Calistenica is...
Many modern trends that have come into workout in recent years are pulling this movement away from its original idea. True workout isn’t about showing off or rivalries, not about challenges or flashy dynamics—it’s about beauty and strength in movement, where everyone teaches everyone else on the playground, and there is a large community of like-minded athletes with shared values. I saw something like this back in 2011–2012, and many old-school athletes notice it too.
If you get philosophical about the terms, workout or street workout is more about elements (skills), while calisthenics or ghetto workout is about the basics and building an athletic body. That’s what we’ll focus on here.
It is specifically the ghetto workout movement that athlete Yasin Hasan, nicknamed G.I.A.N.T., identifies with. The first ghetto workout movements were formed in the U.S. in the 1990s, in low-income neighborhoods among African American communities. In this context, “ghetto” refers to a community of people united by common goals.
So who invented workout? Chronologically, there were two key athletes: Beast, also known as rapper Lord Vital, who created the Beastmode team, and Giant, the leader of Bartendaz. The rest are essentially followers who came out of these teams.
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O Hassan Yasine
Hasan Yasin, nicknamed Giant, was born in 1970. His hometown is Harlem, and he currently lives in New York City. Since the 1990s, Giant has positioned himself as the first person to create ghetto workout movements and to popularize them on a массовый scale across cities and even countries.
Hasan Yasin is so charismatic that after listening to him for just a few seconds, you start to feel trust toward this stranger. Giant is a true leader—someone people naturally follow.
The founder of Bartendaz, Hasan Yasin, spent four years behind bars. But after being released in the 1990s, he completely changed his life through the philosophy of ghetto workout and became a motivational speaker and the creator of a street community. More than anyone, Hasan understands what life in poor neighborhoods and prison is like.
The first workout team
The philosophy of one of the first workout teams, Bartendaz, was that everyone they taught to train should pass that knowledge and skill on to someone else—this is how the movement spread. Each one teaches another.
Bartendaz are the guys who gather on playgrounds year-round, promoting the philosophy of street sports. They train hardcore using their body weight, sometimes adding bricks as extra resistance. Their routines include a lot—really a lot—of fundamental exercises focused on building the body.
All of this allows them to perform long sets on the pull-up bar, combining basics and elements that can last several minutes. They also attracted celebrities from the music world—rapper Snoop Dogg, for example, was involved in the Bartendaz movement. Among the Bartendaz members, you can find people as young as 5 and as old as 90. Bartendaz spans more than 20 countries and over 40 cities worldwide.
When Hasan Yasin was asked who he considers a calisthenics master—or, as another term puts it, a “pull-up bar master”—he gave an interesting answer. A “master of the bar,” in his view, is someone who has spent several years in prison and trained there. But why did this concept emerge behind bars?
In the United States, inmates train a lot, and the most accessible piece of equipment there is the pull-up bar. According to Hasan, a true “master” is someone capable of completing 40 rounds of 10 pull-ups per session. And Yasin knows this firsthand—after being released from prison, he trained for a long time almost out of inertia, until it eventually evolved into the Bartendaz movement.
So what kind of training does the team promote? While many people talk about quality and full range of motion with complete elbow extension, few consider that this can put stress on the joints. In prison yards, a different style of pull-ups became common—so-called “bodybuilder-style” pull-ups performed in a reduced range of motion, without fully extending the elbows at the bottom and without necessarily pulling the chin above the bar at the top.
This kind of pull-up is often criticized in calisthenics circles, but it is used in bodybuilding to maximize muscle engagement and protect the joints, since the muscle stays under constant tension. In prison yards, however, the reason was much more practical: there were queues for the bars, and people rushed each other, so they performed shorter, explosive repetitions just to free up the equipment faster.
The attitude toward elements
An interesting point is that Giant categorically rejects certain elements and clearly separates workout from gymnastics. For example, he respects the handstand as a gymnastic balance skill, but does not consider it part of calisthenics. He believes that everyone who popularizes this street sport by showing a mix of calisthenics and gymnastics in videos should not do so—arguing that elements should be kept separate and not combined indiscriminately.
In a joint interview, Giant and Beast both admitted they are not very pleased with how popular athletes on YouTube promote many unnecessary tricks and increasingly less pure calisthenics and training sets.
At the same time, on Hasan’s social media pages today, you can see photos of him surrounded by people performing handstands and other—even dynamic—elements, all wearing Bartendaz branded shirts. Music videos have also been shot featuring the team’s symbolism, where these “unwanted” tricks are shown. There was even a commercial filmed with Nike, where such elements appear along with a new generation of young people wearing Bartendaz shirts.
The world changes, new stars emerge, and this is inevitable. Perhaps Beast and Giant are frustrated that they have lost their former spotlight?
Workout rivalry
I’ve listened to a lot of interviews and studied the history of the first workout teams. Beastmode and Bartendaz were among the pioneers and were initially friendly with each other. However, other American teams are either openly or indirectly in conflict, criticizing each other’s styles. Giant and Beast criticize the Barstarzz for their tricks, and also Hannibal for having trained for 15 years without evolving—each time you see him training, it’s supposedly the same routine.
They also have a negative view of Zeph Zakavelli’s long set style, saying things like: “So what if he does 50 pull-ups and then a muscle-up, burns out in one set and the workout is over?” In contrast, they prefer multiple sets of 10–15 reps. So in American workout culture, things are not as smooth and unified as they may seem. Anyone who chooses one team often ends up being critical of the others.
These two athletes also believe that they were the first to start everything, while others simply copied their movements, slightly modified them, and then created so-called “own styles.”
There is also the athlete Hitt Richards, who was the first to show his “tiger push-ups” on video—where you go from a handstand down onto your elbows and then push back up to straight arms. Richards is a massive, highly respected athlete and a master of balance. He considered many of his exercises his own intellectual property and even sold them through VHS tapes and DVDs. He openly clashed with others and forbade people from performing his signature elements in competitions without permission. He also complained about those using his “tiger push-ups” on YouTube videos, claiming they had no right to do so. That’s how complicated things can get in the American workout scene.
The decline of Bartendaz
The story of Bartendaz and Giant has undoubtedly become part of workout history, but how many people still remember them today? And how many actually stop to think about who invented workout and where it all started? According to one perspective, the team was ultimately brought down by excessive commercialization, prioritizing money over their original values.
At the peak of their popularity, Giant no longer agreed to perform for free or at an affordable rate in prisons, orphanages, or public events. Seeing him on a playground—let alone interacting with him—became rare. Schools gradually stopped adopting the expensive programs, especially since what children learned there could essentially be replicated for free outdoors.
At the same time, more open street workout groups began to emerge with new approaches and directions in the sport, gradually pushing aside the “old-school” Bartendaz. Over time, the team slowly faded from prominence.
I had to talk to Hassan Yasine to tell you this long article for all of you. I hope it was interesting.
Artemus Vazhui