Bodyweight workout routine

Running Bing

Question: Can significant strength gains ever be achieved solely through bodyweight work (i.e. no weights)?

I often do dips and push ups but I dont feel they do a lot for me.

So does anybody swear by bodyweight stuff? Could anybody recommend a good programme or some good exercises to try or is it really all about heavy weights?

TommyKnocker

Hi There

No expert here, but IMHO weight gain will not be made through any form of exercise.

Weight gain will be made by eating more calories then you expend, simple as.

Now if you want to ensure that as much of any weight gained is lean weight, then you will need to perform some kind of resistance training.

IMHO if you are starting from pretty much scratch, then you can make pretty decent gains from doing purely body weight exercises. However after a while, your body will adapt to this routine and you will need to add further resistance to continue to increase in size.

And again size is a subjective and divisive subject on these forums

Do you want the physique of

• A Men's Health cover model (Athletic build, strong and defined with low body fat)
• A competition Body Builder (Well developed muscles, Chiseled, strong, low body fat)
• A Power Lifter ( Muscular, strong, maybe not so defined, moderate body fat)

I believe that you could get or at least get close to the cover model physique with a really good diet and body weight exercises. For either of the other physiques you would need to be using weights and have a really good diet.

There are lots of example body weight routines on Youtube. Another mostly body weight (though dumbbells and a pull-up bar are advised) routine I have heard about recently on these forums is P90X. I have looked at some videos on Youtube from folks who have used this and some of the results are pretty impressive. However you have to believe that these folks only used the P90X system, and how do you prove that....

** EDIT ** Have just noticed your forum name, and if this is a indication of your preferred sport and you do a lot of running, then you will find it very hard to gain significant muscle size while doing a lot of cardio work. Plus the last thing a runner (except maybe a 100m/200m sprinter) wants is muscle mass. More weight to carry around with you.


Best Regards & Seasons Greetings,

M

Running Bing

Sorry B-builder, made a complete bags of that op.

I meant to put in strength gains instead of weight gains.:rolleyes::o

Your quite right, I have no interest in size whatsoever Im looking purely to build strength with as little mass as possible.

Thanks.

BrianD3

Some bodyweight exercises are very easy, some are brutally difficult. The latter can be found on
www.beastskills.com

One problem with difficult bodyweight exercises is the lack of straighforward progression. If you want to deadlift 3 times your bodyweight, you can start with an Olympic bar with two light plates on it and build up slowly over time. If you want to do a handstand pushup or a 1 arm pullup etc. with 1 x bodyweight, that is far too much resistance at first and it's not as if you can chop off your legs to reduce it. With a lot of bodyweight exercises there are some easier variations/techniques to help a person to build up but they are not an ideal preparation.

fei_hung

:cool: www.fitnessanywhere.com

The answer is YES bodyweight training is excellent for building strenght.
You`ll find a piece of equipment called the trx that`ll give you endless excercises and workouts it really good.

d'Oracle

http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/229/

liam-h

Great interview about bodyweight training:
http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_interviews/all_muscle_no_iron%3bjsessionid=C65B11FF353C26616B4967E2FE046F98.hydra


Also this is a good guide to progressions, from easy to extremely tough:
http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/articles1.html

A chin up bar is worth every penny

just realised the second article was already posted by d'Oracle