Gaining Muscle and Bodyweight Exercises

Right now I am only concerned with gaining raw strength from my bodyweight exercises.

I feel that in the future I will want to get ripped/more toned (not necessarily more bulky just semi big muscles, but really defined).

I am against any other exercises except bodyweight exercises because I am too lazy and do not have a car to drive to the gym everyday.

So I ask, is it possible to build muscle through bodyweight exercises only?

(I'll have to bump up my rep rang from 3-5 to 6-10 and eat more food-proteins- but I feel that it's possible.)

Any thoughts?

Of course you can gain muscle if you eat enough and train intensely.

Although you probably won't get bigger than most gymnasts... but you need some rings if you don't have any already.

Yea, I have rings.

Y do u think I won't get bigger than most gymnasts?

...Actually, what do most gymnasts body's look like?

I'm actually aiming to look more like this guy...

ignore everything after 2:25 tho. Thats too buff for me.

I'm actually more interested in getting the v shaped back and the semi big/toned pecs and shoulders.

I figure that if I am a fighter and I will (soon) have insane gymnastic strength, that I should have an intense looking body to add to that persona.

Would you happen to have any useful links that I can use to educate myself on gaining more muscle (body building articles...and if you can, articles that advocate bodyweight exercise only)?

I probably should be asking on bodyweightculture.com, but I forgot my password and account name.

If you want v shape:

There isn't better way (and is a bodyweight exercise) . Arnold said to do 50 pullups until you can do 5x10, and after that start adding weigth to your pullups so you can do a classical piramid training (12-10-8-6-6). He also said that he didnt add weigth becase his bodyweight was enough (at 100-105 kgs).

And for pecs, dips, (Arnold also use those for pecs and is also bodyweight exercise). Of course Arnold used tons of other barbell exercises but anywhere you read you'll find that this 2 exercises to be very valuable even to the people training with heavy weights.

In fact you can use rings or other bodyweight exercises with the same regimen of bodybuilding to build mass, just do more reps than 5 and try to exhaust your muscles (enough volume), and less than 12 because the weight used doesn't allow you to do more (this is bodyweight adding weight or just doing a different kind of exercise that let you do this rep range (or different progressions). And of course eat enough.

The key of building muscle is to reach the muscle failure, something you don't want if you are doing handstand on rings . This is really the difference, at gymnastic you want train to gain strength to be able to do the movements (and the side effect is moderate hypertrophy) and at bodybuilding you just want to add weight to exhaust muscles to grow.

Anyway, i prefer the guy of the video at the 67 kg better than heavier.

this may be a stupid question but what is hypertrophy?

Increase of muscle mass, muscle growth

Wow, thanks Serotonin!

I'm very etchy when it comes to programs that support gaining muscle or gaining endurance because I tried a lot of programs and they've turned out to be bogus, wasting a lot of my time.

Coach Sommer's SCC is the first cycle that I have used in my life that has actually given me noticible results in strength.

So whenever I hear things like "do classical pyramid" or "its all about HITT". I get very lost because 1. I believe it doesn't work since I believe that a lot of exercise-related things out there are bogus and 2. I am not familiar with it and don't have the time to try and see if it works.

No offense to you of course, I'm just saying I want legit advice.

But I digress.

You said that body builders work till failure (I'm assuming before faliure) and then recover, but I've seen many bodybuilders work 3-4 days a week nonconsecutively.

Where do they find the time to recover from their workouts?

Also, how many sets per exercise is standard in bodybuilding?

P.S.--the wide grip pullups are going to be implemented in my next SSC!!

I strongly disagree with the failure part even with BBers. High freq tends to make the quickest strength gains and thus mass if you eat for it... or maximizing volume... as long as you can recover.

-----------------------------------

Dude, I don't know why you're asking about this stuff on this forum. If you wanna know about BBing protocol then search google or going to something like bodybuilding.com.

Even if we know about it, and I do... why would I type up stuff when you can get it yourself far more comprehensively on other sites (and this is a gymnastics forum for goodness sake... we don't care about extra muscle mass especially if it hinders performance).

If that's your goal then that's great, but you are probably on the wrong forum if you want to discuss such stuff.

Yes, perhaps it would be easier to go to other forums where bodybuilders can tell the real experience.

But summarizing, BB work till failure and beyond (failure means you can do another rep) using techniques like after failure just doing negatives, or droping weigth to the barbell and continuing doing reps. And they do (i told you the classical (Arnold) point of view), 5 series of 5 exercises for larger groups like pecs, that mean 20 - 25 series per muscle group just one day. This is hard to one muscle so they will work that muscle just one (maybe two) times a week. In one day they work 2 muscles groups (large and small). So they need almost all the week to train all the body just once.

Anyway this is the old way, which worked for old 70-80' champions. Some other great bodybuilders advocates to do just one serie per exercise (till failure and beyond of course), and there are of course tons of training systems. You also have to think about steroids. ALL pro bodybuilders use them to arrive to those huge bodies. Thats something you'll find in BB forums but not here, because we look for differents objectives.

