Bodyweight exercises and what they can achieve
Welcome to unique bodyweight exercises.com the place that is dedicated to ensuring you can reach your training goals using only your body, the determination to change and the knowledge that this site provides. Here you will find all the information you need on the benefits of bodyweight exercises, advice on diets for weight loss, toning up and muscle building as well as lots of articles on abs training, flexibility, motivation and tutorials describing everything from the basic to most advanced exercises such as the dragon flag. Do not let anyone place barriers in your way use the information here to start your journey today.
What can you achieve with bodyweight exercises? Whatever your training goal is, whether that be building an incredible strength to bodyweight ratio, superb fitness, huge muscles, weight loss, improved sporting performance or simply increasing your health and vitality. There is always a way to apply the principals of overload and adaptation with bodyweight exercises to achieve your aim. For example, if increased strength is your goal you can use a system of progressions and go from doing a few standard chin ups, to explosive clapping chin ups, to one arm chin ups and develop a level of strength that surpasses all other forms of exercise as you can see here with the one arm chin up. The benefits of bodyweight exercises Fitness, there is no better way of building an athletic, toned, physique than using your own body as the resistance. A quick glance at the bodies of gymnasts will show you just how muscular and fat free your body can become using such a program. You can also start your program at any time, regardless of your present physical condition and if you want to, you can take it to a point were you are almost as fit as an Olympic athlete.
Weight loss, your body is an ingenious creation that tries to protect you at all times. Because body fat is a part of the weight being lifted but does not provide any assistance when you are doing bodyweight exercises your body’s metabolism will make sure you lose fat to make the exercises easier and less likely to injure you next time. This is the opposite of weight training which uses an inanimate weight as the resistance and therefore does not require fat loss to prevent injury. So why not lose either a few pounds or completely change your body in the comfort of your own home with hard core exercises such as bench dips? Strength, whether you want to increase your strength a little bit or build the extreme power needed to do hard core exercises it can be done easily and safely with a program of progressively more difficult bodyweight exercises. Whatever goal you have in mind these exercises can be used to achieve it. For example, by changing the position of your body and therefore the leverage, you can create exercises which even advanced gym members would struggle to do. Such as going from standard press ups to hip press ups and then planche press ups.
Muscle, although weight training is excellent for muscle building, forcing yourself to lift such heavy loads can have a down side such as injury or soreness to the joints (particularly the shoulders). You can avoid this and still build incredible muscle with the right bodyweight exercises. For example, to build great shoulders you can’t go wrong with handstand press ups. When you can do 8 to 10 reps (the current thinking on building muscle) simply begin doing them one handed and build up again. Once you can do 8-10 reps of one arm hand stand press ups I congratulate you. You are then in my opinion an extremely strong athlete but if you want to you can keep progressing and make the exercise even more difficult by including an isometric hold at the bottom of the rep. Remember you are only limited by your imagination. If you would like to build up to 2lb of solid muscle each and every week with your own personal exercise and nutrition program designed by me why not let me train you online What about sport, boxing or martial arts? If you want to improve your sporting performance these exercises have no substitute because they are so adaptable. If your sport requires more strength but no extra bodyweight it can be done easily with natural, compound (multi - muscle) exercises such as the full hanging leg raise. The result is you build functional strength that carries over into real life situations and also improves your speed, co-ordination and flexibility. This is why they are a great inclusion to any sports training program. Take boxing as an example, as someone who boxed for many years I can tell you that these exercises are the cornerstone of most boxing conditioning routines and coaches know the benefits that bodyweight exercises can bring to any young boxers ability in the ring.
How good are bodyweight exercises for women? Bodyweight exercises are the absolute best way for women to train simply because most women have far less time than men. It can be very difficult for busy working mothers to find time to go to the gym or even have 30 minutes for one training session. However, everybody can find 5 minutes at some point in the day to do a quick circuit. Do a few of these 5 minute sessions in one day and before you know it you have the start of your very own training program. Another reason why these exercises are great for women is because most women either want to control or lose weight and your body will always try to protect you. Therefore, when you are doing bodyweight exercises your body’s natural inclination is to burn fat and make even exercises such as the L seat easier the next time you train. This is the opposite of weight training were exercises for the legs are likely to encourage bulk in the legs, hips and buttocks. Finally, If you are thinking of joining the armed forces consider this, when judging your strength and fitness the instructors have you do exercises like pull ups, press ups and sit ups. They do not judge you on how much weight you can lift because they know that real strength is bodyweight strength and they know how important this is in real life situations. So why not do as all elite forces do and build incredible fitness, strength and muscle by putting together your own program of bodyweight exercises. I once took part in a fitness competition where the king of the gym could not even do seven pull ups. Do not let this happen to you. Build real functional strength with exercises such as the one leg squat. Remember bodyweight exercises cost nothing and you do not need expensive gym memberships or equipment. The information here is totally free so no more excuses. What are you waiting for? Start your journey to the new you today with safe, simple and effective exercises and build a body that is as supple and strong as you desire.
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Facts on strength building
To build pure strength all bodyweight exercises have to be kept within the 1-6 repetition range.
Once you can do the required number of repetitions in an exercise change to a more demanding one
You can build strength and stay the same weight if that is your goal.
Strength training requires short workouts of no more than 30-45 minutes to be most effective.
Facts on muscle building
To build a combination of muscle and strength all exercises have to be kept within the 6-12 repetition range.
The best muscle building diet requires two grams of protein for every kilo of your bodyweight.
The quickest way to build muscle requires an increase in bodyweight.
Each muscle should be trained no more than once or a maximum of twice per week for best results.
Facts on abs building
Diet accounts for 80% of the success in building great abs.
You cannot spot reduce fat from any one area of your body or in other words you cannot pick and choose were to lose fat. It has to be done gradually throughout the whole body.
To lose weight eat 4 or 5 small meals a day with each meal containing protein. This keeps your metabolism high and stops your body going into starvation mode which is when it will store fat.
Do not lose more than 1 or 2 pound of weight per week.
The best three abs exercises are the dragon flag, full abs rollout and full hanging leg raise.
Sit ups and crunches are terrible fat burning exercises. You would have to do 1000 sit-ups every night for over 2 weeks to burn 1 pound of fat.
In one study on rats, one group was given all their food in one meal per day as opposed to the other group which had the same amount of food but in small meals throughout the day. The results showed that ones who ate all there food in one meal put on weight whilst the others did not.
Doing lots of cardio without muscle building will result in large muscle loss because your body will adapt to make the cardio easy by losing the heavy muscle. The result could be someone who has very little muscle but still carries some fat.
Exercises that are weight bearing like running and walking are better for burning calories than non weight bearing ones such as cross trainers and cycling.
Facts on flexibility
All workouts should begin with dynamic stretchinginvolving two sets of 10 to 15 repetitions of each movement used.
All workouts should end with a cool down of static passive stretching.
The quickest flexibility results are gained with isometric stretching.
Isometric stretching should be done towards the end of a workout and never more than 3-4 times per week.