Bodyweight Training: No equipment needed. Using your own body for resistance and training
- Less stressful on your joints - loading up with heavy weights can stress a bone or muscle to fatigue as cause pain and rest. Using your own body in a fluid motion can be less stressful
- Helps with muscular endurance - bodyweight training usually involves fast movements (sometimes explosive) with high reps and a short recovery. This teaches are muscles how to adapt and endure versus lifting 1 heavy weight slowly for 6-8 reps.
- Convenient - You can literally workout in a small hallway, hotel room, outdoors. If you have yourself, you have a workout!
- Variety - you can switch up the moves daily. Try a standard push-up, then throw in a 1 legged push-up or diamond push-up. Continue to switch up the moves to challenge yourself
- Multiple muscle groups used - When you perform bodyweight moves, you are using your "bodyweight". Duh?! Your entire body is firing at muscles to work and adapt versus sitting or lying at a machine with 1 motion. Take squats. You are using glutes, quads, hamstrings, gastrocnemius (calf), core (abs and erector spinae) to stabilize. This will help you throughout your day perform daily activities like picking up groceries, or leaning down to get a laundry basket
Free weights: Using equipment that is not connected to an apparatus or machine. Dummbells or barbells, kettlebells or med balls used for resistance training. Can be used at a gym or in the home.
- Greater resistance - sometimes I will combine my bodyweight moves with a dumbbell for added resistance. For example, squat jumps holding a 10-20lb weight at my chest can really help you feel the burn in your legs
- Good for developing coordination and control - free weights help you to maintain balance and stamina has you move with an added weight. They can work the main muscle you are working and cause surrounding muscles to stabilize in support of the working muscle.
- Great for at-home gyms - if you have the space, they are cheap and don't take up much room. I'd go for a heavy kettlebell to start because you can use it to swing or hold to stabilize.
- Form is key - make sure you use a mirror when exercising or perform exercises slowly so as to avoid injury. And never lift a heavy weight by yourself without a spotter.
Machines - equipment that generally uses a pulley system to provide varied levels of resistance from a fixed range of motion.
- Great for rehab - because there is a fixed range of motion and a weight you can set yourself, this can be helpful to someone with limited mobility or someone just starting out in a fitness program.
- Isolation - If you are training for a specific event or competition, certain machines can isolate a muscle or muscle group at one time.
- Expensive and bulky - they are pricey if you are trying to build a home gym and you will need a large space for them.
- Does not recruit stabilizing muscles as much - certain machines will target a muscle group and won't require the use of any stabilizers. This is great for targeting as said earlier, but does not mimic real life movements of lifting, hauling, pushing, pickup up, etc.
I have used each of these when training, but time and time again, I go back to bodyweight with free weight training. For me, it's all about convenience and moving my entire body. That said, I am currently working on my bench and squat on a bench/rack at the gym 2 days a week. But overall, bodyweight is where it's at. I heard this said once and it makes perfect sense - I can only bench about 80lbs (3 sets of 8 reps) but when I do a push-up, I can lift 130 lbs (myself!). I know the weight isn't exactly like that, but it is something to think about. I can't throw 130lbs into the air but I can do a burpee 30x times in a row and jump my 130lb body into the air.
Which do you prefer and why?
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