Dejan Stipke is to many a staple name, to others a complete unknown. An illustrious athlete who has helped countless people better their lives and served as inspiration to countless more Calisthenics athletes alike, Stipke has a story to tell and he tells it mostly through social media. In this review of Dejan Stipke’s workout, we want to introduce those of you who don’t know him to this monster athlete. What can we glean from his knowledge and life course? Is it worth following Dejan Stipke on his social media account? Is what he’s saying actually any good? Welcome to the first entry in our series where we closely examine professional Calisthenics athletes.
Who is Dejan Stipke?
Dejan Stipke, whose official name is Dejan Stipke Stipić is a Serbian born athlete of international acclaim. Through his Instagram account, @Iamstipke he reaches out to hundreds of thousands of athletes and calisthenics practitioners world-wide. Viewing himself as an all-round athlete, Dejan Stipke practices many different sports and almost all of them at a professional level. He is a great inspiration to many amateur athletes and his motivating and enthusiastic approach has seen many an amateur become professionals. He offers a series of courses on doing workouts, managing your nutrition and how to do it all from a home gym. Some physical traits of Dejan Stipke:
Age | 28 |
Height | 5’7” |
Weight | 183lbs |
Body | Lean/Muscular |
Sport | Athletics (Hybrid) |
Dejan Stipke’s Athletic Achievements
Before his rise to prominence, Dejan Stipke was already an athlete from a very young age. At age 6 he started gymnastics and kept at it until he was 18. During this time, he became a junior representative of the Serbian gymnastic team. He became national champion multiple times during that time, a foreshadowing of this man’s sportive career to come. In 2012 he began with street gymnastics, a little thing we call Calisthenics now. One year into this and he ranked in the top 3 of freestyle street gymnastics, again practically the same as Calisthenics today.
He came in third place in the StreetWorkout World Cup Super-Final in 2013 and has since earned multiple titles for parallel bars, gymnastic rings and pommel horse championships. Aside from participating in these, he also adjudicates many of these pro-level events and is to this day still a representative for the Serbian gymnastics team.
As a side project, he hosts workout seminars and held them in places like the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan and Switzerland. All of them draw comparatively large audiences of gymnastics and Calisthenics enthusiasts.
Is Dejan Stipke Reliable?
Being gifted with amazing bodily physique has allowed Dejan to compete in an extraordinary wide range of different fields. He is what you can say, the Calisthenics ideal image of a masculine body; lean, exceptionally strong and like chiseled from flesh-tone marble. It shows you just what Calisthenics and, especially weighted Calisthenics can do to a man’s body should you strive for it hard enough and long enough. But, can anyone achieve this with the Dejan Stipke workout? A good student does not automatically make for a good teacher and, it could be that Dejan was just naturally bestowed with the right genes to make it easy for him.
We believe though that Calisthenics is at least 50% a mental exercise. Unless you were born with a handicap, your body is naturally equipped to do this. It’s your mind which needs the most convincing and then the body follows suit. Mind over matter plus a lot of exercise has seen naked men wrestle bears and win. In that motivational aspect, Dejan Stipke hits the mark exactly.
His Instagram page, Iamstipke hosts more than 4200 posts about athleticism and of course workouts. Hundreds of thousands of followers eagerly await his next post, which he updates regularly. Many a Calisthenics practitioner on Instagram stand by the Dejan Stipke Workout as effective and fun.
Coupled by his years of experience in the field and many titles, Dejan knows his stuff when it comes to doing an exercise or two. Of course, you’re not selected to be your national gymnastics representative for no reason.
An Overview of the Dejan Stipke Workout Repertoire
Recently, Dejan Stipke has committed himself to put all his knowledge and uncollected thoughts about gymnastics to paper. The result of this are 7 e-books, ranging from straight up muscle building and toning your body to setting up your home workout and managing your nutrition. All the e-books can be downloaded to your phone and are mobile friendly to read.
8-Week Muscle Building
Get it here:
As the name suggests, this 8-week course focusses entirely on getting strong and muscular in a short amount of time. The whole course is divided into three parts, each 8 weeks long and catered to the beginner, intermediate and advanced athlete. The beginner course starts relatively easy, with basic exercises and with muscle group focus. Different muscle groups are targeted in turn, allowing previously worked out muscles to recuperate while you exercise others in the meanwhile.
All exercises come explained and with a video link to show you how you do them. The plan comes as a one size fits all and is not customized. This explains the relatively easy beginning, seeing as it caters to any man. We say man, because this program is undoubtedly created with the male physique in mind. Dejan Stipke clearly speaks from his own experience here.
The caveat here is that the program is written from the point of view of a normal body type. If you’re obese, you will have to skip parts of this program at first or take more than the proscribed 8 weeks to complete.
The intermediate and advanced programs turn things up a notch, introducing you to more advanced techniques. Where the beginner program focusses on core strength and gross motor skills, building on your body’s largest muscles, the next two make you a more skilled athlete.
Required Equipment
8-Week Shredding
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For quick results and getting those toned muscles, the 8-Week Shredding program works on getting the maximum out of your muscle mass. Where the Muscle Building program is there to create said muscles, the Shredding program is there to dot all your I’s and finetune the look of your body. The Shredding program features many of the Muscle Building techniques but combines them with others and in such a way to maintain what you have, while defining your bodily physique.
There are again 3 levels, taking you from expressing your muscle tonality far better than with just bulking up on strength to a fully, hewn from marble chiseled appearance.
