The Nature of Bodyweight Strength Exercises
Bodyweight strength exercises will, by nature, be bodyweight based as often as possible. When this is not possible, they will be compound exercises that have a very high level of neuro-muscular activation. In general, exercises that move the body through space have been shown to stimulate the nervous system more intensely than exercises that do not move the body through space.
Not only this but utilizing the body as resistance for exercises also trains the body's coordination levels and increases it comfort with maneuvering itself and controlling itself rather than simply sitting down and pressing against the handles on some external exercise machine.
Many factors come in to play when you are performing an exercise that moves the body through space: balance, coordination of multiple body parts at once, flexibility by using your body's natural range of motion, and a higher level of muscular stimulation due to the higher level of neural stimulation (which coincidentally will also cause the body to burn more calories by expending more effort).
Always remember two highly important trinaing rules:
What exactly does that stuff mean?
Adaptation is always specific to the stressor - When you are training the body physically through working out you are deliberately placing physical stress (exercise) on the body in hopes of getting the desired adaption (ie. fat loss, strength gain, muscle gain, etc). It is highly important that the training you are partaking in be of the nature that it will produce the adaption that you desire.
If your goal is to run a marathon then it is important that your training develop aerobic endurance. Doing high intensity strength training would not be the proper primary training method for this goal. On the other hand if your goal is to be a powerlifter with extremely high strength levels then the proper training approach would not be to do a bunch of low intensity jogging.
These last two examples may seem so obvious that they are just plain silly but the reality is that most people's training approach does not fit with their goals and thus they are wasting their best efforts on training plans that are not likely to achieve their desired results even if they performed them 100% perfectly.
For our purpose of developing bodyweight strength we will want our training approach to reflect the goal of developing precisely that: bodyweight strength. Anything else will be considered a side effect.
The body will become a reflection of its function - If you have spent much time working with tools you will know doubt have noticed that a tools form reflects its purpose. A hammer and a wrench have a much different appearance because they have a much different function. The same applies to the body.
If the goal is to just get as strong as possible at lifting an external weight on the bench press for instance then it will not matter if we develop alot of bodyfat in the meantime because the presence of excess bodyfat will not negatively impact the body's ability to press a heavy weight up on the bench press.
On the other hand, if your goal is to be able to perform a pushup or even a one-arm pushup then gaining excess bodyfat will have a very large negative impact on achieving your goal. Not only that....losing excess bodyfat will cause a reduction in overall bodyweight which will actually make the performance of a pushup easier rather than harder. In this way, the body has two possible routes that it can take in your quest to develop bodyweight strength.
So when taking the principle of adaptation being specific to the stressor and the body becoming a reflection of its function you can begin to see that in order to develop bodyweight strength it is highly important to utilize exercises that utilize the body as the primary resistance and move the body through space. This enables the body to adapt specifically to bodyweight based execises and thus adapt in both ways (gain of strength and loss of useless weight (excess fat)).
There are some exercises that are useful for increasing bodyweight strength that do not actually move the body through space but they have other redeeming factors and can still contribute greatly to the attainment of bodyweight strength. However, we will always consider exercises that move the body through space as our bread and butter and anything else as supplementary.
Not only this but utilizing the body as resistance for exercises also trains the body's coordination levels and increases it comfort with maneuvering itself and controlling itself rather than simply sitting down and pressing against the handles on some external exercise machine.
Many factors come in to play when you are performing an exercise that moves the body through space: balance, coordination of multiple body parts at once, flexibility by using your body's natural range of motion, and a higher level of muscular stimulation due to the higher level of neural stimulation (which coincidentally will also cause the body to burn more calories by expending more effort).
Always remember two highly important trinaing rules:
- Adaptation is always specific to the stressor
- The body will become a reflection of its function
What exactly does that stuff mean?
Adaptation is always specific to the stressor - When you are training the body physically through working out you are deliberately placing physical stress (exercise) on the body in hopes of getting the desired adaption (ie. fat loss, strength gain, muscle gain, etc). It is highly important that the training you are partaking in be of the nature that it will produce the adaption that you desire.
If your goal is to run a marathon then it is important that your training develop aerobic endurance. Doing high intensity strength training would not be the proper primary training method for this goal. On the other hand if your goal is to be a powerlifter with extremely high strength levels then the proper training approach would not be to do a bunch of low intensity jogging.
These last two examples may seem so obvious that they are just plain silly but the reality is that most people's training approach does not fit with their goals and thus they are wasting their best efforts on training plans that are not likely to achieve their desired results even if they performed them 100% perfectly.
For our purpose of developing bodyweight strength we will want our training approach to reflect the goal of developing precisely that: bodyweight strength. Anything else will be considered a side effect.
The body will become a reflection of its function - If you have spent much time working with tools you will know doubt have noticed that a tools form reflects its purpose. A hammer and a wrench have a much different appearance because they have a much different function. The same applies to the body.
If the goal is to just get as strong as possible at lifting an external weight on the bench press for instance then it will not matter if we develop alot of bodyfat in the meantime because the presence of excess bodyfat will not negatively impact the body's ability to press a heavy weight up on the bench press.
On the other hand, if your goal is to be able to perform a pushup or even a one-arm pushup then gaining excess bodyfat will have a very large negative impact on achieving your goal. Not only that....losing excess bodyfat will cause a reduction in overall bodyweight which will actually make the performance of a pushup easier rather than harder. In this way, the body has two possible routes that it can take in your quest to develop bodyweight strength.
- Strength gain
- Weigh loss
So when taking the principle of adaptation being specific to the stressor and the body becoming a reflection of its function you can begin to see that in order to develop bodyweight strength it is highly important to utilize exercises that utilize the body as the primary resistance and move the body through space. This enables the body to adapt specifically to bodyweight based execises and thus adapt in both ways (gain of strength and loss of useless weight (excess fat)).
There are some exercises that are useful for increasing bodyweight strength that do not actually move the body through space but they have other redeeming factors and can still contribute greatly to the attainment of bodyweight strength. However, we will always consider exercises that move the body through space as our bread and butter and anything else as supplementary.