Body Weight vs. Weight Lifting

[mmhorgan2001]

I've been following Mark Lauren's "You Are Your Own Gym" routine for almost ten weeks now. I"m just starting week 8 tonight and have seen some decent gains in muscle and decrease in my waist. Progress has been slowing down though.

My schedule is changing soon and I will have access to my company's (small) gym. I was wondering if I should stick with body weight routines or move to weight lifting. Or is there a way to blend the two effectively?

Looking forward to what the community thinks.

[NukeTheUnicorns]

Depends on your goals. What do you want out of training?

[MMyers]

Depends on your goals. What do you want out of training?

This is very important. Have you seen the gym yet as far as equipment goes?

If I remember correctly, a few of the sample plans from Overcoming Gravity were pretty much Upper Body/Core Gymnastics +Deadlifts, for what it's worth.

[oystergirl]

If they have dumbells or plates fine, but do not use machines....stick with body weight and you can add more reps or another interesting thing to do which my husband is doing to increase the difficulty of body weight is to slow each rep down. Say it generally takes you 3 counts to do a rep, make it three counts down and three counts up. he is now on three counts down, hold 3 counts and 3 counts up....SLOW can be very good!

[weirdquark]

If they have dumbells or plates fine, but do not use machines....stick with body weight and you can add more reps or another interesting thing to do which my husband is doing to increase the difficulty of body weight is to slow each rep down. Say it generally takes you 3 counts to do a rep, make it three counts down and three counts up. he is now on three counts down, hold 3 counts and 3 counts up....SLOW can be very good!

I did that to make pushups harder when my workout routine was having all exercises be four reps -- I ended up hanging out at the bottom for maybe ten seconds before pushing up again.

Other options are do it faster and/or more explosively, like clap pushups. (I tried those a couple of times and so far keep falling on my forearms rather than being able to get my hands back into position.)

[161803398874989]

Controlled negative, explosive concentric is where it's at. To make an exercise harder, you move up a progression.

This is a great article on integrating bodyweight and barbell training:

http://www.eatmoveimprove.com/2012/04/integrating-bodyweight-and-barbell-training/

[mmhorgan2001]

Good imput! I have been following a progressive plan for the last 7 weeks. I just wasn't sure if I'd benefit from adding in weigh lifting or if I should continue my focus on BW routines.

As far as my goals...back in December I would have said weight loss, but I've dropped nearly 30 pounds since then. I still need to lose more weight (especially off the belly), but I think I'm more focussed on overall fitness now.

I've decided not to stress out about that final pounds I need to lose--I'm following the line that form follows function (and hoping its true). So, short answer is that my goal is overall fitness and physical ability.

[161803398874989]

Squats, deadlifts. Do 'em. There is simply no bodyweight exercise that can rival the awesomeness of squats and deadlifts. For lower body, that is.

[Luthorcrow]

If you are going for muscle endurance and sports function you will do fine with doing just body weight. If you goal is to maximize your strength then at some point you will have to add barbell weighting lifting to your routines. That said body weight exercises still have a place even on a pure strength program. Chin ups, dips and back extensions will always have a place in any program.

Still seven weeks is barely scratching the surface of what you can do with body weight work so I would switch when either your goals change or you are no longer feel challenged by body weight work.

[161803398874989]

If you are going for muscle endurance and sports function you will do fine with doing just body weight. If you goal is to maximize your strength then at some point you will have to add barbell weighting lifting to your routines. .

Strength can be and has been achieved with bodyweight exercise. Look up VassTheSuperSaiyan, or the little guys from the GymnasticBodies crew.

[epaleocookbooks]

Squats, deadlifts. Do 'em. There is simply no bodyweight exercise that can rival the awesomeness of squats and deadlifts. For lower body, that is.

I definitely think you should step it up to weights if your new gym has free weights. Using bodyweight exercises, you're eventually going to plateau if you decide to swtich from weightloss to muscle building. Bodyweight exercises are great for burning calories, but once you ditch the fat, building that muscle is going to become increasingly more difficult and the added weight available to you through free weights is going to be a blessing. However, you can still increase your gains through bodyweight exercises, by switching to exercises that utilize resistence bands or by holding positions for longer periods during reps, like someone mentioned above. But they're right when they say that nothing rivals squats and deads with weight. You can do 100 body weight squats a day and never get the results that you'll get if you throw some serious weight on there! Same with deadlifts. Just make sure that if you switch to lifting that you find someone who can show you proper form, so you don't end up injuring yourself.

