.”
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