Why it matters what bodyweight workouts you use…
Don’t fall into the trap of believing that all bodyweight workout routines are created equal. There an almost unlimited number of different exercises and huge differences among the possible different workouts. Forget about the most ‘trend’ or ‘fad’ workout. Instead, design your workout with the end in mind.
Before you begin any workout routine, whether it is weight training or bodyweight training, you need to picture the outcome you want to achieve.
Why are you working out? To lose fat? To build muscle? To improve your sport specific performance?
You need to answer these questions before you can decide what bodyweight workout program will work best for you.
When you establish your desired outcome, you develop a laser-like focus. You literally tell your subconscious what direction to take you in. This focus will allow you to zero in on the exact workouts you should be performing. Knowing your desired outcome will also help fuel your drive and determination to push yourself every day.
When you establish your desired outcome, you develop a laser-like focus. You literally tell your subconscious what direction to take you in. This focus will allow you to zero in on the exact workouts you should be performing. Knowing your desired outcome will also help fuel your drive and determination to push yourself every day.
Here’s Some Examples Of How To Organize Your Bodyweight Workout To Achieve The Results You Desire:
If you’re only looking for some additional functional strength, you’ll probably perform bodyweight exercises every day. Your focus will be on harder movements like pull-ups, dips, and difficult push-up variations.
Avoid overtraining like your life depends on it. One of the easiest ways to do this is to never train to failure.
The best way to teach your body to do more pull-ups is to do more pull-ups. But if you go all the way to failure, you eat up your body’s ability to recover and you’ll lose strength instead of gain it. So instead of training to total failure, stop a few reps early…rest…and then do another set.
You can perform several sets throughout the day. Make it a game for yourself. Say that every time you go to the bathroom, you are going to do a set up pull-ups.
If you struggle to do five pull-ups right now, follow this protocol and pretty soon ten will be a piece of cake. Then 20 will be easy. And so on.
If conditioning is your focus, there are several bodyweight conditioning exercises and drills. Pick the exercises that really get you moving. Possible exercises are squat thrusts, box jumps, lots of pushups, situps and leg lifts.
For conditioning, you want to perform the exercises back to back without any rest in-between. Consider adding jump roping drills to your bodyweight workout as well. The thing to remember when conditioning is that the harder and more explosive you train today, the more rest your body requires. You can’t perform the same super explosive workouts every single day. A hard core conditioning routine only has to last 20-25 minutes or even less depending on your current level of fitness. And only needs to be performed 2-3 days per week.
If the purpose of your bodyweight workout is to condition your body for a specific sport like boxing, mixed martial arts or grappling, you want to adjust your workout accordingly.
Use exercises that are the most sport specific. And perform your routine according to how you need to perform in a “live” situation.
Let’s take mixed martial arts for example. The right bodyweight workout can be a very effective conditioning tool for MMA. Most MMA fights have 5-minute rounds with 1-minute rest between each round. Setup your bodyweight routine just like this.
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5-minutes going as hard as you can, followed by one minute of rest. If you are training for a 5 round fight, make your workout last for 6 rounds.
As you can see, this bodyweight conditioning workout will only take you 30-35 minutes.
Here is a sample five-minute bodyweight workout (you can swap the exercises accordingly):
- 30 second jump rope sprinting
- 30 seconds of leg lifts
- 30 second jump rope sprinting
- 30 seconds of hindu pushups
- 30 second jump rope sprinting
- 30 seconds of reverse situps (aka supermans)
- 30 second jump rope sprinting
- 30 seconds of situps
- 30 second jump rope sprinting
- 30 seconds of bodyweight squats
You can increase the intensity level by using more explosive exercises. You will notice that none of the above exercises are super explosive. If you need a harder workout, you can try explosive pushups, box jumps, pullups, etc. Or you can replace any of the 30-second intervals with more explosive conditioning drills. You are not limited to just calisthenic exercises. There are plenty of drills that are very sport specific to mixed martial arts, grappling, or whatever sport you are training for. You can also replace the jump roping with 30-second sprints.
Should Your Training Go Beyond Bodyweight Exercises?
Bodyweight exercises give you an almost unlimited number of workouts if you are creative enough. But adding additional conditioning drills are a great way to increase your body’s workout capacity as well.
Definitely include jump roping, sprinting, and resistance band training into your workouts. Again, this depends on the outcome you are looking for.
There is a lot more bodyweight workout and training information throughout this website.
