I make it very clear that I’m a big proponent of resistance training for optimal health. In particular I believe that the most effective and practical method of training is through lifting weights.
However, one cannot ignore the tremendous physiques built by some athletes (especially gymnasts) solely through means of bodyweight strength training. In this article, I outline some of the reasons why it can work, but is largely not a practical means of resistance training for most people.
What is Bodyweight Strength Training?
Bodyweight strength training basically means training to get stronger using only your bodyweight as a form of resistance.
Pushups are a form of bodyweight exercise that targets the chest muscles. Its barbell counter would be the Bench Press.
Some Definitions are in Order
This is a general article targeted at the general population. I want to address specifically why the average person shouldn’t be focusing exclusively on bodyweight strength training to build strength and for aesthetic goals; arguably the 2 most common goals among people.
This isn’t a sports-specific article, and do understand fully that some sports demand competency in some bodyweight exercises (handstands in gymnastics for example).
Some Amazing Results of Bodyweight Strength Training
Check out some vids of break-dancers, Free-runners and gymnasts and acrobats like Dominic LaCasse, and even some people like Hannibal and you’d be amazed not only by the feats of strength, but also by the great physiques sculpted in the process.
It Works if you do it right
There are sites like gymnasticsbodies.com and Beast Skills which give practical recommendations on how to go about training with bodyweight exercises.
The question becomes, can you “Do it Right”?
Limitations
All the limitations surround the Central Tenet of muscular strength and growth: Progressive Tension Overload. A muscle doesn’t sense a barbell on your chest, it only responds to the amount of tension it is under. The greater the force it needs to generate, the greater the tension on a particular muscle.
Your muscles will grow and you will get stronger as they adapt to be able to generate more force and thus withstand more tension.
1. Basic Exercises Don’t Provide Enough Resistance
While pushups may be a great challenge for a previously sedentary individual, one is rapidly able to do more and more pushups. It’s simple logic that if you can many repetitions of a particular exercise, the weight is considered “light”, and thus the tension on the muscles used isn’t very great.
Yes, doing many pushups will get you better at doing more pushups. However, most people don’t want to get good at doing many pushups, they just want to get stronger for a sport or look good naked. Bodyweight exercises like the pushup won’t cut it for these purposes. We need more challenging exercises, with leads to another problem.
2. A degree of technical competency is required
Since horizontal loading (in the pushup) isn’t enough, let’s get more weight on the muscles: Let’s do Handstand pushups.
If you saw the videos above, you’d notice that those people were in very awkward positions. In those positions, the muscles involved have less leverage; they need to produce a greater amount of force to maintain that position.
A simple example would be trying to hold a bottle of water close to your body, versus trying to hold it with your arm completely straight and parallel to the ground. The latter is harder.
The corollary, is that you can generate greater levels of tension in the muscles simply by challenging yourself with these positions of poor leverage. You thus can grow big and strong using bodyweight exercises, provided you can achieve those positions.
Let’s face it, doing a handstand, one of the basic tenets of gymnastics training and the like, is a daunting task for many people. Even if there is no fear factor, there is the technical factor to considering. Learning how to do a handstand is both an exercise in strength as well as skill and balance.
To progress further, even more technically challenging skills need to be done. It’s no wonder gymnasts train for years since youth and for many hours a day to achieve the look and strength they possess.
While training with weights also demands good technique, it is generally easier to master and “scalable”.
In other words, a properly executed 50kg bench press is going to look the same as a 150kg bench press, and getting from the former to the latter will guarantee some added muscle. Whereas going from 5 handstand pushups to 15 handstand pushups doesn’t guarantee the same; one needs to progress to more challenging exercises.
3. Not everyone is built for it
Image Credit: Beast Skills
Let’s take the example of an advanced bodyweight exercise called the planche, pictured above. Now what if it were done with someone of the same bodyweight, but with longer legs? While it is a simplified explanation, someone with longer legs would have more “useless mass” pulling down on him/her in this exercise, since only the upper body is “functional” in this exercise.
