5 Ways To Gain More Benefits From Body weight Exercises

5 Ways to Gain More From Body weight Exercises

Can I gain muscle at home?

Is going to the gym necessary?

These couple of questions are very commonly asked from fitness specialists. The answer is yes, we can gain muscle at home through body weight resistance exercises. There are significant gains in strength and muscle tone of people whom we tested in our body weight program.

But the problem with these exercises is that you master them very easily and what is the fun in exercise if it doesn’t challenges you.

So, here we are with 5 simple ways on how you can make bodyweight exercises more beneficial and challenging.

Way 1 Use full range of motion

Often, people don’t use full range of motion of the joints that are involved in an exercise. Like going down deep in squats or contracting the triceps completely in bench dips. When we use full range of motion, we make complete use of our muscles, contracting and relaxing them completely. This stimulates more muscle fibers making more gains.

Some examples are, going completely up and down in chin-ups or pull-ups or contracting the leg muscles in lunges.

Way 2 Do not lock out

In exercises like push ups and squats, when you lock out, it takes away the stress from your muscles to the skeletal system. What is locking out? When we take away all the stress from our muscles onto the bones like when you are up in push ups. If you use full range of motion, focus on breathing and don’t lock out, you will stimulate maximum muscle fibers.

Way 1 and 2 can be applied to body weight as well as weighted exercises.

Way 3 Use the count rep method

When we perform the phase of the exercise where we lower the weight i.e. the eccentric phase, we can count till 5 while lowering the weight. At the end of the 5 count the weight should be back at the starting position. You can also apply this on concentric phase or raising the weight up.

Way 4 Add resistance

If you don’t have dumbbells or barbells no problem. You can keep a brick or a bucket of sand on your back while performing push ups, you can squat with a bucket of water, do shoulder raises with water bottles. Be creative and imaginative. Try adding resistance to the body weight exercises you perform.

Way 5 Increase the reps per set

Reps are the number of times you repeat a movement without stopping for rest. Increasing the reps per set for an exercise would create the necessary volume in your workouts for muscle growth. Don’t follow a rep scheme, just take each set to failure.

For a complete workout using only bodyweights, check the link below

https://ritvikfitness.blogspot.in/2016/08/the-rapid-fire-workout.html

For a complete ab workout without any equipment, check the link below

https://ritvikfitness.blogspot.in/2016/09/the-super-hero-ab-attack.html

If you liked this article, if you didn’t, please write in the comments section below. If you want us to write on a topic of yours please write it in the box below. Like, comment and share. For more articles on motivation, nutrition, supplementation and workouts keep coming back to the blog