isometric does good to your muscles.
[quote]dannyrat wrote:
Mate, you need to get ‘the naked warrior’ by Pavel. He doesn’t recommend silly-number sets, saying not to really go above 5 reps, and that you can just increase the difficulty of an exercise, once you can do more than five reps.
Like the pullup- you progress to a pullup leading into a row of your bodyweight. You get the idea. Get the book[/quote]
I like this forum, because I started one thinking of the same…
I must accept and admit I was wrong, the only way you grow out of bodyweight exercises is when you are not as good enough on them as to go over 15 reps on the first sets.
To me, it’s staying between 15 and 8, sometimes drop to 6 for a finisher…
My workout became a twice a week per bodypart workout, pushing and pulling and I do about 8 exercises: dips, bench presses with barbells (incline, devcline and flat), crossovers,flyes, pec dec and pullovers and I start each one with a 15-rep approach set, and then up the load, so I get less reps after those initial 15 reps, and keep gauging up the load and dropping the rep numbers because of it, until I hit my heavy 6-rep weight, stying 1 rep or 2 away from failure.
In crossovers, pullovers, pec decs flyes and dips or pushups, I just go for maximum reps, 2 or 3 sets.
If i was doing only dips and pushups, i would need to add weight so I got 15 reps on my first set and the laod was so heavy i couldn’t repeat it, getting less reps on my second or third set, and probably I would add weight or do the exercise eith the smae load than I started with, until I hit a set below 5 reps, let’s say my first 4-rep set, I’d go lower because I am not using as much volume or exercises as in my gym routine.
I have done it for about 2 months now and truth is, i am seeing a change, I feel like I gained 5 pounds of muscle, I think I lost 4 of bodyfat and won 2 of lean muscle, so I look much better now…I’d advice to use bodyweight exercises with added weight only, or as complements of a gym routine.
I know purists will sa bodyweight exercises with a belt or vest are not bodyweight exercises, so we can call them “structural-focused resistance exercises”, for the resistance is your weight and an added weight on a vest or belt, and it is centered on the torso area, so you move yourself with an added load, unlike moving a load towards and away from your torso.