Bodyweight Strength for Average People

Not everybody wants to be ultra-strong.  Some people just want to be able to play with their kids, throw the ball with them, wrestle with them, run around the back yard with them, etc.

As basic as this goal may sound, a large portion of adults in the United States today are not capable of doing this without risking injuring themselves because of the deconditioning that their bodies have undergone through years and years of sedentary living.  

Plenty of people, on the other hand, exercise regularly, look the part and yet still find themselves incapable of partaking in such simple activities as playing athletically with their kids because of a lack of flexibility and functional strength and agility.  These people have spent hours on the weight equipment and cardio machines at the gym and yet have ultimately not found what they have achieved to have actually impacted their functional bodyweight strength in any significant way.


This all goes back to what the goal initially was and whether the training approach reflected that goal.  If agility, flexibility, balance, and strength relative to body size are the goals then sitting down on a weight machine and pushing the weights through their predetermined range of motion with the machine stabilizing the weight for you is not going to result in achieving your goal.  In fact utilizing machines with the hopes of gaining true useful bodyweight strength may actually be detrimental to your chances of accomplishing that goal.  The reasons for that are specifically what we'll discuss in the next post.