Building muscle without weights is an excellent place to start your muscle building program. It will build a foundation upon which you can develop at a later stage using heavy weights for maximum muscle growth.
But don’t be thinking this is an easy touch. Any method of increasing your muscle mass is going to involve hard work and effort on your part, and if you’re not prepared to make that commitment, there’s not much point in reading any further.
Why in particular is building muscle without weights so beneficial?
Well, it is particularly beneficial in the building up of your slow twitch muscle fibre development and it helps your recovery ability. This means that when you progress to weights, you will be able to recover quicker between weights.You see, it is a fact that slow twitch fibers contract for long periods of time but with little force, whilst fast twitch fibers on the other hand contract quickly and powerfully but tend to fatigue very quickly.
Several top guys in this field as well as myself are big advocates of training without weights before progressing to weight training. But you should have training with weights as your goal within the near future because good and all as training without them can be, you will not see the same muscular growth and development as I’m sure you would like by just sticking to training using your body weight.
So, anyway, what sort of exercises should you be doing without weights, and how often etc, to see any sort of improvement?
I am going to suggest 5 exercises and these will provide the perfect platform for progressing to weight training if you don’t feel quite ready for that stage yet…(In fact they can still be done even alongside weight training)
Exercise 1 (Chest) – 50 Push Ups (Press-ups). These are to be done with the chest touching the floor each time, the arms fully locking at the top of each rep and eyes facing forward, not looking to the ground.
Exercise 2 (Lats) – 50 Pull ups. You need a bar to hang from for this one with palms facing down on the bar. You have to make sure you keep your elbows out – as you tire, you will want to bring your elbows in to assist you to lift each time, but this will be working your biceps not your lats. Make sure your chin rises above the bar for each rep and that you fully extend your arms.
Exercise 3 (Shoulders) – 50 Dips. You do these between parallel bars. You have to go right down each time until your triceps are parallel to the floor.
Exercise 4 (Biceps) – 50 Chin ups. Again done using the bar, make sure you have full extension in your arms and that your chin rises above the bar during each rep.
Exercise 5 (Legs) – 50 One Leg Squats. Stand with one leg on a bench or chair with the other unsupported to the side. Bend down until your leg is parallel to the ground and then up again. Use your arms to help with balance.
Now, do you think these will be beneficial? Too right they will. Just for your information – 50 reps as is suggested here is VERY CHALLENGING! Even when these are broken down into 3 or 4 sets with 30-60 sec rests, they are STILL very demanding.
But don’t fret. Look on the 50 reps as your ultimate goal. The main thing is that you are progressing as you go along. Try to increase the number of reps each workout(by at least 1 or 2) or reduce the time it takes to do the same number.
Do this workout 3 times a week but vary the order each time. Start each workout with the exercise you are weakest on.
After 6 weeks you should see superb results and be in the perfect position to progress onto muscle building with weights to take it to another level.
Now get active!