Anyone want to talk about bodyweight training?

eslcity

Personally, I did body weight training squats, push-ups, crunches and etc. before joining a gym to use weights... and I know it prepared my body... to lift heavier... without the pain...

http://hundredpushups.com/

waldo56

Waldo, I've read Convict Conditioning and while I didn't care for the tone of most of the book and thought the nutritional advice was scant, I'm curious to hear your gripes with it.

A few things,

First of all, the overall programming plan if terrible. That is the worst part. If you compress it all into a single day and progress exercise to exercise as soon as you can, it becomes much better. One exercise a day, ridden out to high reps each progression, purposely slowing progression to bank strength, is absolutely idiotic.

His "banking strength" concept is utter BS. Erase it from your memory, it is totally false.

Progression-wise:
- The book will lead to believe you are ready to being one arm chin training FAR, FAR earlier than you actually are. After pullups, work on the front lever and muscle-up, then go back to the one arm chin.

- There is no such thing as a one arm handstand pushup. It is a theoretical exercise. After headstand pushups (handstand pushups on a floor) elevate the hands (giving space for the head) and work on handstand pushups. The stack of book progression for both is by far the easiest.

- The one arm pushup progression does not include straddle (wide leg) one arm pushups and the step before, incline straddle one arm pushups. CC followers are led to believe that doing one arm pushups with wide legs are incorrect or poor form. It is a different exercise and on the progression path; you never do a feet together one arm pushup using his progression, it doesn't ever deal with the rotation (the hardest part).

- LOL @ the pistol squat progression. Close squats? That thing with a basketball? There are much easier ways to get there; there are 4 main weak points to a pistol, each has a different means of attacking. That progression addresses none of them. Box pistols, doing pistols onto progressively lower objects like chairs is by far the easiest progression.

- The bridge progression is fine. He overstresses the importance of it, but W/E. A better path than the walkover bridge is to move to single leg bridges/hip thrusts if glute work is the main goal.

- The hanging leg raise progression is fine, easy though. That should be the first one you get, then further progressing to hanging L's, L-sits, and toes to bar.

sparklefrogz

First of all, the overall programming plan if terrible....Progression-wise: (long list items)

Thanks for elucidating. I had a look at your bodyweight strength training beginner's guide post on your site and from what I can tell, Mark Lauren's programming plans fit in much better with your philosophy. I am curious to know what you think about his exercise progressions in "Body By You" (if you've read it). Also curious to hear your opinion on Startbodyweight.com, if you have one.

I'm coming to this as someone who did gymnastics as a young child and loved it, but hasn't touched resistance training of any kind for close to 20 years. I realize that at my stage of the game, getting started with any program and going consistently is probably more important than picking the "best" program, but I'd still like to hear your thoughts.

CrescentCityGirl

This is all new information for me, but I definitely want to be involved. Many great websites and resources to check out here.

I too have trouble with my shoulder. I've found tha if I weight train a few times a week with yoga and kickboxing the other days it doesn't keep me up at night.

Is there a body weight group on myp yet???

Vailara

I have used Body By You (mentioned above) and preferred it to You Are Your Own Gym. It seemed less fiddly - just basic whole-body exercises (although the actual programme was a bit complicated, with different sorts of sets on different days). What I liked about it was that it allowed for small increments, so you could feel you were progressing. One thing I didn't like was that it felt uneven in difficulty: this may well have been just me, but I found I was able to start just about at the end of the progression for one particular exercise, whilst I was on a much lower level with the other exercises. The website did give suggestions of what to do at that point, but it was frustrating to be outgrowing an exercise right at the beginning.

I'm reading this thread with interest and will look at some of the things other people have suggested.

Yagisama

I'm starting to add some body weight exercises so I'll be paying close attention to this thread.

geebusuk

bodyweight stuff is hard, that's why nobody wants to do it.

I don't want to do it because it's often less effective.

This is hard:

That is NOT why people don't want to do it .

I just tried a pistol squat - it was pretty easy, it seemed - but while I'm far from from strong, my first warmup sets for normal barbell squats is around body weight on my shoulders, so shouldn't be challenging to put all my actual body weight through one leg.

After all that - if it's all you've got available, it's certainly much better than nothing.
For me, I could never get motivated to do it when I was last working away, so I found a better solution this time ...

enipla

I like BW exercises. For me it is very functional and can carryover to my other activities I like to do such as hiking, climbing,etc.

tonileigh820

I also do mainly body weight exercises. Not only have I been getting great results, but it's free and you can literally do it anytime, anywhere.

steve0820

Waldo, I've read Convict Conditioning and while I didn't care for the tone of most of the book and thought the nutritional advice was scant, I'm curious to hear your gripes with it.

