I’m not disagreeing with the notion that weight-based strength training doesn’t produce great results. I’d be the most willfully ignorant human being blogging about fitness if I believed that. People get healthy and strong with weights all the time and have since antiquities. That’s not what I’m disputing at all. What I am disputing is that you can’t get strong without weights. That is what irritates me.
The truth is that you can get strong with no other resistance other than what you can generate with your own body. Just because it hasn’t gotten the attention that weights received over the past 8 decades doesn’t mean that it’s an illegitimate form of strength training.
Now, every form of strength training has inherent risk of injury. That is true for bodyweight-based and weight-based strength training. On the other hand, I think that the risk of injury is greater on the latter. Often times, weight-based strength trainers are more interested in things outside of the health of the body. As far as some are concerned, the ability to hoist more iron off the racks is the only test of health that matters. To others, it's the ability to make the muscles bigger is what counts the most. There's more life and strength training than these visceral pleasures.
BW-based strength training is different. It’s evolved into a more holistic and comprehensive approach to health and strength that’s more devoid of ego than weight-based strength training has devolved to. This isn’t to say that weight-based strength training couldn’t be a more complete package. It’s just the way things have gone in the past 55 years. This is where my statement about weight training has come from:
“I have no problem with weight training other than weights cost money and they’re hard to travel with. I have a problem with weight lifters, however.”
In the end, your health and strength is a result of your habits. Since you can do BW-based strength training without anything other than your body, it’s an overall superior method of strength training than weights.
So, what do you think?
2 comments:
I have to agree with you here. You can get in amazing condition from just bodyweight training, I mean think about it, you have no risk of injury from bad form, you dont have to rest alot if you want to do daily strength excercises and best of all, YOU DONT HAVE TO JOIN A GYM! I mean I have a gym, and i train with both weight and bodyweight but if i had no gym i wouldnt care, i'd just do bodyweights like a madman. I train for MMA so I feel I need to get the best of both worlds. However I would love to do advance bodyweights like you see with the guys on the bar in jungle gyms!
This is Mehrad from RossTraining btw, I saw your link in your sig.
Keep up with the good work!
Justin, you are so full of it. One only gains strength if you use the Doctor's Miracle Muscle Tonic! (step aside sonny, your crowding my action.) Now folk as I was saying...
PINGGGGGGGGGggggggg.
Tao
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