subject: How To Make Bodyweight Workouts More Intense [print this page] Many trainees prefer bodyweight workouts over weight training as a way to build muscle. These weightless workouts have their benefits. The can be done almost anywhere such as you home or hotels when you are traveling. One disadvantage to workouts without weights is that it can be tough to make them more intense.
One key to making your training effective is progressive overload. This is when you try to improve upon your previous workout. If you were weight training, you can make progress by adding five pounds to the weight you lifted the previous week. For example, if you benched 225 lbs for five reps the first workout, you would bench 230 lbs the following workout.
With bodyweight workout, it can be difficult to add weight since we are using you own bodyweight but there are other ways to progress. For illustration, we'll talk about pushups but you can substitute any exercise. In the first workout, we did 5 sets of 10 pushups with 2 minutes rest in between sets. In order to improve we need to improve upon that performance to build muscle. There are a few ways to accomplish this.
We can add more reps to each set. If we did 5 sets of 10 the first workout, we can do 5 sets of 12 reps with two minutes rest. The only variable that we changed was the amount of rep but this is still progress. You could also increase the amount of sets. Instead of 5 sets, we can increase it to 6 sets of 10 with two minutes rest. You can also decrease the rest time in between sets. So, instead of 2 minutes rest, we'll cut the rest time to 1:45.
There are many ways to increase the intensity of bodyweight workouts. You can choose to change one or more variables. The key to gaining muscle whether you are working with weights or not, you need to make each workout more intense or you muscles will remain stagnant.