A few things,

First of all, the overall programming plan if terrible. That is the worst part. If you compress it all into a single day and progress exercise to exercise as soon as you can, it becomes much better. One exercise a day, ridden out to high reps each progression, purposely slowing progression to bank strength, is absolutely idiotic.

His "banking strength" concept is utter BS. Erase it from your memory, it is totally false.

Progression-wise:
- The book will lead to believe you are ready to being one arm chin training FAR, FAR earlier than you actually are. After pullups, work on the front lever and muscle-up, then go back to the one arm chin.

- There is no such thing as a one arm handstand pushup. It is a theoretical exercise. After headstand pushups (handstand pushups on a floor) elevate the hands (giving space for the head) and work on handstand pushups. The stack of book progression for both is by far the easiest.

- The one arm pushup progression does not include straddle (wide leg) one arm pushups and the step before, incline straddle one arm pushups. CC followers are led to believe that doing one arm pushups with wide legs are incorrect or poor form. It is a different exercise and on the progression path; you never do a feet together one arm pushup using his progression, it doesn't ever deal with the rotation (the hardest part).

- LOL @ the pistol squat progression. Close squats? That thing with a basketball? There are much easier ways to get there; there are 4 main weak points to a pistol, each has a different means of attacking. That progression addresses none of them. Box pistols, doing pistols onto progressively lower objects like chairs is by far the easiest progression.

- The bridge progression is fine. He overstresses the importance of it, but W/E. A better path than the walkover bridge is to move to single leg bridges/hip thrusts if glute work is the main goal.

- The hanging leg raise progression is fine, easy though. That should be the first one you get, then further progressing to hanging L's, L-sits, and toes to bar.

Glad I caught this write up, thanks Waldo. Was thinking of some new reading material, and this was one of them. But the one arm chin progression had me laughing.

steve0820

bodyweight stuff is hard, that's why nobody wants to do it.

I don't want to do it because it's often less effective.

This is hard:

That is NOT why people don't want to do it .

I just tried a pistol squat - it was pretty easy, it seemed - but while I'm far from from strong, my first warmup sets for normal barbell squats is around body weight on my shoulders, so shouldn't be challenging to put all my actual body weight through one leg.

After all that - if it's all you've got available, it's certainly much better than nothing.
For me, I could never get motivated to do it when I was last working away, so I found a better solution this time ...

Bodyweight is only less effective if you have no progression like anything else. Most people use the barbell because, well, there is nothing to think about, just add weight. Programming is a lot more difficult when it comes to bodyweight training.

BB Squats on a ball is ridiculous! It's already a full body exercise, what are they trying to add? haha. Also, see a guy at my gym using a bosu ball.

If you just "tried" a pistol squat and found it easy, then kudos to you my friend. You certainly have strength and really good balance. The weight is not the issue for most people, it's the balance, and well not having it.

geebusuk

Yep; 'often less effective' both because it's harder to workout decent progression - even if we take someone only just able to do 5x push ups in a set, that's great, but to move up the weight we've then got to move legs around (which actually changes the move a bit for the arms, or end up taking one arm away, which brings us back to making it hard because of balance, which isn't really an effective way to train muscles to be stronger.
Similarly - my current 5rm bench press is a bit above bodyweight. I don't see any easy way to replicate that; and then even worse to make it progressively harder. I could do handstands against a wall, but my overhead press is lower and I specifically do both exercises separately.

I'm sure I've done pistol squats before, just trying them - I can certainly remember trying and mostly failing to demonstrate them to friends when at bouldering wall - doing it on a 1.5' thick foam crash mat does make it even harder .
(Being able to stand up in that manner is quite useful for climbing, especially bouldering.)

sabified

great topic!

bump to read later

steve0820

Yep; 'often less effective' both because it's harder to workout decent progression - even if we take someone only just able to do 5x push ups in a set, that's great, but to move up the weight we've then got to move legs around (which actually changes the move a bit for the arms, or end up taking one arm away, which brings us back to making it hard because of balance, which isn't really an effective way to train muscles to be stronger.
Similarly - my current 5rm bench press is a bit above bodyweight. I don't see any easy way to replicate that; and then even worse to make it progressively harder. I could do handstands against a wall, but my overhead press is lower and I specifically do both exercises separately.

I'm sure I've done pistol squats before, just trying them - I can certainly remember trying and mostly failing to demonstrate them to friends when at bouldering wall - doing it on a 1.5' thick foam crash mat does make it even harder .
(Being able to stand up in that manner is quite useful for climbing, especially bouldering.)

I agree! I only meant "easier" in terms of having a program to follow, not the actually progression. If you stale on a any lift, typically de-load, find accessory work, that sort of thing. With bodyweight training, it can get a little more tricky.