Required Equipment
Hybrid V1
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For those who truly ambition to be like Dejan, the Hybrid V1 workout program combines techniques from bodybuilding, weighted Calisthenics and weightlifting. This is the program Dejan Stipke himself adheres too on a daily and weekly basis. It will require a lot of fortitude and persistence to see it through and only one look at a photograph of Dejan will tell you why. The prerequisites for this program are pretty potent. You’ll have to be able to do the following before starting: 30 squats, 5 muscle-ups, 15 pull-ups and 20 dips in one workout session.
We recommend taking this program only if you can pass the prerequisites without trouble or after following the Muscle Building program first.
Required Equipment
- Dumbbells
- Barbells
- Dip bars
- Pull-up bar or Power Tower
- Weighted vest
Home Workout
Get it here:
Truer to the purer form of Calisthenics, the Home Workout program consists of exercises you can do from your home. All you need is a floor to do them on. Less focused on getting absolutely ripped head to toe, the Home Workout program sets its goals as staying fit, healthy and building some more muscle on an average body type.
Should you find yourself at home with no way to visit a gym for the foreseeable future (looking at you 2020), this program can help you maintain your gains in the meanwhile.
Required Equipment
- None!
- (optional) workout mat
Nutrition
You are what you eat and, a strong man requires enough calories and nutrients to build and sustain his body. With Dejan Stipke’s Nutrition plan, you’ll be guided towards a specific eating habit consisting of healthy food and intermittent fasting. According to Stipke, he found intermittent fasting with the fasting periods being before the workout to gain him the best results.
Dejan is a vegan himself and you can get his nutrition plan in either a normal or a vegan version. Both work equally well for getting those enhanced results in combination with the Muscle Building program or the Hybrid V1 Workout program.
Stretching Program
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During those off days, you want to stretch your muscles to increase repair and reduce the recuperation time for your body. The Stretching Program is specifically meant to be used in conjunction with the Muscle Building Program and, targets the same muscles groups as those being worked out in that program. The Muscle Building program relies on muscle hypertrophy, which can lead to quite a lot of soreness. Stretching techniques can help you alleviate some of that pain quite effectively as well as preventing stiff muscle growth.
8-Week Swole Calves
Get it here:
Working out and building on your calves has historically been a point of contention. The way your calves are formed is largely genetic and seeing as we are upright creatures, our leg muscles are comparatively strong and pronounced to begin with. Many a Calisthenics practitioner struggles to find an effective workout to create stronger calves and have those muscles better toned. The “Swole Calves” program gives you just that: a training schedule focusing on those lower leg muscles and really make them pop.
Required Equipment
- None
The Dejan Stipke Workout: General Thoughts and Conclusions
Dejan Stipke is a popular athlete who practices many different sports. They all share one thing in common: gymnastics. What he does has a lot of overlap with Calisthenics and he will borrow many Calisthenics exercises and concepts and weave them into an effective workout program. His programs aren’t the easiest nor are they the hardest, especially if you start with the beginner versions.
Dejan Stipke’s workout pdf are concise, to the point and offer you a step-by-step guide to transform your body in 8 weeks’ time. Along with the pdf come videos for each individual exercise. For most the programs involving building your muscle, you will need some Calisthenics equipment. This is a program for those who want to get every last bit of performance from their body to get fit, healthy and build that statuesque physique Dejan Stipke is known for.
For the nitpickers and grammar-Nazi’s out there: No, his English isn’t perfect. He’s not from the US or any other English-speaking country. But that doesn’t mean that what he has to say has no merit. Dejan Stipke is an experienced athlete and the man has a story to tell. You can learn a thing or two from him. Could he use a native English-speaking editor to go over the material? Sure. But the books and his website are readable and you’ll understand just fine as is.
Pirating the Dejan Stipke Workout PDF
Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of “free” copies of the Dejan Stipke Workout flying around on the internet. People put links to free downloads of the Dejan Stipke Workout Program pdf on some file sharing website, either out of malice or because they think it will help others gain a healthier lifestyle. Who it doesn’t help is Dejan Stipke, who worked very hard to produce this excellent material. We talked earlier about that Calisthenics is at least 50% the right mental mindset. If you’re willing to pirate his work, what does that say about that mindset of yours? Will you look at the material with the same value? Then, if you value your body so little that you’re not even prepared to put a couple of dollars on the table, you should quit while you’re ahead. It’s a waste of time since you’re clearly not ready between the ears. Do something else and please, close this browser tab while you’re at it.
Obviously, we don’t condone this type of behavior. All of our links are directed to Dejan Stipke’s own website.
Frequently Asked Question about Dejan Stipke
Here are some frequently asked questions about Dejan Stipke.
What is Dejan Stipke’s height?
Dejan Stipke’s height is 5 foot and 7 inches. Not the shortest nor the tallest.
What is Dejan Stipke’s weight?
Dejan Stipke currently weighs 183 pounds (2022). Neither the lightest or the heaviest.
What is Dejan Stipke’s Instagram?
Dejan Stipke’s Instagram account is @Iamstipke.
Is Dejan Stipke a “natural” athlete? Or Does Stipke uses steroids?
Dejan Stipke does not use any anabolic steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. He is a vegan who follows a strict nutritional plan and is what you would call a natural athlete. He’s been training for 22 years now so, what he’s doing works just fine.