Bodyweight Exercise: The Cure or the Problem?
You see the ads on TV, and all over the internet. Zumba, Insanity, Tracy Anderson, brazilian butt lifts, MMA circuits.
Buy this 9 DVD set with all bodyweight exercises you need to get shredded as a guy and long tone muscles as a girl in only 20 minutes a day for 90 days.
I love bodyweight exercises but should you be using them all the time and as your only source of exercise?
I do not agree with the advertising that says using one tool in health/wellness/fitness/strength is the only thing you need to reach all your goals or a healthier body. I am not being biased here and attacking all Bodyweight exercises and experts either. This rule applies to everything. Goes along with the sayings “Everything in Moderation” and “Too much of anything can be bad for you.” Too much lifting without stretching is bad, too much milk can be bad, too much water can actually kill you.
Before some of you get angry at me, I am going to make a clarification here as to my definition of bodyweight exercises. Pretty simple…no equipment or assistance devices.
The Good Bodyweight Exercise Brings to the table
You are your own equipment
At a time in our history where the economy is down and the need for convenience is at such a greater need, the aspect of no equipment is a huge one. It means that you are available to exercise as long as you have the time to do so. You do not need to go to a facility like a gym or studio to get a workout. We all know that TIME is FINITE for everyone and, that the popular quote “A one hour workout is only 4% of your day” really is a bunch of bullshit. Your day is never a simple math problem so, the ability to get a workout in whenever and wherever you can is a huge advantage to your fitness progress.
Compound movements
Naturally your body does not move in isolated patterns. So, if you are using the movements of your body to exercise by default you will be performing movements or exercises that require multiple areas of the body to contribute for success. Go ahead try and only work your triceps in a push up. Sure you can change your hand position to target them a bit more but you need your shoulders, upper back, core musculature(abs and back), hips, legs, chest, neck calves, quads and hams to stay in that position and perform solid technique reps.
Progressive/ Regressive
Not everyone can do bodyweight exercises successfully when they first start exercising .iI this is the case for you the exercise can be scaled or regressed to an easier version. If you have been doing a bodyweight exercise for quite sometime and it’s no longer a challenge there are plenty of ways to make it challenging. Just like you would if you were using an equipment based exercise you can slow your tempo, add explosive elements, decrease stability, increase time and so on and so forth.
It’s hard to progress too fast with bodyweight exercises. Is it possible but, it’s also pretty easy to tell if you are capable of performing a bodyweight movement or not. On day one you are not going to try clap push ups with you know you can not even do one rep with your knees on the ground.
Exercise Variety
Just based off the fact that you can progress/regress different exercises, the variety is vast! If you need an example just try and find all of the different variations of a crunch, sit up or a plank on YouTube. Go ahead and type Bodyweight ab exercise into the search bar and watch away the rest of your life trying to record and perform them all.
With such a large variety available, bodyweight exercises can be great for everyone from injured grandparents to advanced young athletes.
Improvements in strength/ Size
Improvements in endurance/conditioning
5&6 go together here. Just like any other exercise you can increase your strength, endurance, cardiovascular conditioning and size. You will have to make progressions the same way as well. Once it becomes easy you need to make it difficult again. The easiest example of all of these would be to look at those olympic gymnasts; very strong with bodyweight movements in a variety of forms.
Easy to circuit and superset
Without having to change equipment or add or subtract weights, you can go from one exercise to another quite easily. All you really have to do is maybe stand up or sit down etc…etc. If you are looking to get in a quick workout then making a few different bodyweight exercises a continuous circuit for time or reps is a great way to do that.
Requires Stability/Balance/mobility
If you have a glaring weakness your body will let you know about it right away. Maybe you do not have the mobility/flexibility you thought you had. Does this mean you need to be ballet or stereotypical yoga girl flexible for everything…no but you need some work. The same applies to your balance and stability. Should you be able to hold a one arm plank with no feet on the floor on day one…nope, sorry you can not look this cool yet. Even better if you have a hard time standing on one foot for more than 30 seconds without falling like a redwood…you need some work.
