Anyone want to talk about bodyweight training?

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.