Is is possisble to gain (muscle) mass from body weight exercises?

[Anonymous]

I currently do not have a gym membership for the summer. Was lifting 4-5 times a week during the year at college.

Am I correct that body weight exercises cannot allow you to make (much if any) real gains?

Updates

+1 y

just found a gym to join, so looks like I'll be doing that. good info though.

[seasidehermit]

It is more difficult to gain muscle mass from body weight exercises as mass gains come mostly from a low number of reps with a high amount of weight. The goal here is to do less lifts but much nearer to your max weight for that exercise.

Body weight (or lower weight) are better for toning and getting "cut" rather then bulking. A very important part of bulking is the quantity of food your eating your gonna really want to down the calories (good ones, not having 5 burgers) although you don't really have to be that careful about what your eating so long as you are really pushing in the gym.

When bulking I will do about 6 reps with 55lbs dumbbells for bi's (cause that's close to/ basically is my max)

When trying to get the definition rather then just a wide arm I'll drop it to 30- 35 and do 15 reps, then also through in some pyramid stuff to make sure I'm still getting a good work out.

[kheserthorpe]

You can.

The difference is that with weights, you do the same exercise and add weight as you progress to stay in the desired rep range for mass gains.

With bodyweight exercises, you constantly adjust the -variant- of the exercise you do to stay in the desired rep range. So you go from pushups to harder pushup variants progressing towards one arm pushups, and so on.

There's also obviously homemade equipment - a heavy canvas bag filled with sandbags (plastic baggies filled with sand) can give you something heavier to work with. So can one of those exercise balls half filled with water.

Highly recommend ross enamait's site (rosstraining.com) and forum, plus his book 'never gymless' on the topic. He's not all about bodyweight, but is about home workouts.

For some of the particular skill variants, beastskills is a great site for progressions.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

No. You are not correct.

Example of chest workout for growth

10 reps

https://youtu.be/iiz0VEzYVec

10 reps of clap push ups

10 reps left, 10 reps right

https://youtu.be/ohq6ql0YYSk

3 sets with the last set being until failure on each exercise

100 reps is usually what you'd be doing weightlifting.. e.g. bench press 3x10, butterflies 3x10, incline bench press 3x10 = chest workout completed. That's the goal here-- to fail at 80-120 reps.

By using velocity/gravity against yourself, you can create more resistance... easily mimicking the work load of weight training.

[Anonymous]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I think it is possible to gain at least a little.

The reason muscles grow is because they sense that the work they need to do is more than they can handle, ie: enough fibers are stressed to make the muscle want to fortify them.

The conditions they need to be able to grow are adequate rest and nutrition.

So theoretically, if you can really hit a muscle group hard, then give it plenty of rest and food, it will grow.

Can you do that with bodyweight exercises? I think if you make them hard enough by making the angle more challenging, and do enough reps to get really sore, AND have plenty of rest and food in between to recover from that soreness before the next time you train, then yeah I think you could induce some growth.

[whattothink]

I don't know I started swimming laps for exercise and have gained some muscle and definition as well. And its just using your body as the weight against the water...

[michael21]

Gaining muscle mass is a combination between nutrition, training and proper rest. To be specific to your question, you are not completely right. Studies have shown that muscle mass is primarily caused by endurance training. It was proved that for ex: 10 reps with a light weight causes more muscle growth compared to 2-3 reps with a heavy weight. It is definitely possible to build muscle mass by doing bodyweight exercises, you just have to do a large number of reps and sets per exercise. For example, over 10 reps, 5-6 sets for pull ups. I hope I helped a little, good luck and remember if you exercise constantly, eat right and get enough rest you will grow.

[NotJustAnotherGuy]

You define 10 reps as endurance training? So what is 1000 reps (like when you run long distance and take many many steps) gonna do to your muscles? Must make them super huge huh? Super huge marathon runners.. hmm..

[michael21]

I didn't define 10 reps as endurance training, I just told you how the experiment in the study I was talking about happened. Usually over 12-15 reps is considered endurance training, as for the 1000 rep question, you will not gain muscle mass with normal running or jogging. If you look closely you will see that sprinters have the most muscle mass compared to long distance runners. If you want to put mass with running you got to sprint not run a 1000 miles.

[martyfellow]

Maybe you won't look like a body builder with bodyweight exercises, , but if you do enough if them, on the parallel bars as well as on the floor, you can make signfiicant gains, although more slowly that doing a lot of lifting. Look at gymnasts, most of them don't do a lot of weights, all the muscle is from doing things with their body weight. Of course, they do a LOT of things with their body weight, for hours a day!

[kheserthorpe]

Yeah, ironcrosses will build some muscle.