Does anyone know any good bodyweight exercises/routines that build strength ( as opposed to endurance gained from exercises such as pushups)? Thanks.
You could probably do a search on this site and find a bunch.
1 leg squats or pistols.
1 arm pushups
Pullups
Handstand pushups
The site Vash posted is great. I base alot of my home workouts on his exercises and throw in a couple of things by Furey.
also, www.crossfit.com
What the others said + Janda situps.
horse stance stance training see tao thread
“Strength” or “endurance” will come from how hard your muscles have to work. The reason people say things like pushups build endurance is because, once you can do more than about 10-15 of them, you’re just gaining endurance by increasing the amount you do. In other words, if you can do 15 pushups now, and you work up to 30, you won’t be able to bench or lift more weight, but you’ve increased the amount of times you could do a bodyweight pushup.
Remember that your body doesn’t care if you’re doing a bodyweight exercise or a weighted exercise. Resistance is resistance to a muscle. All it can do is contract or relax. So the same principle applies with weights. If you can bench press x pounds for 15 reps, and you increase it to 30 reps, you won’t be any stronger, meaning the maximum weight you can lift for one rep won’t have increased, but you’ll have increased the amount of reps you could do with that weight.
So, any bodyweight (or weighted) exercise you can do for a lot of reps will only be building endurance and not strength. So if you want to build strength with bw stuff, you’ll have to find a way to increase the load placed on your muscles.
Some suggestions:
Can you do a lot of Hindu squats (bodyweight squats)? Try one legged squats (pistols).
Can you do a lot of pushups? Try one armed pushups.
Can you do a lot of pullups? Try weighted pullups or one armed pullups.
Don’t forget hand stand pushups! A very underrated exercise.
Yes, but not much of a chest developer. I just wouldn’t do them exclusively.
No, of course not, but still a great bodyweight exercise to build into your routine once you get past strength development with the basics.
Thanks for all the advice so far. I’m definitely going to use some of these tips. What’s a good way to work up to handstand pushups? I can’t even do a handstand… and when I try it against a wall I have a very difficult time doing even one pushup. Also, I can only do one one-armed pushup so I can’t really get a good workout doing that. Should I just do one repetition and conclude my workout? Also, is it possible to increase the amount of one armed pushups and the amount of regular pushups (strength and endurance) concurrently? It seems that after working on one type of these pushups, my arms would be too tired to work on the other type. Thanks.
One more thing, scrapper seems more designed for endurance than strength. Also, spiraler, your link doesn’t work.
I’ve got access to weights and I find them more effective for strength than BWE but here’s my advice:
(i) handstands: I did yoga years ago and we’d do it against the wall. That way you’d have no concerns about falling over on your head. Put your hands a few inches from the wall and walk your feet up a bit, then kick up. Get a friend to help catch your feet the first few times so you learn how much to kick up - too much and you’ll “bounce” off the wall and find it hard to stay up. Once up, try to stay tight and straight - don’t do the super-arched back handstands that you see some people do.
(ii) one-armed pushups: do negatives. Do your one pushup, then do several negatives. If you’re purely after strength, that means < 6 reps per set and several sets. Long rests (>3min) between sets.
(iii) endurance and strength: yeah, it’s a tradeoff. You’ll have to decide which you prefer. You can certainly train both simultaneously, but in general endurance training will detract from your strength training. A lot of us do HIIT (also discussed on trainforstrength) for our endurance. That minimises the detrimental impact on strength which giving a very decent cardio capacity. But I definitely wouldn’t try to do e.g. a strength benchpress workout and follow up with 50 reps at 50kg.
Sorry for my ignorance, but how do I do a negative repetition? Also, how many reps/sets do you recommend? Thanks.
There are two parts to every lift, extension and contraction. It is known that the human body is capable of “lifting” 130-140% of the concentric phase during the eccentric phase. This is a failsafe mechanism - you can always (relatively safely) lower what you can lift. You can use this to your advantage. Get into the start position and lower down on one arm. Do your one rep. Try again - lower under control. If you can’t press up again, then use both arms and get back in the start position. Try again - lower under control. Repeat for x reps. I have used negatives in the past, specifically to improve my weighted pullups. Still do some occasionally and it’s a good way to break plateaus. As to what sort of program to do - that’s an involved question. To give you a start, I follow a program commonly referred to as PTP. 2 sets of 5 reps, 4 compound exercises, 5 mornings a week. It’s a strength program. Most strength programs will focus on 5 or less reps per set and up to 5 or so sets. Most will focus on compound exercises.
What Toby forgot to say is:
Concentric phase = contraction (when the muscle shortens)
Eccentric phase = extension (when the muscle lengthens) (aka negative)
So for example, if you’re doing a pushups, the concentric part is when you’re pushing yourself up, and the eccentric part is when you’re lowering yourself. Unless you’re using pulleys or machines that change things up, the eccentric part is almost always the part where gravity is pulling you or the weight back down.
So yeah, if you can only do one rep of one armed pushups, you could do your one rep, and then do some negatives, meaning get in the top position and slowly lower yourself down. You won’t be able to go back up, so after you reach the bottom get back in the starting position and do another negative, etc. Make sense?
Hmmm… do you think it would be possible to increase endurance/strength concurrently by doing endurance exercises (standard pushups) on one day and doing strength exercises (one armed pushups/negative reps) on other days?
actually i can attest to that, i always had problems with developing my lower chest, trying to get the defining line under my pecs, the lower chest, i found that holding a handstand against the wall with the body straight yet slightly arched worked wonders for that area. not really good for the upper chest but good for the shoulders and upper mid back, at least thats what i feel contracting during the exercise.
see other related arts>tao. its a forum thread.