So, you can see that this type is training is not what we are talking about here, that is gymnastic and his 'moderate' hipertrophy (look at the man of the title :wink: ) and performance of gracile movements throw the space

ok Brandix lol.

I understand ur logic. If you don't want me to ask these questions here then I'll go somewhere else.

Any forums you guys recommend I should join?

The main focus of gymnastics conditioning is to increase strength and athletic ability. Increased muscle mass is simply a pleasant by product of that increased strength. In other words if you focus on getting strong, by progressing through the various exercises, the improvements in physique will come naturally.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Hey Coach SOmmer!!!

THat was my original plan. I suspose I'll stick to it because your SCC works and is very simple for my to use.

I suspose results in tone/structure in my body will come in time

thanks for the reply/looking foreward to your books,

-kombat

Coach Sommer said:

The main focus of gymnastics conditioning is to increase strength and athletic ability. Increased muscle mass is simply a pleasant by product of that increased strength. In other words if you focus on getting strong, by progressing through the various exercises, the improvements in physique will come naturally.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Yep, just stick with it. You will be amazed by the results. If you really want to get the lean look though you need to clean up your diet and stick with it.

To quote wolverine (aka Hugh Jackman):

"I consulted a bodybuilder and what I realised is that how you look is 30% how you train and 70% how you eat. No carbs after lunch. Six to eight chicken breasts a day, two at each sitting, 4,000 calories in total."

This is just to illustrate a point. Namely, eat a lot of protein and less carbs later in the day. I personally do not adhere to the reduce carbs theory though as carbs help fuel you for endurance exercise and therefore are very important for most athletes. The type of carbs you use is very important though; aim for natural low GI sources.

In terms of bulking up there is a routine called squats and milk:

http://www.leehayward.com/squats.htm

Squatting works the largest muscles in your body--the quadriceps (front of thigh), adductors (inside of thigh), gluteals (buttocks), hamstrings (back of thigh), gastrocnemius and soleus complex (calf), and erector spinae (back); your core will be strengthened as well. When used in conjunction with barbell pullovers, chin-ups, dips and lots of milk you are looking at serious size gains. Deadlifts are also useful. The article also outlines the number of sets and repetitions required. This routine is very tough and technique is very important.

Some of these movements are basic gymnastic exercises so the potential for muscle building is good especially given the more difficult progressions Coach Sommers recommends.

If you use coach Sommer's guidance and combine it with weighted squats and deadlifts you will do very well.

Besides the 20rep squat program there is StartingStrength coupled with GallonOfMilkADay for bulking up. This program also includes bench press and deadlifting and pullups and power cleans.

I hate to hate on BB ( well maybe I don't ) but if they were working a lot of isolation exercises they can go lighter on the carbs. I think that's why the Anabolic Diet works for some based on what sort of workouts they are doing, basically BB workouts.

I'm pretty jazzed. I measured my guns tonight at 15 inches+. Somebody call the veternarian cause these puppies are sick! Ok, my L5 likes to say that. It just shows an improvement from the last time I did some body measurements ( mainly to try to calculate BF and symmetry ).

Blairbob said:

Besides the 20rep squat program there is StartingStrength coupled with GallonOfMilkADay for bulking up. This program also includes bench press and deadlifting and pullups and power cleans.

I hate to hate on BB ( well maybe I don't ) but if they were working a lot of isolation exercises they can go lighter on the carbs. I think that's why the Anabolic Diet works for some based on what sort of workouts they are doing, basically BB workouts.

I'm pretty jazzed. I measured my guns tonight at 15 inches+. Somebody call the veternarian cause these puppies are sick! Ok, my L5 likes to say that. It just shows an improvement from the last time I did some body measurements ( mainly to try to calculate BF and symmetry ).

HAHAHAHAHA!!! I like it!!! Call the vet, these puppies are SICK!!! Also you called your arms guns! I love this place

Ishasum: I ripped you up on your nutrition post because you deserved it there, but this one with the squat program is great. The big lifts definitely get you big. Squats, Deadlifts, Dips, and Pullups/Chinups are the key to gaining size. For anyone wondering why that is, the body releases testosterone in response to muscles working so they can heal, and the more muscles working at once, the more testosterone gets released. Also, the bigger the muscles, the more testosterone your body releases. So those big lifts that utilize most of your body's muscle structure are the ones that will gain you the most size or strength, depending on how you structure your workout. Squats and Deadlifts are absolutely key if you want to gain lean mass quickly.

And that whole carb thing is purely for aesthetics. They cut out the carbs after lunch because carbohydrates are what draw water into the body. Carbo-HYDRATE. For every glycogen molecule that gets stored in lean tissue, 3 water molecules go with it. Pretty sure it is three anyhow, might be four but I am pretty sure it is three. Anyhow, that's why. No carbs for most of the day means lower water retention for a bodybuilder, which means more visible definition.

