Erik Barsi

Erik Barsi started his calisthenics career in 2017 which is at the time of writing 4 years ago. He mentioned that it has a lot to do with how you train and mainly genetics. Erik Barsi would consider himself as someone who wants to break his own limits. Before calisthenics, Erik did Free climbing for 3 years and used to work in a factory. Due to the origin of his occupation, he worked at odd hours, which made calisthenics the solution for workouts. He found out about calisthenics through YouTube. His inspirations back in the days were Thenx, Andreas Larosa, Osvaldo Lugones etc. The skills that they performed inspired him and wanted to copy those skills. His main objective in training is getting stronger than yesterday. He explicitly mentioned that there is not one person who is the strongest athlete in the world. But even though he progressed a lot lately, his main focus is getting stronger than yesterday and not competing with somebody else.

Calisthenics is growing rapidly according to Erik Barsi. More and more variety is presented in statics, dynamics and the complete athlete section. His love for the street workout sports lies in the fact that people share their vibes. The ease of connecting with new people and the general enjoyment is his motivation. It is a lifestyle.

The first skill he could ever perform was the muscle up, which he considers a basic exercise now. Right after he focussed on the back lever and the front lever, back in the days he wasn’t aware about planching, so this didn’t even come to mind. A friend of his told him about the exercise and within 1 month he was able to perform his first full planche with ugly form. 3 months later he would consider the full planche unlocked and added the skill to his unlocked front lever, back lever and human flag. The fun fact is that he never actually trained for the human flag, but just unlocked it out of nowhere. 

A lot of people ask how he learned the planche in such a short amount of time. He thinks it has mainly to do with his genetics, everybody got different skills and besides that he works out hard. He says that the exercise is always the same and your body simply adjusts to it. Furthermore, he considers that his body is just simply made for planche. Once he had a bad injury which made him lose all of his skills, but luckily he got them back not too long after. He considers that his body is not made for pulling exercises. The biggest challenge for him is to overcome the negative thoughts regarding goals. If you believe that you can achieve something, you will get it if you put the effort in. The moment that you say you can’t do something, you will not get it. 

Erik Barsi considers that he is working on a new skill, which would be the hardest skill that he is able to do. He doesn’t want to spoil what move it is yet. Besides that for him the hardest skills are one arm planche push-ups, 2 finger planche press, zanetti, camora and one arm front lever. Even though he considers every push exercise the same difficulty, if you train it enough, your body simply gets adjusted to the stress. For example, a maltese is not necessarily more difficult than a planche for him.

His strongest move is planche maltese according to Erik, he considers that he is the most complete in that particular skill. He considers somebody strong in a skill if he is complete in that particular skill. Everybody is different in his own way, since everybody is built differently. It is important that you see where your mistakes are, and he would advise you to film yourself. You will be able to see all the progress and make your adjustments accordingly. 

Erik considers that people in Italy are not necessarily interested in dynamics, but rather the strength part of gymnastics. People should start very young with dynamics if they don't want to have any fear. He mentions that he is too scared to start it now, and he would break everything. He doesn’t want to do it because he is too stiff and locked for that as well. His main priority to not start doing so is that he doesn’t want to get injured and break his whole body.

According to Erik Barsi, basics are the world which will translate into your static skills. If you wouldn’t do basics, the chance for injuries is higher, simply because of the reason that your tendons are not used to that kind of resistance. You will have more power, better shoulder and wrist conditioning, and improve massively in push and pull strength. He says that when he trained for 1 year only skills was the point where he got many injuries. He only did straight arm skills, which is not good considering his own experience. Also, bend arm exercises are good for conditioning the tendons and muscles. Yet, it really depends on your body how often you have to do it. It is also important to switch between static and dynamic power exercises.

Currently, Erik doesn’t follow a specific diet, but eats clean in general. He knows exactly what to eat. It is easy for him to eat clean since he has stomach problems and can’t eat bad things. He doesn’t count calories but would guess that his daily intake is around 3000 calories. His main focus for meals are carbs before workouts, for example pancakes with honey, bread with peanut butter. It should burn fast for his workouts, and simply don’t eat junk food. Once per month is not a bad thing, but just don’t do it on a regular basis.

According to Barsi, there is no right program for skills, he learns everything with attempts on attempts and sometimes switches it up with resistance bands. You have to develop your strength in that particular position. To learn finger strength, you have to strengthen your wrist flexor muscles. He mentions that it is really uncomfortable and starting off on a soft surface will reduce the pain. Just make the exercise gradually more heavy.

There are a lot of athletes that he respects but doesn’t necessarily have an idol. He gets motivated from people he can learn something from. You watch others and learn from them, but make sure you keep your authenticity and stay original. Everybody should be unique in their own way.

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