This means that the long-legged person would need to generate more force in his upper body in order to successfully do the exercise. The exercise would be much harder for the long-legged person, and progress would be arduous and slow.
Also, some people have joints which are not favourable for such exercises. I will come back to this in Point 5.
Because different people have different muscle compositions, limb lengths, muscle attachment points, joint mobility, etc, different people will find it relatively easier or harder to do certain exercises.
The corollary is that there are people who are built to be great at doing bodyweight exercises.
Gymnasts typically don’t need a very powerful lower body compared to some strength athletes, and one could say that strong arms and favoured over strong legs for gymnastics.
Also, never forget that Genetics Matter, and there are some people who are born stronger than others.
4. You Either Can Do It Or You Can’t
For many bodyweight exercises, you can either do it or you can’t. Even though highly respected Coach Sommers laid out some great progressions for the planche in his article ‘Building an Olympic Body through Bodyweight Conditioning’, progressing from each progression demands drastic leaps in athletic ability.
It’s just like pullups: once you get the first pullup, you set the stage for the second one, and the third, and so on. But doing a planche is much harder than doing a pullup, and there are no other alternatives to directly train the movement (you could do pulldowns to train for pullups).
5. If You Can’t Do It, You’re Left With Few Options
Also, never forget that safety comes first, and that come people cannot perform such exercises safely. The best example would be the handstand. In his Great Series, “Shoulder Savers“, Eric Cressey gives some great recommendations on how to avoid Shoulder Trouble.
In the first part of his series, he talks about the different structure of different individual’s acromion (part of the shoulder blade). He points out that those with Type 3 acromions can run into trouble doing too much overhead pressing (as in a handstand).
The question now is: If you can’t do handstands safetly, then how are you going to train the shoulders effectively with bodyweight exercises?
While many people frown on machines for forcing the body into various planes of motion, it is precisely because of this that they can be useful at times.
One of those times is when dealing with an injury. The shoulder is the lynchpin of all upper body bodyweight exercises, and if you have a shoulder injruy, you’re basically sidelined. Not so if you train with weights; one can “work around” the injury.
Finally, remember the point above, that not everyone is built for certain exercises. The difference is that if you cannot perform one particular weights exercise safely, you simply choose from the many variations out there, and pick on which you can do.
6. You can’t easily measure progress
Progress is generally vague when it comes to bodyweight exercises.
Sometimes it can be pretty specific. For example, you could say that being able to hold a handstand for 3 seconds longer is a sign of progress.
However, because one has to challenge oneself with new and harder exercises as one progresses, benchmarks are hard to lay down. For example, what does 15 handstand pushups mean when compared to 3 planche pushups?
Training with weights generally doesn’t suffer from this. Because you can keep on adding weight to a Bench Press, but not to a Handstand Pushup. The Bench Press is “scalable”, and you can stick with it indefinitely, while you will have to progress with more difficult variations of bodyweight exercises that don’t necessarily scale linearly. (Just because you can do 15 handstand pushups doesn’t guarantee even a single planche pushup)
What happens when you work in very different rep-ranges?
You can much more accurately predict that if you could do 5 reps of the Bench Press with 85kg, you would probably be able to manage 100kg for 1 rep. This is largely because exercise form with weights is easier to manage as compared to bodyweight exercises.
A good bench press always looks the same for a given individual, and assuming technique is laid down, the main factor that determines performance for the day is one’s ability to exert a certain amount of force. Bodyweight exercises, even at the intermediate level, must be performed with good form as well, but since good form is harder to master and a large balance component is involved, a bad workout may not just be caused by a lack of strength.
Finally, you can also say quite accurately, “my current bench press max is 100kg and I want to get it to 120kg by next March”. In other words, progress in bodyweight strength training isn’t as easy to measure as compared to weights training.
And remember: You Manage What You Measure.
Final Words
If all of the above arguments do not apply to you, then you are fully capable of progressing and becoming very strong with bodyweight exercises alone.
However, most people can’t do that, and for most people pursuing strength or physique goals, training with weights in the only way to go.
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