Are Bodyweight Exercises Enough? Though it can be modified with weight vests, at its core it is comprised entirely of exercises that use your own bodyweight as resistance – push-ups, pull-ups, planks, rows, squats, and sprints. Bodyweight training is a legitimate option for anyone interested in building an impressive physique, increasing their strength, improving their athletic performance, mobility, and flexibility, and establishing excellent mind-body-space awareness. What kind of exercises qualify as “bodyweight training”? - Calisthenics are the basic bodyweight exercises like pull-ups, push-ups, squats, jumping jacks, lunges, dips, planks, and rows. - Plyometrics consist of explosive bodyweight exercises, like depth jumps, box jumps, broad jumps, jump squats, Russian lunges, burpees, and jumping push-ups. - Gymnastics describes the highly technical movements those amazingly compact, muscular people perform during every summer Olympics. Most people probably won’t ever reach that level, but they can still get really strong using the rings to work on the earlier progressions that precede the expert-level movements, like levers, planches, muscle-ups, rows, pull-ups, and dips. Bodyweight exercises develop proprioceptive awareness. Bodyweight training refers to moving your body through space, and this movement provides additional feedback to your body and brain when compared to lifting a weight with your arms. Neuromuscular activation is highest during exercises that move the body. Bodyweight exercises can’t be replicated by weight training. A recent review spanning several decades of research summed up the effects of lower body plyometrics training on neuromuscular, performance, and health adaptations in healthy people: Increased neuromuscular activation. Increased strength and power. Faster stretch-shortening cycle of muscles, leading to improved performance. Improved coordination between muscles involved in the movements. Enhancement of general athletic capability, including jumping, sprinting, agility, and endurance. Reduced risk of lower body injuries in susceptible populations. Increased bone mass. The one area where bodyweight training probably falls short is the lower body. However, a program consisting of plyometrics (jumping lunges/squats, broad jumps, depth jumps), single leg squats, and sprinting, especially hill sprints, can produce a strong lower body. You may not get the same degree of hypertrophy without adding weights to your lower body work, but you can certainly get stronger.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 06:05:54 +0000
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