Zaid;

Great question. I have been doing calisthenics for the past 5 months. During that time, I canceled my LA Fitness membership and started going to outside gyms more. I’ve got to say, it’s been amazing.

Don’t get me wrong — I loved going to the gym. You can see the incremental progress by adding 2.5 or 5 pounds to a lift every week or so, but after a while it gets stagnant. Stale. Boring.

I applaud your efforts regarding 5x5 lifting. That will definitely increase strength, due to being in the 3–5 rep range. If you bump it to something like 3x8–12, you should experience what is called hypertrophy, or muscle breakdown and rebuilding (if that’s your main goal).

Seeing as you’ve only been at it for two months — again, super proud of you — you have options, which is the best. You can:

• Continue to “line up for the squat rack” (I totally got triggered reading your last line…who tf curls in the squat rack?? Come on!) and stick with heavy weightlifting with both strength reps (3–5) and muscle building reps (8–12).
• Switch to calisthenics, which won’t give you quick muscle gains like weightlifting would. The benefits of doing so outweigh (pun intended) the slower growth: It’s free, you get to do cool shit with your body, it is still applicable in real-life scenarios, and you stay leaner in my opinion.

That second option is really intriguing, because I believe with calisthenics comes a cardio aspect to working out. Rather than pumping out 5 reps on incline bench press, followed by 2–3 minutes of rest before doing it again, you can bust out 10–15 push-ups (or a variation) then couple it with pull-ups 60 seconds later.

Having this cardio element burns more calories. Not a crazy amount more, mind you, but enough that it could be the difference between losing fat and staying the same. Plus, if you can go outside, that sunshine is super beneficial for your well-being.

Truthfully, all movement is tremendous for your body. You could even mix weightlifting and calisthenics together. If a body part is lagging, lift external weights. If you want to perform one-armed push-ups, train to do exactly that.

Hope this helps! If you want more in-depth help where I personally go through your entire routine, you can check me out on Patreon.

I wish you gargantuan gains!