Athletically carbs are more generally useful than you have stated. The body runs on sugar. You have a few seconds of pure atp, and then you're into the creatine phospate system, lasts 15 seconds. after about 20 seconds, you are burning sugar via anaerobic glycolosis. That lasts for 30-50 seconds, depending on the individual and their diet. That is why higher intensity exercise cannot continue in the same muscle group for more than 80 seconds or so at the most. Even a one second rest gives the body a chance to flush waste products and start replacing energy substrates, so even that one second break will let you go a while longer. Moving from one position to another and allowing momentum to carry the weight through a range of motion both provide rest for the muscles, even if it is momentary in some cases, and will extend the set time beyond 80 seconds if there is enough rest for energy replenishment. Anyhow, I wanted to make sure everyone has a clear idea of how important carbs are to an athlete. You can't perform without them. Period. If you don't eat them, your body will tear itself apart and create them from your own tissue, and that is the worst thing an athlete can have happen to him or her. Don't try to maintain a low carb diet if you need to perform athletically.

Some people that are fat adapted can take very few carbs and working well.... but they generally don't do much endurance work. SOME high intensity work but not a lot. Most carbs go into PWO window.

Generally, high fat low carbs is the best way to "cut" fat anyway because of less of insulin response and such besides the fact that carbs draw water into the cell.

Yea, and getting fat into the diet makes your body produce more of the enzymes that break down fats for energy. There are definitely some people whos bodies work differently, but that is really rare.

There are definitely some people whos' bodies work differently, but that is really rare.

Actually not as much a matter of being rare, as it is simply our cultural preference for carbs over fats. The body performs quite well on a higher fat diet, even in terms of endurance work. Our physiological need for carbohydrates is actually quite low.

One author, Dr. Stephen C. Cunnane, has written a very interesting book, Survival of the Fattest, about the essential evolutionary role of fats in brain development and physical health overall. In fact he traces many of today's health concerns (among them decreasing brain size!) to a lack of essential fatty acids in our day to day diet. It is interesting to note that this is but one among a growing body of work examining this same hypothesis.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Wow, that's cool! I am going to look into that, thanks for the info Coach!

Coach Sommer said:

Our physiological need for carbohydrates is actually quite low.

Yes, look at eskimos/inuits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit#Diet

The typical Inuit diet is high in protein and very high in fat - in their traditional diets, Inuit consumed an average of 75% of their daily energy intake from fat....

Anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson lived with and studied a group of Inuit. The study focused on the fact that the Inuit's extremely low-carbohydrate diet had no adverse effects on Stefansson's health, nor that of the Inuit. Stefansson (1946) also observed that the Inuit were able to get the necessary vitamins they needed from their traditional winter diet, which did not contain plant matter

Coconut is very high in fat, but I have read the fat acts differently and is likely not to end up "stored as fat", but rather gives you energy and can help you lose fat.

Lol that's pretty ironic rubadub.

Fat intake helps you lose fat.

I personally think it is stupid when people say that if you eat fat you will get fat.

I guess it's that kind of thinking that led to so many diet plans and so forth.

Having said that, you still need a reasonable amount of carbohydrates in your diet. Nothing is going to change the basical processes of cellular metabolism, and the primary energy system that most athletes, and gymnasts in particular, work in is the anaerobic glycolysis system. That burns glycogen as fuel, which is sugar. Our bodies can make sugar out of fats and proteins, but that happens fairly slowly. Nothing is going to change the fact that a strength/power athlete is going to want a caloric intake divided into 25-35% from fats, 20-25% protein, and 45-55% carbs. That's for absolute maximum performance. You can obviously perform at a pretty high level with moderate alterations to these ratios, but for your absolute maximum potential you're going be in those ranges. Each athlete will need to determine which levels of macronutrients(fats, proteins, carbs) make them feel the best and perform the best.

slizzardman said:

Having said that, you still need a reasonable amount of carbohydrates in your diet. Nothing is going to change the basical processes of cellular metabolism, and the primary energy system that most athletes, and gymnasts in particular, work in is the anaerobic glycolysis system. That burns glycogen as fuel, which is sugar. Our bodies can make sugar out of fats and proteins, but that happens fairly slowly. Nothing is going to change the fact that a strength/power athlete is going to want a caloric intake divided into 25-35% from fats, 20-25% protein, and 45-55% carbs. That's for absolute maximum performance. You can obviously perform at a pretty high level with moderate alterations to these ratios, but for your absolute maximum potential you're going be in those ranges. Each athlete will need to determine which levels of macronutrients(fats, proteins, carbs) make them feel the best and perform the best.

********** But how about people who need to lose fat?

Brandon

********** But how about people who need to lose fat?

So long as you are in caloric deficit you will lose fat. The main reason to avoid fat if wanting a caloric deficit is merely due to the fact that fat is a very dense calorie food, thus you have to eat less than you otherwise might. If anything, a higher fat component in your diet can benefit fat loss by conditioning your body to use fat instead of sugar for fuel.