How to Build Muscle with Body Weight Exercises
Delve into the best way to build muscle, even if all you have is just your own body weight.
Ben Greenfield
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How to Build Muscle with Body Weight Exercises
If you opens in a new windowfollow me on Twitter, then you may remember a study I mentioned two years ago that reported you can put on muscle just as fast with a high rep, low weight workout of 30% intensity to failure as you can with a low rep, high weight workout with 90% intensity to failure.
Then last year, in opens in a new windowHow Many Reps Should You Do To Build Muscle?, I reported on a new study showing that when comes to building muscle, it’s not about how heavy you go or how many reps you do; it’s whether or not you lift to failure. This flies in the face of the traditional assumption that lifting super heavy weights for 6-12 reps to failure is the only way to maximize muscle growth and instead shows that if you simply want to build muscle (aka hypertrophy), then grab any weight or body weight, and lift or move that weight until your muscles are fatigued. When it comes to building muscle, your body will know what to do from there.
Now a new study takes this concept of building muscle with body weight exercises to a new level. The study, entitled “The acute and chronic effects of ‘NO LOAD’ resistance training” shows that simply flexing your muscles (yep, the same way as you would if posing in front a mirror, flexing your abs, biceps, etc) throughout a full range of motion was just as effective as traditional weight training when it comes to building muscle. While it’s important to note that actual strength gains were greater in this study for high load condition compared to the no load condition, this research is definitely worth taking a closer look at if you don’t want to be limited to using dumbbells, kettle bells, resistance bands, barbells, or machines to build muscle and instead want a body weight only option.
The Body Weight Only Workout
The purpose of this study was to remove the influence of an external load and determine if muscle growth could be elicited by maximally contracting a non-loaded muscle through a full range of motion, for three training sessions per week for a total of six weeks. In addition, the acute physiologic and perceptual response to each stimulus (load vs no load) was also investigated. The exercise used in the research was a “unilateral elbow flexion exercise.”, which is basically a fancy name for a bicep curl or a bicep contraction. Each arm was designated to either “no load” or “high load” condition, with high load being 70% one repetition maximum and no load simply involved repeatedly contracting the arm as hard as possible through a full range of motion without the use of an external load. In both cases, EMG biofeedback was used to encourage participants to flex as hard as possible throughout the exercise.
The no load group performed 4 sets of 20 reps of arm flexion and arm extension, with 30 seconds rest time in between sets. The high load group performed a dumbbell curl with 70% of 1RM for 4 sets of 8-12 reps with 90 seconds rest in between sets. Each week, extra weight and intensity was added as necessary.
So what did the results show? There was a significant increase in muscle thickness and size from pre-test to post-test over the course of six weeks, but no difference in this thickness or size between the no load vs. the high load condition, and researchers concluded that “these results extend previous studies that have observed muscle growth across a range of external loads and muscle actions and suggest that muscle growth can occur independent of an external load provided there are enough muscle fibers undergoing mechanotransduction.”
So basically, as long as sufficient tension is produced, contracting a muscle through the full range of motion, even with no external load or weight, increases muscle size comparable to high load training. However, high load training produces larger increases in actual muscle strength and muscle endurance compared to no load training.
How Body Weight Training Works
So how does this type of training work? It all begins with isometrics. The term “isometrics,” which combines the Greek words “isos” (“equal” or “same”) and “metron” (“distance” or “measure”), refers to a muscle contraction without any visible movement in the angle of the joint. This is in contrast to traditional moving “isotonic” contractions, in which your muscle length and joint angle change throughout the exercise.
If you’ve ever performed a wall squat, in which you sit in an imaginary chair with your back against the wall for as long as you possibly can, then you’re familiar with isometric exercising! Your legs are certainly burning, but you’re not budging an inch. Other popular examples of isometric exercise are the front plank, side plank, and the “boat” abdominal hold in Yoga and Pilates.
If you really want to take isometric exercises to the next level, you can use a technique called “extreme isometrics,” in which you do indeed move your muscles, but you move them very, very slowly, taking as long as 5-10 minutes to complete a single repetition. As you can imagine, this takes intense focus. Go ahead and just try and do a 10 minute push-up and see what happens to your entire body.
Why Isometric Exercises Work
In addition to all of the cardiovascular and strength benefits that I explain in “Does Super Slow Training Work?” such as increased cardiac output, better training of your muscles to pump lactic acid, and increased ability to withstand an external force, isometric exercises also result in better muscle utilization and coordination.
Think about it this way: whether you’re running a marathon, shoveling snow, or lifting a piece of furniture, if the wrong muscles are turning on for any given movement, then you have poor technique and this means you increase your risk of injury, and you produce less-than-ideal force.
But your body can learn how to utilize the correct muscles, and just like any movement, it’s easier to learn how to use the right muscles when you train slowly or you hold a position, with an emphasis on maximally activating the specific muscle groups you want to work.
In “ opens in a new windowGet More Lean Muscle with Isometric Training,” you learn that for this type of training, you can simply include a weekly or every-other-week workout in which you incorporate at least one move or a series of moves performed very slowly, or simply held for a long period of time. For example, you could simply perform one set of each of the following exercises (timed so that it takes you 10-60 seconds to go up and 10-60 seconds to come down), or simply hold each exercise in it’s hardest position for as long as you possibly can, up to five minutes.
-Push-up
-Pull-up
-Dip
-Lunge
-Wall Squat
Another isometric technique you can use is to simply do isometrics when you’d normally be standing around anyways – such as doing a wall squat while you’re on hold on the phone, or holding a push-up position during the commercial break of a TV program.
I recently finished reading a book called “Neuro-Mass”, which is also chock full of good body weight and isometric training routines. The relatively simple routine outlined in the book has absolutely blown my mind. It basically goes like this: you start with what is called a “grind”, which is basically a super slow set. For example, if you are doing this type of neuromuscular training for your legs you might do a super slow lunge with one leg forward in the back leg elevated on step. Next, you moved into some kind of a power, explosive movement. For example, using the leg training analogy above, you could do lunge jumps. Then you finish with an isometric hold that builds up a time of lactic acid and finishes off the muscle group. For this, you would use something like an isometric lunge hold. And that’s it. You can do these type of workouts with kettle bells, dumbbells, body weight, you name it and I’m now – because of how much I’m traveling – doing these workouts about three times a week in a hotel room. The workouts are somewhat unconventional, but I highly recommend these as another way to build muscle with body weight only exercises.
Summary
So, if your goal is to build muscle does this mean you never need to visit the gym again? Are health clubs with weights now useless?
Not exactly.
First, strength and function are important, not just hypertrophy and, as the study results show, strength and function are best build with some kind of external load. Next, this study examined beginner exercisers, who may respond better to body weight only exercises compared to trained participants. Finally, the study looked at biceps only, and it would be interesting to observe if the same results apply to all the other muscle groups too.
However, if you’re pressed for time or don’t have much equipment, it does indeed look like a body weight only training session comprised of something like 4 sets of 20 reps of hard, controlled movements for a body part, with 30 seconds rest time in between sets, can certainly build muscle size!
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about how to build muscle with body weight exercises? Join the conversation at https://www.Facebook.com/getfitguy.
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