THE BAD Bodyweight Exercise Brings to the table
No equipment
Yea, I know above I said it was a positive. But, it is actually a huge negative for your fitness progress and safety. Without additional equipment it is hard to overcome an adaptation your body has made to that exercise. Can you still see the benefits from just using bodyweight exercises? Sure, but results will come a bit slower than you want them too.
Not having any equipment including: steps, boxes, bars, ropes, rings, trx, walls etc. really limits the type of exercises you can do and limits the progressions as well.
Deceiving strength progress
Lets see here, if a man weighs 200 pounds and can do 10 pull ups without stopping on day one and 4 weeks later he weighs 190 pounds and can do 15 pull ups without stopping; did he get stronger? I do not think so. The thing with bodyweight exercises is the intensity is based on what you weigh. If you weigh less and do the same you are doing less. If you lose weight you have to increase the intensity another way in order for that exercise to maintain the same benefits. Again, when you are unable to progress or at least track your progress then you will have a harder time see the results you really want.
Boring/Repetitive
You have to do reps, on reps, on reps and sets, on sets, on sets…..over and over and over. What if you don’t want to do more reps or sets? Imagine doing that for every workout and knowing when you get better you will have to do more reps of the same or similar movements. What really sucks is remember that short workout you used to have because at the time you could only do 10 push ups. well it just became a lot longer now that you can do 50 push ups in a row easy.
Pushing dominant
Can you name me a bodyweight exercise that does not use equipment that primarily works your biceps, lats, delts, back and hamstrings. I’m sorry if you initially said pull ups and chin ups but, you need equipment for those so we can’t count it. Yes, I even a tree branch counts as equipment. If you are in your cubicle and have 10 minutes at the start of your lunch break where are you going to do a pull up…? The only exercises you can really do involve a pushing motion and not a pulling one. This is a huge issue considering that we are typically weakest in our pulling motions because our whole day is based around pushing movements. When the only time you pull something… is what opening a heavy door? Always working out with this one-sided dominance will create quite a bit of imbalance.
Too much variety
These varieties come from people who are trying to make an exercise harder or more exciting. That is not the problem; the problem is when someone who is doing this variation of a simple exercise when they really should not be. I have injured shoulders and it hurts me when I do diamond pushups ..why would I continue to do them for any other reason besides them being different. The benefit of the “new exercise” is lost when it has a great potential to keep you out of the gym.
Any average joe can make up a variation and not know that it might actually be causing more harm than good. They might think it is a great variation because it is challenging and tiresome.
High Impact Lower Body
Here is a superset for you. Burpees, jumping lunges, high knees jog and sprinting. Is is going to be difficult?…absolutely! Is it working the same part of your legs over and over again? Most definitely and that’s the problem! The unfortunate easy way to increase the intensity of a lower body bodyweight exercise is to add a jump/hop/ run. This paired with the pushing dominance or Quad dominant movements is a recipe for injury. Some people won’t jog daily on the treadmill because of the impact on their joints, imagine the impact of jumping, hopping and running as the staple exercises of your workout. Talk about serious impact.
Don’t think it’s an issue? Go ask an old professional basketball player how their knees are doing. High impact exercises are intense and take a toll on the body more than we usually think.
When we pair tons and tons of reps with high intensity, high impact movements the common sense likelihood of injury in any shape or form is going to be higher.
So there you have it, Bodyweight Exercise is not the Best thing in the world! To make them better without getting crazy you will need to include some equipment like weighted vests, pull up bars, ropes, walls, bands and anything else you can climb or hang from. The overall bottom line is that just like everything else…Don’t over do it! It’s that simple, the best program or exercise routine for health benefits, fat loss benefits, athletic benefits, strength and power benefits is BALANCE!
Originally published at fitletes.com
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