Bodyweight exercise is strength training using only the body as resistance.  The word “only” hardly conveys how much power is possible:  the athletes that use “only” their bodies for their resistance training are pound for pound the strongest athletes in the world.  Bodyweight exercise gets you in shape to do things.  It doesn’t pump your arms into Sponge-Bob-inflatable biceps that look good oiled in a calendar photo.  What it does is give you the strength and flexibility at once that will power you into moves and activities at your top potential.  Gymnasts know this from the bottom of their strong, pumping hearts.

Non-athletes are now rediscovering the secrets of bodyweight exercise.  First of all, it’s fast.  You can get into good shape in only minutes a day; a full hour five days a week can catapult former weightlifting gymrats into the best shape of their lives, and leave them with some actual time in the day left in which to enjoy that shape.  Next, since the workouts use so many muscles together in the way muscles were meant to be used, there are far less injuries.  The human body is miraculous, but it wasn’t meant to bench press or squat press hundreds of pounds repeatedly.  Finally, of course, it’s nearly free.  It removes the need to pay monthly fees in order to drive to a gym and huddle around sweat-soaked machines.  All you need is a mat and some gravity.

If you lift weights, you might think bodyweight workouts are pretty easy.  You would be wrong.  While you can get some serious progress accomplished within in as short a time as ten minutes a day, you will still find yourself sweating like a cold beer in the summer sun.  It’s a workout.  Weight training builds muscle, but it does not transfer that puffed up fiber into the ability to perform athletic motion.  And it kills the joints.  

In some ways, a preschooler has more functional strength than an adult male.  Try this:  find a preschooler and have a race with him, using the bear crawl (you’re on all fours, but no knees on the floor).  See what I mean?  Little kids use more of their muscles in tandem with each other than most adults do.

There are some great websites that will inspire you to try some of the best bodyweight exercises tonight.  While they may have products or books to sell, there is enough free information on the website, and more  when you subscribe, that it’s worth clicking these links and reading.  Then you can google, youtube, and surf your way around the web to see what others are doing.  (Remember that lots of people still don’t know the secret of bodyweight exercises and will still pay top dollar to buy all your now-unused weight equipment!)

Bodyweight Basics

Combat Conditioning

For those who are already fit through bodyweight exercise, it’s time to take it up one more notch.

Lost Art of Handbalancing

If you like this post, then please consider subscribing to our full feed RSS . You can also subscribe by e-mail and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.