In addition to carefully following these exercise instructions and their accompanying photos, there are several important points to keep in mind as you begin HumanaNatura’s calisthenics program, both to ensure that you optimize your workouts and, as importantly, to help you avoid injury over time:

1. Always match your calisthenics routine to your level of stamina. Start slowly and take time to build your strength and capacity for strenuous exercise. The calisthenics exercises are intense and physically demanding, even at the Core level. As you will immediately discover in actual practice, the exercises look much easier in the photographs than they are in reality. Even experienced athletes find calisthenics exercises extremely challenging at first. Please, don't overdo it and risk injury, whether you are just beginning to exercise or if you are physically fit already. You will get substantial health benefits, greatly reduce your risk of injury, and make more rapid and reliable progress in your physical conditioning by performing the calisthenics exercises at a moderate level of intensity.
   
   
2. This matching of your exercise intensity to your stamina applies both over time and day-to-day. If you are tired or not feeling at your best, it might be a day to scale back your calisthenics workout or rest completely. You should feel no obligation to do the HumanaNatura calisthenics routine every day, and should always vary your workouts to match your physical readiness for exercise. Just as the body needs activity, it also needs rest, especially after a day or series of days of relatively intense exercise or other physical activity. And the HumanaNatura calisthenics program will provide intense exercise, we promise!
   
   
3. Consider your safety and comfort. The calisthenics exercises can be done indoors or outdoors, but should always be done in a clean, level area that is free from dangerous objects and other physical hazards. The area should be well-lighted and quiet, with good ventilation. You should wear flexible clothing that does not impede your full range of motion and that ensures you are neither hot nor cold as you exercise. You should make or purchase a padded exercise mat for the floor exercises and should use a friend or trainer as a spotter on all of the inverted and balancing exercises until you are proficient at these. Safety first, please.
   
   
4. Always do the Core exercises whenever you do a calisthenics workout – and always complete all of the exercises you do in the order presented, regardless of which Intermediate or Advanced exercises you may be adding on a given day. The order of the HumanaNatura calisthenics exercises is intentional, designed to work your body in a complete, complementary, and systematic manner.
   
   
5. Please read and follow the exercise directions carefully – including notes on foot and hand placements, order and manner of body movements, and any use of or suggestions for isometric position holds. Be sure to breathe naturally as you exercise, exhaling with major exertions and never holding your breath. The moving exercises should be done at a steady pace that matches your breathing, one that is never so fast as to be jarring or that feels as if you are hurrying. You should proceed directly from exercise to exercise, never rushing but also only pausing long enough to catch your breath or to walk off the strain of the previous exercise. Drink water if you become thirsty.
   
   
6. Should you at any time feel any pain, discomfort, dizziness, or shortness of breath, stop your routine at once. And assess your readiness for that level of activity and even your need for immediate medical attention. Build your stamina slowly and carefully, and build it for life.
   
   
7. If you are exercising above the Core level, it is optimal to vary or alternate the non-Core exercises you do. To do this, always include the Core exercises and follow the overall exercise order. One option to achieve this variability is to add the first half of the Intermediate and Advanced exercises you do to the Core program on odd-numbered workouts and then, on even-numbered workouts, to add the second half of the Intermediate and Advanced exercises you do to the Core program. For people exercising at the Advanced level and physically able to do all our calisthenics exercises, especially, this approach offers a way to get the full HumanaNatura workout in every other session, while adding diversity to your workouts, limiting your frequency of same-exercise repetition, and reducing your total time commitment. Another alternative is to split the non-Core exercises you do into three groups and alternate them on a three-workout cycle, again always in addition to including the entire Core program and ensuring the correct exercise order each time you exercise. Yet another option is to add the non-Core exercises you do each time more randomly – this is acceptable as long as the presented exercise order is followed, all of the Core exercises are always included, and you are attentive to achieving good diversity in your calisthenics exercise choices.
   
   
8. You can vary the pace of your calisthenics exercises too. As you will see noted in the exercise instructions, another workout variation (for people exercising at all levels) is to slow the pace of each of the moving exercises, and to hold each exercise repetition (but not your breath) at the point of maximum exertion to increase its isometric force and conditioning potential. To use this technique, greatly slow the pace of each moving exercise repetition and then hold each repetition at its most intense point (the lowest point of a push-up or the highest point of a sit-up or stomach crunch, as examples). Some calisthenics practitioners advocate this approach quite passionately, others use it periodically to bring variation to their workouts, and some advanced practitioners never or only rarely exercise this way and are in great shape nevertheless. If you have the extra time, and want added variation, this is an option that allows you to explore and perhaps get a bit more conditioning out of each moving exercise.

By adding regular calisthenics to your daily walking program and natural diet, you will achieve true natural conditioning and realize significant new improvements in your health and sense of well-being, including quite dramatic and often surprising increases in your overall level of physical fitness and conditioning.

Through these important natural health techniques, you will have new and perhaps much greater physical and emotional strength and energy in your life. You will feel more poised and focused, and will become physically and personally changed in important ways. You will experience life more optimally and much closer to our natural state of health, and will enjoy the many benefits that natural conditioning provides, including new feelings of confidence and self-reliance.

As your natural eating and exercise practice progresses, you may even begin to have new ideas and perspectives on yourself, your health and well-being itself, and the world around you – ideas and perspectives emerging from your improved natural conditioning and enhanced quality of life.

You will become increasingly ready, in other words, for the challenge of natural living.

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