You know the drill by now: If you wanna be AF, you gotta lift. However, weight lifting can be hard for someone entirely new to fitness because:

  • It can be intimidating. People have trouble going to the gym for the first time because they usually have no idea what they are doing and are afraid of making a fool of themselves. Working out by yourself allows you to work out at full intensity without the fear of looking like an idiot.

  • It can be dangerous. Many newbies walk in the gym not knowing jack shit about form, programming and the intensity/volume analogy. They go to the gym, start doing a bro split or (Brodin forbid) a circuit and a year later they wonder why they haven't gotten any of the sweet sweet gainz, why their lower backs are wack and why they are slouched over worse than Quasimodo. Bodyweight training is focused more on the mentality of "quality over quantity", emphasizing proper form over anything else from the very beginning.

If you are considering bodyweight training but don't know if it suits you and how to start, you are in luck, because TAG is here to shed his light upon thee.

Reasons to choose bodyweight training:

  • Bragging rights. With traditional weight lifting, you'll be doing basically the same exact exercises from your first day at the gym until your last prayer at the Iron Church. That is not necessarily bad - I still love me some heavy deadlifts. However with bodyweight exercises, since progression is based not on increasing weight, but on placing more mechanical stress on your muscles through leverage, you often have to get creative with how you position your body to achieve that. You'll find that by progressing in a given exercise you end up being able to perform some pretty insane feats of strength.

  • Focus on proper form. Bodyweight exercise form is often much more complex than free weight movements, due to the need for the whole body to ba stable and moving in unison. Due to this complexity which increases together with the difficulty of each exercise, there is a much higher chance for injury when you don't practice good form. This is good, because it forces you to be constantly mindful of the way you move, thus making your workouts safer. This ties in with one of the negative aspects of bodyweight exercises: there is a lot of misinformation out there, and it usually takes more in-depth research to learn how to do an exercise properly than in the case of weight training.

  • Movement mastery. Aside from monstrous strength, training advanced bodyweight movements will also give you great balance and coordination that regular weight training will not. A great example is the 90 degree pushup. There's a reason why people that can squat 315 have trouble performing a single pistol squat. You'll find that this method of exercise will improve your posture faster than weight lifting. It will also make the way you move on an everyday basis more slow and controlled.

  • More palpable results. And no, I don't mean that adding 100 lbs to your squat PR is not palpable. But there's just that special something to holding a 5 second straddle planche for the first time. Mastering the way your body moves through space is indeed a very appealing concept.

  • Virtually no cost. The only thing you need for a complete bodyweight workout at any level of strength is a pull up bar or a set of gymnastic rings. That is all you need. No gym subscriptions, no exorbitant prices for home gym equipment. Just you, the floor and something to grab onto for pulling exercises. You can, with consistency, get fucking jacked without ever spending a penny on your training.

Hopefully you are hooked by now. Unfortunately a lot of people are intimidated by the complexity of bodyweight fitness, and hesitate before trying it. "Sure, bodyweight fitness sounds cool as fuck, but how do I get started?", I hear you ask. Do not worry, TAG is here to help your weak, puny ass ascend to Swolehalla.

How progressions work. As you all (should) know, any type of physical training (notice the use of the word "training" and not "exercise") is based on the concept of progressive overload. Simply put, it means that every workout should be, in some way, harder than the last one. In weight training, this is about as straightforward as it gets: increase the weight moved during any given exercise with each workout session.

In bodyweight fitness, you always use your bodyweight as resistance, which stays more or less the same. Progressive overload is achieved through exercise progressions. This is basically the principle that you can group every exercise in existence in a few basic categories (progressions), in an increasing order of difficulty. Progressions can sometimes branch out in different paths, making your approach to strength unique and suited to the specific skills that you are seeking. Progressing in bodyweight fitness basically means starting from the beginning of each of these progressions and slowly making your way through harder and harder levels. The final levels of any given progression are basically god-tier and are usually only acieved by world-class olympic athletes. Don't be discouraged though: With persistence and correct programming and nutrition, you too can make it pretty far up the ladder.

Here is an example of what a progression might look like.

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As you can see, the final progressions are pretty crazy, but there is still an appropriate level for anyone to get started. In general, pick a progression level in wich you can do 4 reps semi-comfortably, and then get started with the one below it.

Those are the basics of bodyweight training. My next post will include, among other things, an effective workout plan for people at any strength level. Stay tuned.