Back To Basics

Body Weight Training For The Win

Long before boutique gyms and bumper plates came into being, humans relied on the one form of resistance we’ve always had: our body weight. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians used bodyweight training, and it’s still just as valuable today as it was then. The combination of resisting your body weight and overcoming gravity comes in many forms.

• Calisthenics - What most people think of when they hear bodyweight exercise. Movements like squats, push-ups, jumping jacks, and pull-ups fall into this category.

• Yoga is a movement practice that encourages connection between the mind and body and is also great for improving flexibility and mobility. If you’ve ever said to yourself, “I’m not flexible enough to do yoga,” then you need to be doing yoga

• Gymnastics - Pound for pound, gymnasts are some of the strongest athletes in the world, regardless of gender.

Advantages Of Body Weight Training

The most obvious advantage is the lack of equipment to buy or store. This also means you can bypass the gym membership expense if you would rather train at home. This lack of equipment also means you don’t need much room either. You can do an entire body weight session in a small closet if you have to and still get a great workout. However, even minimal equipment can open many more doors for different exercises. This especially applies to any pulling exercise, such as inverted rows or pull-ups, where something to grab onto is a must-have. Some essential equipment can also allow you to progress your movements and make them more challenging. Remember, if you keep doing the same exercise with the same resistance, your body will only adapt to be strong enough to meet that demand. Also, repeating the same exercises for every training session can lead to boredom, decreasing motivation to exercise over the long term.

An inverted row station I made using chairs while on vacation.

Two items I recommend to anyone who desires to step up their body weight training are a pull-up bar and a suspension trainer, such as a TRX or something similar. You’ve just added numerous options to your exercise buffet between these two pieces of equipment. Not only can you perform new exercises, but you can also make exercises that you’re already doing, such as a push-up, more challenging. An atomic push-up, where your feet are suspended in the stirrups, takes a regular push-up and instantly makes it much harder.

Body weight-only routines are also perfect for circuit training since moving from one exercise to another is quick. Anytime I do a bodyweight session, it’s usually a workout for time or a fixed set of rounds. A workout for time is a circuit where you set a timer and try to perform as many rounds of a circuit within that time frame as possible. A fixed set is when you have a goal of how many rounds of a circuit you wish to perform and do it as fast as possible. An important caveat for each of these is that you should rest as needed to maintain proper form. My favorite way to enhance the difficulty of body weight exercises is to slow them down. The longer it takes to work through the range of motion, the more the muscle has to work. Of course, this doesn’t apply to explosive movements like jumps or sprints but to more traditional strength movements such as push-ups or squats. It’s just as simple as it sounds. For example, if doing a push-up, slowly count to three as you lower down, pause at the bottom, and then do a slow three-count on the way back up. A set of 10 reps like this is much more challenging than a standard pace.

Your Environment Is Your Gym

Do you have a set of stairs in your house? Then you have a stepper machine. Walking quickly or running up and down stairs is a great option to add to your body weight circuit. How about gallon jugs of milk or water? Fill them with water to make an eight-pound weight, or fill them with sand to create a 13.5-pound weight. They even have a convenient handle built right in. A sturdy ottoman or coffee table can also be used for step-ups, box jumps, pistols, or elevated push-ups.

The bottom line is this: some form of exercise is always available to you. It might not be what you want to do, it might not be your ideal training method, and it might force you to think outside the box and get creative. But if there’s one thing our species has proven to be good at, it’s using our big brains for something other than a hat rack. No gym? No problem!