Bodyweight Training = No Muscle?

You would think people who do tons of pullups and single-leg squats will have monstrous lats and legs, but its actually quite the opposite. Almost everyone I know who are “bodyweight guys” have so little muscle its like asking them, “do you workout”

What is your theory that BW exercise promote huge muscle growth?

Resistance never increases. Body quickly adapts. No need to build more muscle than needed.

They would be able to scale up a cliff-face better than you though!

They might be much more explosive in the movements they train in more than you also.

maybe their nutrition is off. I work heavy weights but there was a time when my gym was closed for the better half of a month. I performed explosive training(all bodyweight) and body squats. My legs were sore for more than a week, i think 8 or 9 days until i did another leg workout.never in my life have i been so sore. and i also saw change in my legs after a few weeks of this. maybe it was just the change in routine, but id say you can make good changes with bodyweight.

Well if you could bench press 115 lbs for 10 the very first time you walked into a gym and you never ever increased the load past 115 do you think you’d be making signifiant gains in your chest shoulders triceps? Incresaing resisance or decreasing leverage on bodyweight exercises is obviously key if you want significant muscle growth, but then they just turn into well, regular exercises.

I guess it’s time for this video to re-appear.

[quote]Brant_Drake wrote:
I guess it’s time for this video to re-appear.

[/quote]
Haven’t seen that one yet. Nice.

Wouldn’t swimmers and distance runners be huge is this was the case?

Most of those athletes are toned with some moderate muscle.

I think someone made a comment that Sprinters and speed skaters have massive thighs and do a lot of reps for squats and whatnot. But they can also squat 400+ pounds even though the majority of their workouts are high rep medium weight stuff.

Lift heavy, get big.

Am I being naive, or (was that Ronnie in the beginning?) did Ronnie have shitty form? I know it’s a TON of weight, but the dude didn’t even go down to parallel, let alone ATG…

I remember seeing a video of Cutler working out and he, too, had horrible ROM and form, no doubt because of the heavy weight but still.

[quote]PonceDeLeon wrote:
Am I being naive, or (was that Ronnie in the beginning?) did Ronnie have shitty form? I know it’s a TON of weight, but the dude didn’t even go down to parallel, let alone ATG…

I remember seeing a video of Cutler working out and he, too, had horrible ROM and form, no doubt because of the heavy weight but still.[/quote]

It doesn’t matter if he had bad form. What’s important is what he’s doing gets him the Sandow.

[quote]B.b. in stress! wrote:
You would think people who do tons of pullups and single-leg squats will have monstrous lats and legs, but its actually quite the opposite. Almost everyone I know who are “bodyweight guys” have so little muscle its like asking them, “do you workout”[/quote]

Here’s one way to look at it. The body’s tendency is to adapt and be more efficient in a particular exercise. Hence, increasing body mass isn’t the best adaptation when it comes to bodyweight exercise performance. The body becomes better at them by getting stronger while staying light (ex. through increased neural and metabolic efficiency), not by getting heavier.

i wish i could find this video of a guy doing 30 or 30+ rack chins, he has massive lats. bodyweight exercises are alright. obviously you arent going to win any bodybuilding shows doing them but you can make some decent gains depending on what you do although if your bodyweight never increases its going to be pretty difficult.

[quote]undeadlift wrote

Here’s one way to look at it. The body’s tendency is to adapt and be more efficient in a particular exercise. Hence, increasing body mass isn’t the best adaptation when it comes to bodyweight exercise performance. The body becomes better at them by getting stronger while staying light (ex. through increased neural and metabolic efficiency), not by getting heavier.[/quote]

You know whats funny, I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable guy in the gym. I may not be the biggest or the strongest, but I am relatively new so how could I be? I read religiously about all of this, every article almost on this site, pubmed, menshealth(gasp!) hahah and that explanation is fantastic. I haven’t really thought of it in those terms undead.

I totally understood your body increasing in size, as an adaptation to make lifting the heavy loads were subjecting it to a doable task… I just never took the connection further and realized that in case of bodyweight work the body has two options
A) Become bigger, stronger etc… to make the load seem lighter.
B) Actually make the load lighter by limiting SIZE gains, and instead going the CNS path and making the load seem lighter.

Good stuff, I love when I x’ out my browser knowing more than when I opened it (which happens every time I come on here it seems!)

