Entry #1 Introduction

    Hello everyone! My name is Mark, but most of my friends just call me Marky. I want to start by sharing the fact that I have many hobbies, but in this blog, I want to focus on the hobby that I most enjoy, and that I think represents me as a person most, which is calisthenics. For those of you who don't know, calisthenics is simply bodyweight exercise and can be as simple as doing pushups or sit-ups. The reason I started doing calisthenics was primarily that I was a gymnast for 9 years, I started at age 6 and ended when I was about 15  or a freshman in high school. As a gymnast, we utilized bodyweight exercises, as they were more suitable for building strength in a particular event like high bar and especially the still rings. After I quit gymnastics I wanted to stay in shape and be healthy which led to me doing calisthenics as a hobby. 

      You might wonder "why did you start doing calisthenics instead of just weightlifting"? One answer to that would be simply because you can do calisthenics at home and with minimal amounts of added weight. Whereas with weight lifting you would have to either buy a gym membership or have an at-home gym setup. Since I didn't want to spend any money or burden my parents with having to buy me any weights or a barbell, I simply started doing calisthenics at home. Another huge reason I wanted to do calisthenics is that it looks cool, I mean who could look at this image:

                               

and say that doesn't look cool. Doing calisthenics means you could even do most of those exercises outside, so even if you travel you can practically perform these movements or exercises anywhere. An aspect of that freedom also made calisthenics appealing to me, I can go to a park down my street and start doing some calisthenics workouts there, I could be on a beach and do calisthenics like this guy:

                                    

      Everyone has their own hobbies and interests, however, I believe that what is most important is how that hobby defines you and makes you feel. I talked at length about my hobby, but I would love to know other people's hobbies as well, and I hope everyone will try calisthenics at some point. Thank you!