Is Bodyweight Training Effective for Building Muscle?

I absolutely love bodyweight training and always include it in my programs. Bodyweight exercises don’t beat up your joints as much as traditional weight training exercises do. In fact, some would argue that they heal your joints. They’re more natural than traditional weight training exercises and they improve your overall athleticism quite effectively.

As I have mentioned in the past, bodyweight training leads to higher levels of neuromuscular activation than any exercise that simply has you moving your body through space. From a muscle building perspective that’s a good thing

However, there are still those who argue that bodyweight training isn’t as effective as weight training when it comes to building muscle. I understand where they are coming from and can see why.

Bodyweight training is often associated with high reps, endurance and the military. But if you look at the muscular upper body development of male gymnasts it kind of paints a different picture.

I think the problem is that most people don’t know or utilize proper bodyweight progressions. So they never really increase the resistance. They just do basic variations of pushups or inverted rows and then think to themselves, “This is too easy to build muscle.”

And they’re right. Those two exercises, in their most basic form, would be too easy and wouldn’t provide enough tension or overload to build muscle.

But what about if you worked up to one arm pushups? Or one arm inverted rows? TRX steep incline pushups? Ultra wide grip inverted rows to the neck with the elbows flared and a 2-3 second hold at the top?

Then you get to the point where you’re adding chains or weighted vests to those exercises? Now, technically that’s not strictly bodyweight training anymore. In that instance it becomes bodyweight plus resistance. But it’s still a variation of bodyweight training and is still highly effective.

Another reason people think you can build muscle more effectively with weight training is because it’s a lot easier to grab a heavier dumbbell than it is to progress from a crow stand or frog stand all the way to a planche pushup over the course of 12-24 months. That takes a LOT of patience and discipline. The other problem is that as you’re getting bigger and as you gain weight through proper nutrition, the bodyweight exercises become more difficult so then you can’t progress as quickly. Or you perceive a lack of progress and give up.

Most intelligent coaches would argue that a chin up is superior to a pulldown for building muscle. So why wouldn’t other bodyweight exercises be effective?

Why wouldn’t l-sit ring dips with a forward lean be more effective than a bench press?

Why wouldn’t glute ham raises be more effective than leg curls?

Why wouldn’t front levers be more effective than stiff arm pulldowns?

Why wouldn’t Power WheelRollouts be more effective than an ab machine?

I’d argue that they are.

But just to change things up and to play devils advocate to my own argument here I could say that for the majority of people lat pulldowns are actually more effective at building the lats then chin ups are for the simple fact that MOST people are not strong enough to do chin ups properly to get anything out of them. They turn a good lat exercise into a shitty biceps exercise that does very little for back width.

Put most people with a poor mind muscle connection to their lats on a pulldown machine for the first time and they will actually be able to feel their lats as opposed to their biceps. Since I’m not a big fan of machines I’d compromise and do band assisted chins instead. If you can’t do a solid six reps on chins while keeping tension on the lats the entire time and holding the contracted position at the top you’re going to get very little growth stimulus out of them.

The same could be said for pushups. If you have a young, weak male or the average female doing pushups they’re probably not going to get as much out of them as they would a dumbbell press simply because they’ll be flailing all over the place like a dead fish, using every muscle but the ones you intended to target.

Instead of moving them to a bench I’d simply elevate the pushups onto a bar set higher in a power rack and then progress them down over the course of a few months.

The lack of knowledge regarding bodyweight training and its proper progressions is what prevents more people from getting the results they should from it. That’s why I’m gonna start posting more and more of these progressions in the near future both here on the blog and in the Renegade Inner Circle.

Bodyweight exercises can build muscle rapidly, especially if you keep progressing to more difficult variations of each of them. Simply doing more reps, as most people do, won’t help you build muscle at all.

To elicit a hypertrophy response you need significant loading and tension. High rep work provides neither. It does very little to activate the fast twitch fibers either, and those have the greatest potential for growth. So you need to keep that in mind and stick with reps in the 5-10 range, predominantly. For lower body exercises you can go a bit higher. Twenty rep pistol squats, for example, will force some pretty good leg growth.

At the end of the day the most effective combination for building muscle is a mix of weights, strongman implements and bodyweight training. The weights give you the benefit of easily trackable progress, the bodyweight training gives you a myriad of other benefits and keeps you healthy.

It’s the best of both worlds and the basis for all Renegade training programs.

Now go get after it!