[quote]B.b. in stress! wrote:
You would think people who do tons of pullups and single-leg squats will have monstrous lats and legs, but its actually quite the opposite. Almost everyone I know who are “bodyweight guys” have so little muscle its like asking them, “do you workout”[/quote]

If you don’t use progressive resistance and eat properly you won’t make gains whether you are doing bodyweight movements or “pumping iron” And anyone who argues that you can’t claim you do bodyweight movements once you add a vest is arguing semantics and probably flames your spelling mistakes on the internet too. I concede that most “bodyweight guys” on the internet seem to be 130 lbs, so at 215lbs and with a vest I may be a bit biased towards their effectiveness.

I ask because I was going to do all bw exercises but add weight accordingly or decrease my leverages to add resistance. If I keep my reps all in the low range, they still won’t be as anabolic as free weights but my question is why?

undeadlift provided a good explanation but I’m still a little unsure.

The real reason is because it is difficult to progress in bodyweight exercises, like others have said. They are the same essentially as weighted exercises, but like Scott M said you have to figure out ways to work the limits. You can only do so much without adding weight.

With pistols you can start with a partial ROM box pistol, then a full range with say doorway support, then full range without support, then full range and jump ONTO a box…I mean, that will suffice for progression along with other exercises too.

Same way with pushups. Elevated pushups, flat pushups, decline pushups, one-arm pushups, one-arm decline pushups, handstand pushups, etc.

“Cheated” jump pullups, various grips, one-arm on the negative, one-arm for reps…

There are ways to progress them, but you are going to have a hard time progressing steadily. You can’t always gradually progress bodyweight exercises.

I would argue that if pistol squats are tough for you, they would be just as anabolic as two-leg loaded squats of equal difficulty. I mean, what’s to figure out? It’s basically the same thing as far as your body’s concerned, it’s trying to overcome resistance.

The real question is, why are you fixated on doing “bodyweight only.” I could understand if you are really limited in your eqp choices but even then you can push a car, hoist a sandbag, press a log, deadlift stuff, carry rocks…all this stuff might be a refreshing change, but it isn’t necessary to limit yourself to bodyweight only!

There is obviously no real gain to doing ONLY bodyweight unless you are a prisoner in a cell with nothing to do.

I would argue that they would be as anabolic if you kept adding more resistance.

There is nothing magical about BW exercises that make them less effective at promoting muscle growth (if you keep adding extras resistance).

I started on an assisted pullup machine (stop laughing), moved on to BW pullups, added 2.5kg, … , now I can get 6 reps with 10kg or 1 rep with 17.5kg.

My back and lats are wider then before.

The lat pulldown is always taken but noone is ever on the chin bar so its just easier for me this way.

Add some weight to a vest or dipping belt and you’ll grow.

I love you guys for posting those squat videos. I never came across those until now. I just have to add that Ponce’s coment was hilarious! lol Even if he didn’t have perfect form who are we to tell that beast of a man that what he’s doing is wrong, if what he’s doing got him so massive.

[quote]B.b. in stress! wrote:
I ask because I was going to do all bw exercises but add weight accordingly or decrease my leverages to add resistance. If I keep my reps all in the low range, they still won’t be as anabolic as free weights but my question is why?

undeadlift provided a good explanation but I’m still a little unsure.[/quote]

If you’ll do that, you’ll still be working with your BW only. The adaptation process will be the same.

However, doing open chain exercises with external resistance (meaning total resistance = BW + external resistance) will have a different effect. The smaller your BW becomes in comparison to the external resistance, the more your body will ignore the BW aspect and the more it will adapt to lift that external weight. In this case, it wouldn’t “need” to stay light in order to be efficient.

The human body is a physiologically lazy organic machine. It will do no more than you demand of it. It doesn’t get bigger and stronger because it’s bored. It gets bigger and stronger only when faced with no other option.

[quote]conwict wrote:
There is obviously no real gain to doing ONLY bodyweight unless you are a prisoner in a cell with nothing to do.[/quote]

I forgot to add that I have made 3 lb. individual sandbags (total of ~200 lbs) and I would be using those for various exercises combined with bw exercises

The main reason why I want to switch bw exercises is because I want to have a functional, injury-free body that has been taken away from me by weight lifting throughout the years. Yes, I know you could build a functional body with free weights, but I either have to drive my car there or ride my bike for 15 min. to get there.

I have much better things to do then spend the time/money GETTING TO A GYM whereas my gym is pretty much the Earth anywhere anytime - the convenience CANNOT be beat.