[mmhorgan2001]

If you are going for muscle endurance and sports function you will do fine with doing just body weight. If you goal is to maximize your strength then at some point you will have to add barbell weighting lifting to your routines. That said body weight exercises still have a place even on a pure strength program. Chin ups, dips and back extensions will always have a place in any program.

Still seven weeks is barely scratching the surface of what you can do with body weight work so I would switch when either your goals change or you are no longer feel challenged by body weight work.

Thanks for the reality check...the routine I've been following has been a little intense and I guess I've been feeling like its been a while. You're right, though-I've barely scratched the surface. I think I'll keep focussing on my BW program and use my new extra time to get back into mountain biking and up my overall activity level.

[161803398874989]

I definitely think you should step it up to weights if your new gym has free weights. Using bodyweight exercises, you're eventually going to plateau if you decide to swtich from weightloss to muscle building. Bodyweight exercises are great for burning calories, but once you ditch the fat, building that muscle is going to become increasingly more difficult and the added weight available to you through free weights is going to be a blessing. However, you can still increase your gains through bodyweight exercises, by switching to exercises that utilize resistence bands or by holding positions for longer periods during reps, like someone mentioned above. But they're right when they say that nothing rivals squats and deads with weight. You can do 100 body weight squats a day and never get the results that you'll get if you throw some serious weight on there! Same with deadlifts. Just make sure that if you switch to lifting that you find someone who can show you proper form, so you don't end up injuring yourself.

There's this magic thing called 'leverage'. You should look it up sometime. If you don't think bodyweight exercises can get you strong, you're misinformed. Just try doing a front lever and you'll see.

[NukeTheUnicorns]

Bodyweight movements can get you strong, as long as you're willing to be flexible with your definition of strength.

A body that can squat 500 pounds is strong. A body that can crank out 50 pull-ups is also strong, as is one that can perform one-arm pull-ups, planches, gymnastic ring dips, and handstand push-ups.

There is no one objective standard to what "strength" really is. It fluctuates from person to person, and it depends on skill level, training history, and goals.

A few ways one can get strong through bodyweight training:

• As Phi said, changing leverage. There's a world of difference between a push-up and a push-up with one arm slightly elevated off the floor.
  
• Training for muscular endurance. Sounds counter-productive, but it worked for me at least. For a while, I was doing nearly 50 pull-ups and 100 dips in a training session (not all in one set, mind you). I increased my max dips from 18-25 and my max pull-ups from 9-15 in about four weeks. Then, I decided to try finding my 1RM for weighted dips and pull-ups. I found that I was able to perform dips with an additional 75 pounds of resistance, and pull ups with an additional 50. That' not a ton, but after only two months of training those particular exercises with any sense of seriousness (previously, I had been doing mostly push-ups and mostly sucking at pull-ups).
  

That being said, if you have access to a barbell, there's no sense in not integrating bodyweight and barbell training to have a solid body. Decide your goals and do whatever it takes to work toward them. Maybe you want to squat 225, perform a one-arm push-up, deadlift 315, and perform a free standing handstand. You can absolutely create a training program that will accomodate all of these goals, and you will often find that training for one will compliment the training for another.

The link to Stephen Low's article is a good place to start, as is his book, Overcoming Gravity.

[Waldo]

Bodyweight exercises are great for burning calories, but once you ditch the fat, building that muscle is going to become increasingly more difficult and the added weight available to you through free weights is going to be a blessing.

Not necessarily, you just have to do harder exercises as you get stronger, get into one arm limb stuff and tough static holds.

I'm pretty satisfied with pistols, walking lunges, and hill sprints for my bw leg workout. A 100-200m hill sprint has the same time under tension as a set of 5-10 squats, and shouldn't be viewed all that differently, it is a bodyweight strength training activity.

[Knightwatch]

There's this magic thing called 'leverage'. You should look it up sometime.

Snarkiness doesn't get anyone anywhere. If you disagree with a point, there are many, many better ways to communicate it.

[161803398874989]

Snarkiness doesn't get anyone anywhere. If you disagree with a point, there are many, many better ways to communicate it.

Sorry, I got pissed off.

[Zorch]

Others covered it fairly well - it's great that you're seeing gains. At 7 weeks you're really just scratching the surface of what you're capable of, so I'd suggest sticking with it a while longer. If gains are slowing, some of that is normal, it may also mean you may need to move to more difficult bodyweight moves.

As a few have mentioned, one of the keys for bodyweight work is to progress your strength not just by increasing reps, but continually moving to more challenging exercises over time. There's a lot of options in this regard, and the Assassin's guild on these forums should have plenty of folks who are knowledgeable about that sort of thing.

[rtalencar]

Depending on goals and free time, I don't see why you wouldn't want to do both rather than just picking one.