Learn about the key components required to master the best tool at your disposal, your body!
The Foundation
Bodyweight training is the foundation of all movement and exercise. Ever since we were babies we've been doing bodyweight training in the form of progressively crawling, walking, running, jumping, and climbing. Sports are an outlet for most kids to further challenge their body’s capabilities and enhance athleticism. Stability, Mobility, Strength, Endurance, and Power are all put to the test, but can you improve these areas with just your bodyweight?
Progressive Overload
The key principle behind any physical development is progressive overload. That means continuously challenging your body beyond it's current limitations with a stimulus that's more demanding than it's capable of handling. For example, lifting more weight (strength), performing more reps (endurance), jumping higher (power), balancing or holding positions longer (stability), and controlling your body in more difficult movement patterns (mobility).
Growth requires challenge. Your body is built to adapt to the stress that you expose it to. If you weren’t programmed with this survival mechanism, then you would eventually die from exposing yourself to the same stresses. For example, if you were losing 1 Ib/week by doing what you‘re currently doing, then you would continuously lose 1 Ib/week until you wither away and turn into dust with a snap of a finger. Learning how to control this mechanism inside you will help you better understand how to overcome plateaus and manipulate your body to the desired results. Now that we know that progressive overload is the main component for improvement, the second is a calorie surplus.
Gain Muscle
If building muscle is number one on your priority list, then a caloric surplus is required. That means consuming more calories than your body is burning. Recovery requires energy. If your body isn't getting the required energy to recover from the stress that you put on it, then you can’t develop and grow. The body must take the energy from other places like it’s energy stores, fat, and even muscle. For muscle building, the primary energy source for growth and recovery is protein. Without adequate amounts of protein and calories, your body won’t have the tools to take advantage of progressive overload.
I know you’re wondering, “Can you build muscle with just your bodyweight?” The answer is yes you absolutely can; however maximizing your muscle building potential requires incorporating resistance training. Resistance training is the most optimal way to utilize progressive overload beyond your body’s stress capabilities. Bodyweight training is the foundation for resistance training because of one simple fact... If you can’t control your body without resistance, then how can you effectively control your body with resistance?
Burn Fat
Prioritizing fat loss is slightly different than muscle building. The main difference is incorporating a calorie deficit which is burning more calories than you’re consuming. You must gradually increase the energy demands of your body by either moving more or consuming less. Any aggressive approach such as drastically dropping your calories for an extended amount of time is detrimental to preserving muscle because of the energy demands. Thanks to the good ol' adaptation mechanism that we got inside us, any short term satisfaction from aggressively cutting calories will be short lived. A progressive reduction approach which is the opposite of muscle building, is the best solution to maximize fat loss without sacrificing muscle. Fat loss ultimately comes down to maintaining a calorie deficit and how you maintain that deficit is up to you.
Bodyweight training is just another tool that can aid in your daily calorie burn for the day, so that you stay in a caloric deficit. The key component of progressive overload, just like with building muscle, must still be prioritized if not even more. The consequences of adaptation is that your body will revert back to the state that it was previously in if you no longer give it progressive stress. Your body will simply not be challenged therefore, it doesn’t require the gained musculature development to survive. Since energy is scarce, the energy that would’ve been used to maintain your state will be reallocated to the most important areas for survival. Imagine if you had the ability to control this survival switch in your body to simultaneously build muscle by incorporating progressive overload with bodyweight training while also burning body fat?
Newbie Gains
The adaptation survival mechanism seems like it's more of a barrier rather than an aid for our bodyweight performance, muscle gain, and fat loss efforts, but there are some massive advantages. Enter newbie gains! There's a window of opportunity in the beginning of incorporating a new training style where you can rapidly see results because of metabolic adaptation. You can manipulate this mechanism to use energy for building new muscle while simultaneously burning body fat. As long as you have efficient recovery, a moderate calorie intake with adequate protein, and progressive overload, then you can take full advantage of this capability.
Level Up
Mastering your body with bodyweight training offers you the same muscle building, fat loss, and performance improvements that you would get with any other training style. Bodyweight training doesn’t maximize one particular area over the other, but instead lays the foundation and helps improve every single area. I believe a hybrid of multiple different training styles and nutritional practices is required to master your own body. Intertwining every aspect of mental and physical fitness to level up your body to its ultimate potential is what Walt Workout embodies!
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