Want To Incorporate Some Bodyweight Exercises Into Your Strength Training Routines?
Aug 29th, 2011 | By Todd Bowman | Category: Exercises, Training How To
Body weight exercising is one of the best ways to obtain a healthy lifestyle. The think I like about using the weight and resistance of your own body is that it allows for much more natural movements (let’s face it, a decline free weight fly isn’t really a natural body movement according to our physiology).
It allows you to remain fit and free from diseases even at an old age. Just so we’re clear, body weight exercises won’t make you healthy. Not by themselves. Being fit and being healthy although not mutually exclusive, are in fact two COMPLETELY different things. I see some of the most unhealthy “fit” people in my gym every single day I workout.
Though most of us would want to go to the gym for the “perfect body”, exercises performed with out own body weight will make us in tune with nature and is more beneficial, regardless of age. Weight equipment and weird machines may be able to strengthen a certain muscle but it isolates it. The other muscles remain limp.
Body weight exercises are great because they tear and break down the muscle fibers of secondary slow twitch muscles and stabilizer muscles. By breaking these stabilizer muscles down, they help to in essence “prop up” the main muscle or muscle groups you really care about.
They do this by using timing, balance and coordination in order to keep the correct posture, range of motion and body form during the full range of each repetition. It’s simply incredible how beneficial body weight workouts can be and I barely see anybody doing them.
To be fair I must say that my current weightlifting routine consists of power lifting for 3 weeks using very heavy weights and compound movements, then the fourth week I do strictly body weight exercises.
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I do this simply to recover and allow some time for muscle confusion to happen. I’m still getting a workout but I’m allowing my body a more natural recovery time.
There is practically no downside to doing bodyweight exercises. Doing strictly body weight routines may not provide you the same level of strength as those that do power lifting using dumbbells and barbells, but it’s already an improvement compared to doing no exercise at all. Here are some benefits that you should also consider for bodyweight training.
Location-independent
Most bodyweight exercises can be done at home which gives you the benefit that it can be done practically anywhere.
Walls, chairs, stairs, you can use them all for bodyweight training. Even free space can be used for most bodyweight exercises.
It’s Freakin Cheap
It isn’t actually cheap because it costs time and requires motivation (and that ain’t cheap!). Bu in fact, it costs you nothing to do bodyweight training. After you wake up, doing push ups and squats already qualify as bodyweight exercises. And you don’t even have to change into anything in order to do that. You can even do them naked.
Better Athletic Performance
There’s no better way to build a toned athletic physique than using your own body as resistance. Take a look at the bodies of gymnasts and you will see how muscular and fat free their bodies are. They help to improve reaction time, balance, timing, and agility.
No age requirement
You can basically start bodyweight training at any stage of your life. Whether you’re in your teens or you’re pushing 60. Usually lifting heavy weight (especially free weights) at the gym might require a doctors checkup if you’re elderly.
But body weight routines are incredibly safe. Still check with your local qualified health practitioner though.
No Fitness requirement
Whether you want to increase your strength a little bit or to extreme levels, you can use bodyweight. You can change your program progressively to give you more difficult bodyweight exercises. Think of it this way, when doing pushups, you can do a wall pushup, chair pushup, ordinary pushup, to a one armed pushup. In all those exercises, you only used your bodyweight but all of them are of different difficulty levels.
Don’t have a gym or want to join a gym? No problem. Watch the video below for some cool body weight routines you can try out now. And even take a look at the Turbulence Training program. This way you can get hundreds of workout routines all broken up for you so you know exactly what you’re doing to be doing each and every day.
In this video, Craig Ballantyne states that there should be no excuse for you to “not workout”. If you watch the video, he’ll show you various types of bodyweight exercises you can do. Such would include prisoner squats, pushups, prisoner lunges. So again, in order to exercise, bodyweight is your primary need and that’s what you already have.
Click Here To Learn More About How Turbulence Training By Craig Ballantyne Can Transform Your Body
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