We need to challenge our muscles enough to stimulate growth, then recover by eating enough calories and getting good sleep, and then challenge our muscles again- doing more than last time. Now, I realize that you’re probably more interested in bulking up your chest and arms than you are in bulking up your calves, but the same principle holds true. Of course, as Milo grew bigger, so too did the calf, and so his bigger muscles were always challenged by the ever-heavier calf. Then he went back to carry the calf again. He was skinny (and calves can weigh as much as 500 pounds) so that was more than enough to challenge him, provoking muscle growth.Īfter carrying the calf, he feasted, slept, and grew bigger. Milo was the prototypical skinny guy who dreamt of being muscular, and so he had the idea to challenge his muscles by carrying around a calf. The simplest way to explain muscle growth is with the story of Milo of Croton.
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In fact, especially when it comes to your chest, shoulders, upper back, and abs, you should be able to progress just as quickly as if you were training with a full barbell setup. If you’re a skinny guy who wants to get bigger, stronger, healthier, and better looking, bodyweight training can be incredibly effective. It’s true that without biceps curls, triceps extensions, and lateral raises, it’s a bit harder to bulk up lanky arms, but it can be done. Horizontal and vertical push-ups are great for building a thick chest and broad shoulders, and chin-ups are amazing for building a wide upper back and strong biceps.
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The one caveat is that the health benefits continue to accumulate as our strength increases ( study), and so eventually we might need free weights to continue growing stronger.įor aesthetics, bodyweight training can be surprisingly good. By adding in resistance training 2–3 times per week, whether that’s weight training or bodyweight training, our all-cause mortality risk is reduced by a further 23% ( study). In fact, even just walking for twenty minutes every day lowers our risk of blood sugar problems by 25%, and those benefits stack with added activity ( study).Ĭalisthenics takes us far beyond that, though. Bodyweight training absolutely counts as exercise, as do cardio and lifting weights. Exercising is one of the most important things we can do to reduce our risk of sickness and death, but only 20% of people exercise, and only 10% exercise enough ( study, study). In fact, that’s what most calisthenics routines are designed for. Maybe not for an advanced powerlifter who measures their strength by how much they can squat, bench press, and deadlift, but for everyone else, there’s no reason to think that how many push-ups and chin-ups we can do is any less indicative of strength than how much we can deadlift.Ĭalisthenics are great for our general health, too. Even people with access to free weights should include plenty of them in their bulking routines.īodyweight workouts can also be quite good for gaining general strength. After all, the push-up and chin-up are two of the very best muscle-building lifts of all time ( study, study). They can still make good progress with bodyweight training, it’s just that the workouts can quickly become more complicated and painful than weight training.īut I don’t mean to make it sound like bodyweight training is a lesser choice. The same holds true with most intermediate lifters. An advanced lifter who’s near his genetic muscular potential might have trouble even just maintaining all of their muscle mass (especially in their legs and spinal erectors) with just calisthenics.īut a skinny beginner can absolutely gain muscle with bodyweight training, and the rate of progress will be almost identical to using free weights. The first question is whether we can build muscle with just bodyweight workouts.