We make muscle and increase our cardiovascular fitness by putting our bodies under controlled stress. The overload principle, imposing a greater load on a muscle as it adapts, is the route to follow to make increases in muscle mass and cardio fitness, to a point.
But we shouldn’t undervalue training with only the weight of our bodies. Bodyweight training is closed-chain exercise. This means the exercises are performed with the hand or foot in contact with a stable surface such as the floor, a wall, or a box.
For example: the squat and the pushup are closed-chain exercises. These exercises transmit less force to the joint and are more functional movements.
Bodyweight training, for me personally and as a trainer, is linked to the playfulness of our youth, moving our bodies in ways that made us laugh and enjoy exercise. The beauty of it was it didn’t seem like exercise. It’s the playfulness, laughing and enjoyment that can make training easy to incorporate as part of our lifestyle rather than a bandwagon we jump on and fall off.
Bodyweight training is a great way to re-establish movement patterns. Adding progressively heavier weights into our workouts will certainly build muscle, but it can also put excessive stress on our joints, especially if we are adding more weight before safely mastering the level we are at.
While lifting, we should be continuously aware of our breathing and of our body’s alignment. We have all heard about pushing through a difficult set, but pushing through when we have bad form is just doing more damage than good.
Be honest with yourself. Are your legs or arms shaking, knees caving in? Are you hyperextending your back, letting your core go, or holding your breath?
Taking your training back to bodyweight even once or twice a week is a great way to go through movement patterns to re-establish good habits, and to spend time working on muscle activation while giving your joints a little break. Many bodyweight exercises also demand involvement from the small, controlling muscles that are extremely important in joint stabilization, which may be missed when we focus more on working the larger, flashier muscle groups.
Bodyweight training incorporates flexibility and playfulness into our strength training, and can add some creativity into our workout routine. As we get better at doing push-ups from our toes, we can begin to take limbs out of the equation, lifting a foot, or an arm, perhaps. We can incorporate yoga, martial arts and even dance, to push our bodies to move with power, stability, and strength.
Take the wonderfully named “dive bomber.” You begin with your hands and feet on the floor with hips raised in an inverted “V” position. For those of us who are familiar with yoga, this is downward facing dog.
Then we lower our shoulders and glide our chest just slightly above and across the floor as we come through plank to an upward facing dog position, or our chest facing up to the ceiling with arms long and our hips just off the floor. Then we do it all in reverse and come back to the starting position.
This exercise takes flexibility, stability and a great deal of strength, and it’s fun. If we always move in the same way, in the same plane, we’ll begin to inhibit the plasticity of our bodies and minds that can come from creative and free-flowing movement.
One of the best arguments for including some bodyweight training in a workout regime is that you can do it anywhere. At home, at the beach and in your hotel room, “everywhere” becomes your gym.
We shouldn’t put up barriers when it comes to getting our bodies moving. It’s about doing what we can with what we have where we are, and always prioritizing the positive.
Bodyweight Mini
This requires a timer, some water and a comfortable working space
30 seconds of burpees
15 push-ups
30 seconds of high knees
15 inchworms
30 seconds of speed skaters
15 sit outs
30 seconds of bear crawls
15 single leg bridges, each side
Repeat this four times
Melissa Sloos is a certified group fitness instructor, spin instructor and studio manager at Coast Fitness.
