Body-Weight Exercise Pros and Cons
Should I lift weights or do body-weight exercises?
WHO is asking this question?
99.9% of people are not entering competitions for body-building. It's more likely that the person asking is someone who struggles to exercise in the first place. So the question becomes, which type of exercise am I most likely to do consistently and will still get great results?
A question I get really often is "Matt Bench why did you choose not open your own little gym?"
Because my clients would ultimately be the one's paying for it. And for you guys a gym membership is just not necessary because don't need all these dumbbells and machines to hit any of your goals.
Now, I do have about $60 worth of equipment that you can read about here but we are going to use mostly your own body weight (which is otherwise known as calisthenics) and there's a lot of advantages to doing body weight training like this.
If you’d like to get slightly more fancy I recommend learning suspension training. Luckily it's not that complex, but these are life-long skills and they apply to anything athletic that you do anyways!
Top 5 advantages here.
1. It is freakin' fun.
Progressing from push-up against the wall to a 1 arm push-up and all the little steps in between...a little bit more satisfying and motivating than simply moving the weight selector up one notch on a machine.
You’ve probably only seen all the typical boring moves like sit-ups, body-squats etc but guys there's so so so many different moves and progressions, and it keeps things interesting.
2. It is 100% entry level.
I have tons of clients that have never worked out before...trust me on this one, everything can be modified to be easier or harder.
3. You can do it anywhere!
Even while you're out of town! So again, you don't have to rely on a gym. Now - I get it - the gym environment can be motivating. That's fine...go to the gym whenever you can...but now you don't HAVE TO.
4. Practical.
Body-weight training is practical and applicable to real life physical challenges. Machines are not practical.
Think about a chest press machine, when in life do you have a padded seat behind you to push against when you're moving a dresser or something? It's silly. It’s almost like practicing jump rope by laying down an move your arms around.
5. Balanced Physique.
Every exercise we do is compound movement mean more than 1 muscle in involved. Calisthenics literally means beauty in strength, you'll end up with a very proportional physique rather than bulky.
So, do you want to work with an business owner with his reputation on the line, have more fun and look forward to your workouts, become self-sufficient without a gym membership, learn the life skills of how your muscles work, how to fix your posture, have practical strength that you can use anytime, get more calories burned and muscles working in that training session toward a balanced physique?