More than likely, you’ve done bodyweight exercises in your fitness journey, even if it’s only a few sets of push-ups. You may even include bodyweight movements regularly in your workouts. It’s hard to deny the benefits that bodyweight movements like push-ups, pull-ups, and planks offer, as they work many muscle groups functionally. They’re time expedient too and are especially convenient when you don’t have access to equipment.
Despite these benefits, there are lots of myths about bodyweight exercises, including misconceptions about how effective they really are and whether they’re as beneficial as strength-training exercises where you use weights or other forms of resistance. Let’s look at some of these myths and see if science supports them. You’ll also see how bodyweight exercises can be an asset for almost any strength-training program.
Myth #1: You Can’t Build Significant Strength or Muscle Size with Bodyweight Exercises
You may have heard people say you must work with heavy weights to build strength and muscle size. Although there is a grain of truth to this idea, it’s not the full story. Research shows you can build muscle and strength by using your own body weight, although there is debate about how much.
When you first train and do bodyweight exercises, you will become stronger over time since your body isn’t accustomed to working against your own body weight. Therefore, it’s a new stimulus that will lead to new adaptations, including an increase in strength and muscle size, but those gains will grind to a halt, and the reason has to do with myth #2.
Myth #2: You Only Need Bodyweight Exercises to Build Strength
It’s clear that you can build strength and muscle size when you first start doing bodyweight exercises, but after your body adapts, it needs a further challenge to continue to make strength and hypertrophy gains. That’s where progressive overload, adding a greater challenge over time, becomes important.
You can add progressive overload by doing more repetitions and more sets of bodyweight exercises, but you’ll probably reach a point where doing 50 push-ups and holding a plank for 5 minutes becomes monotonous. That’s when you need added resistance to abide by the principle of progressive overload. As you’ll soon see, there are ways to add resistance and a greater challenge without using weights. Still, it’s important to have a variety of strength-training exercises in your routine and to eventually add some form of resistance, such as dumbbells, a barbell, kettlebells, or resistance bands, to help you progress faster and avoid plateaus.
Myth 3: You Can’t Make Bodyweight Exercises Harder
Even if you only have your own body weight, you can make bodyweight exercises harder. For example, lifting one leg of the floor while doing a movement, like push-ups or planks, will make the exercises harder and also create more of a stability challenge.
Modifying the range-of-motion of an exercise, such as push-ups, by lowering your body closer to the floor, also makes the movement harder. Changing your hand positioning makes push-ups harder too. Placing your hands closer together increases the height of your body, so it has to travel a longer path. That makes the exercise more challenging.
Another under-utilized way to make bodyweight exercises harder is to pause between the eccentric and concentric phases of a movement. For example, when you lower your body to the floor to do a push-up, hold at the bottom for a few seconds. You can do the same with bodyweight squats.
Finally, you can strap on a weight vest when doing bodyweight exercises, like push-ups, planks, and triceps dips for more of a challenge. If you do bodyweight exercises on an unstable surface, like placing your hands on a stability ball when you do push-ups you’ll work your deep stabilizing muscles more too. You can also increase activation of you’re stabilizing muscles in your core by placing your feet close together when you do planks.
Myth 4: Bodyweight Exercises Are Only Effective for Conditioning
Bodyweight exercises are ideal for conditioning as they require balance and body awareness when you do the movements. However, this does not mean that they’re only good for that alone. As you can see, you can build strength and muscle size through bodyweight exercises, especially as a newbie. However, you can increase the challenge of bodyweight exercises for more sustained strength gains and muscle hypertrophy by the ways mentioned.
Myth 5: Bodyweight Exercise Don’t Offer Cardiovascular Benefits
Don’t be too quick to dismiss the heart health benefits of bodyweight exercises. You can increase the cardiovascular gains you get from bodyweight exercises by adding a plyometric or explosive component to bodyweight movements. You’ll quickly feel your heart rate rise!
When you do bodyweight squats, explode into the air at the bottom of the movement to boost your heart rate. Add a plyometric component to push-ups too. You can get an effective cardiovascular workout by stringing together a group of plyometric bodyweight exercises and doing them in sequence. It’s a great way to get a total body workout in the shortest time possible.
Bodyweight training may also be as effective at lowering metabolic risk factors as aerobic exercise combined with resistance training. In one study, researchers assigned subjects to one of two groups. One group did high-intensity interval bodyweight training while the other did a combination of aerobic and resistance training for 12 weeks. The participants were all at high risk of type 2 diabetes.
At the end of 12 weeks, both groups had a similar reduction in markers indicating a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. So, the benefits of bodyweight exercises extend beyond strength and hypertrophy gains. They’re good for your metabolic health.
The Bottom Line
Bodyweight exercises shouldn’t be the only strength training exercises you do since you’ll get more benefits by diversifying the exercises you do, but they should be part of your routine because of the way they boost functionality.
References:
“Electromyography Evaluation of Bodyweight Exercise ….” https://journals.lww.com/ajpmr/Fulltext/2019/11000/Electromyography_Evaluation_of_Bodyweight_Exercise.9.aspx.
“High-intensity body weight training is comparable to ….” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29471132/.
“Can Bodyweight Exercises Pack on Muscle and Add Strength?” https://www.marksdailyapple.com/are-bodyweight-exercises-alone-enough/.
“Extensive Comparison Analysis between Bodyweight & Weights ….” https://bodyweighttrainingarena.com/bodyweight-vs-weights/.
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