I promote a bodyweight training program. Though it can be modified with
weight vests, at its core it is comprised entirely of exercises that
use your own bodyweight as resistance – pushups, pullups, planks, rows, squats, and sprints.
For the majority of people who try it, it works great because PBF is a
basic program designed to appeal to people from every fitness
background. People who’ve never lifted a weight in their lives can jump
right in with the beginning progressions, move on up through the more
difficult variants, and get quite fit in the process. It’s not the end
all, be all of training – and I make that pretty clear in the eBook –
but it’s a foundation for solid, all around fitness. Some choose to move
beyond it or incorporate weighted movements, some are content.
Still, some people are skeptical about the efficacy of a bodyweight
training program. Is it truly enough, or just “good enough”? Can you
really get big and strong without slinging heavy weights around?
It depends on what you mean by “enough,” of course, but the answer is
generally “yes.” Bodyweight training is a legitimate option for anyone
interested in building an impressive physique, increasing their strength, improving their athletic performance, mobility, and flexibility,
and establishing excellent mind-body-space awareness. Plus, the ability
to bust out some ridiculous moves on the pullup bars at the local park
has to count for something.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Check out some of the people
getting and staying very, very strong using primarily bodyweight
exercises:
Al Kavadlo
Beastskills
Gymnastics Bodies
Eat Move Improve
Hannibal
So yes, a smart bodyweight program can rival the best barbell
training, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. These guys aren’t just
mindlessly doing progressively greater numbers of pushups, pullups, and
air squats. If you want to get as strong as possible, just doing more reps won’t cut it. You need intelligent progression.
Progression isn’t just adding reps. Eventually, you have to make the
exercises harder to keep getting stronger, either by adding weight,
increasing the degree of stabilization required, or decreasing the
amount of leverage you have. Normal dips
too easy? Move onto ring dips, and then weighted ring dips. Doing
twenty pullups in a row without much issue? Try wearing a weight vest or
work your way toward a one arm pullup. Bodyweight rows with your feet
up on blocks a cinch? Try taking one foot off, then both, then trying
front levers.
And that’s part of the reason why most people opt for barbells over
bodyweight training: it’s easier and far less humbling to add weights to
a bar than remove leverage from a bodyweight movement. In many cases,
to progress in bodyweight means learning an entirely new movement from
scratch. Starting over from zero. It’s harder to quantify than weight
training and easier to get stuck.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not effective. In fact, the degree of
difficulty required to perform some of the more intermediate and
advanced bodyweight exercises implies their effectiveness.
What kind of exercises qualify as “bodyweight training”?
There are three primary categories, and the most successful people draw on exercises from all three.Calisthenics are the basic bodyweight exercises like
pullups, pushups, squats, jumping jacks, lunges, dips, planks, and
rows. They have the broadest appeal, attracting elderly Chinese ladies
wearing windbreakers and impossibly muscled guys wearing jeans and
Jordans.
Plyometrics consist of explosive bodyweight
exercises, like depth jumps, box jumps, broad jumps, jump squats,
Russian lunges, burpees, and jumping pushups.
Gymnastics describes the highly technical movements
those amazingly compact, muscular people perform during every summer
Olympics. Most people probably won’t ever reach that level, but they can
still get really strong using the rings to work on the earlier
progressions that precede the expert-level movements, like levers,
planches, muscle-ups, rows, pullups, and dips.
How does bodyweight training measure up to weight training?
There’s not a ton of research, but it seemed to fare well in the one study Ifound. Athletes were placed on one of three training programs:
traditional resistance training, “complex training” (an undulating mix
of high and low intensity weight training), or plyometrics training. By
the end of the study, all groups had experienced identical gains in back
squat, Romanian deadlift, and calf raise strength.
There may be little research directly comparing bodyweight training
to barbell training or other forms of strength and conditioning, but my
intent is not to claim one is better than the other. They’re all
different, and they’re all effective. We do have research
showing the beneficial effects of bodyweight exercises on the same types
of performance markers we traditionally target with weight training,
however, and there may even be a few unique effects.
Bodyweight exercises require activation of more muscles.
Bodyweight exercises are closed kinetic chain movements; rather than
moving an object toward or away from your body, you are moving your body
toward or away from the ground. This requires cooperation between all
the muscles that form the kinetic chain and provides an arguably more
complete stimulus of the musculature. For instance, in a bench press,
your core is supported by the bench; in a pushup, your core is supported
by the core musculature.
Bodyweight exercises develop proprioceptive awareness.
Bodyweight training refers to moving your body through space, and
this movement provides additional feedback to your body and brain when
compared to lifting a weight with your arms. Neuromuscular activation is
highest during exercises that move the body.
Bodyweight exercises can’t be replicated by weight training.
Many people avoid bodyweight exercises because they can’t figure out
how to replicate some of their favorite barbell exercises, like overhead
press (try handstand pushups), bench press (try ring pushups), or
barbell rows (try tuck front lever rows), but what about the inability
of barbell exercises to replace many bodyweight movements? You can’t
replicate swinging on monkey bars, climbing a rope, doing a muscle-up,
crawling on your hands, or performing an L-sit with weights, just to
name a few. Even the weight training exercises that seem to replicate
bodyweight exercises have different effects; compare your lat pulldown
machine performance with your deadhang pullup performance for a perfect
example.
A recent review spanning
several decades of research summed up the effects of lower body
plyometrics training on neuromuscular, performance, and health
adaptations in healthy people:
- Increased neuromuscular activation.
- Increased strength and power.
- Faster stretch-shortening cycle of muscles, leading to improved performance.
- Improved coordination between muscles involved in the movements.
- Enhancement of general athletic capability, including jumping, sprinting, agility, and endurance.
- Reduced risk of lower body injuries in susceptible populations.
- Increased bone mass.
lower body. For the most part, our legs and glutes are just way too
strong to reach their full potential through air squats – and most
bodyweight proponents will agree. However, a program consisting of
plyometrics (jumping lunges/squats, broad jumps, depth jumps), single
leg squats, and sprinting, especially hill sprints, can produce a strong
lower body. You may not get the same degree of hypertrophy without
adding weights to your lower body work, but you can certainly get
stronger.
Am I suggesting that everyone ditch the weights, cancel the gym
membership, and invest in a set of Perfect Pushups? No. The two can
coexist quite happily. In fact, if I’m designing the optimal program for
strength and mass, I’m going with a fusion of bodyweight training
(gymnastics, ring work, pullups, dips) for the upper body and weight
training (lunges, squats, deadlifts) for the lower body.
My point is simple. If you have no access to quality gym equipment,
if you live next door to a park with an awesome outdoor workout station,
if you hate weight training, if you fear weight training, or even if
just prefer bodyweight exercises, fear not: you can build an awesome
body and get incredibly strong by emphasizing bodyweight training.
What about you? Do you prefer bodyweight exercises to weight
training? What kind of results have you seen doing one or the other?
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Posted By:
Mark Sisson
Mark Sisson
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