Posted in Body Weight TrainingGeneral
There are a lot of supporters of bodyweight training – and with good reason. It is very effective in building muscle and some even believe it’s even better than free weight training. This is very possible. Depending on your application of bodyweight training, you can create a regimen without the need to use free weights.
Bodyweight training is much more beneficial to the body as the motions used are more natural than using free weights. There is also less chances of injuring yourself as the joints are more effectively used without exceeding their full range of motion. Totally unlike free weight regimes wherein some workouts call for the body to be pushed beyond its limits.
The problem with bodyweight training is that people fail to utilise it effectively. Either people take the approach of more repetitions or they don’t know how to improve the resistance or tension properly.
A lot of people do bodyweight training but only with the simplest moves and only increasing the repetitions. It’s very hard to build muscle this way. The keys to effectively increase muscle mass are short and intense workouts. These workouts make better use of the muscles and lead to faster muscle breakdown and improvement cycles.
Also, it is important to remember that you have to surprise your body with new workouts every now and then so that it doesn’t get used to the workouts. When you notice any improvement with your muscles, rather than increasing the repetition and number of sets of your workouts, it is better to increase the resistance.
To significantly produce muscle mass, two things are needed: loading and tension. High-rep, low-resistance workouts can’t provide this as compared with low-rep, high-resistance workouts. The more explosive a workout is, the more the fast twitch muscle fibers are involved and it’s these that have the highest room for growth.
Rather than aiming for the 20-30 rep range, go for 5-12 reps. But make sure that the resistance utilised to finish these 12 reps is the same as or greater than the one for the 30 reps.
And this is where some people argue that body weight training is useless. The only source of resistance is the bodyweight itself and you can’t add more weight as simply as using free weights.
Though this is true, most of these people just aren’t creative enough. There are many ways to modify the simple push-up, pull-up and other bodyweight exercises to add more resistance.
Let’s start with the push up. There are many more advanced variations like decline push-ups where you place your feet on a higher surface than your hands. Or even one-arm push-ups wherein, as the name suggests, you have to only use one arm and use it alternately.
For the pull-ups, there are wide-grip and close-grip pull-ups each targeting a more specific muscle area. A pull-up that can have a bigger effect on the back muscles is the behind-the-neck pull-up.
For a more explosive regimen, you can even consider plyometric movements. These build muscle endurance while mostly using just the weight of the body.
The biggest problem with bodyweight regimens is the lack of knowledge on the subject matter. People simply dismiss as it as being too easy. The important thing to remember with bodyweight regimens is proper resistance progression. Make your bodyweight regimen just as hard as free weight regimens.
Build your bodyweight regimen now and marvel at the results.