I love heavy weights.
Love them.
My body? It doesn’t quite love them as much as I do.
Based on everything I’ve read and learned…and to a large degree the mistakes I’ve made over the years, the approach I like to training is as follows:
Hard and heavy for 3-5 months. Typically during the winter.
But then after that I take it right down to 2-3 core lifts and a combination of Body Weight & Body Movement training for at least a couple months.
(This is almost always during the summer for me.)
Then after the summer I ramp back up with Adonis training to prep for the next big Winter push.
I find this Eb & Flow of training is my best option for making gains, but also keeping healthy.
Truthfully, I’d love to do body weight exercises only, all year round, but I find I just can’t maintain my size if I do this for an entire 12 month period.
And As I said before in this post – (body movement training) I think that body weight exercises eventually have to become body MOVEMENT exercises…body weight with added external weight, as you eventually get stronger.
The other issue I have with Body Weight Exercises is the fairly high volume of Reps you need in certain exercises – which can unfortunately lead to overuse injuries.
This is very similar to what happens with runners, only now it’s your shoulders or elbows. This is why you need a TON of variety in your exercise repertoire – You can’t just do push-ups, squats and chins.
But if you have enough of the RIGHT exercises – then I completely agree with Craig Ballantyne when he says that:
Your body is actually the BEST piece of home gym “workout equipment” in the world for helping you GAIN muscle and BURN fat
without spending tons of money
My personal favorite is trying to go ‘single arm’ on most upper body body weight stuff….
But it’s not just about saving money and taking a break from heavy lifting to let your body recover…There’s another reason to try out body weight training is simply this:
It’s absolutely amazing what the human body can do.
Check out this video for proof:
Or this one:
Now, you’re not going to be able to move like Jodi or these free running guys just by doing some push ups and chins, but the fact remains – Being able to move your body is not only good for you…it can be beautiful.
I’m heading to Vegas on Thursday, and I plan of seeing Cirque du Soleil, which I’m pretty sure will put me into a body weight training frame of mind. In fact, I’m planning on dedicating the next couple months of training posts on this blog to exploring body weight training, body movement training and body weight exercises. I’m also going to share with you the body weight programs I like, and the one’s I don’t.
The bottom line is that with body weight workouts, you’ll save time (they are typically shorter and don’t require you to drive to the gym and back), it’s nice break from moving heavy iron, and you can do them outside!
BP.
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