STOMP said:
well you said you aren't currently "lifting weights" but you are trying experiments to get bigger and stronger correct??? so are you saying you are doing like bodyweight workouts or using kettlebells. i mean what are you doing right now to get bigger and freakier? the reason i ask is because i've had some recent injuries with my back from lifting heavy weights and playing football for years so if the time would come where i would have to stop lifting for an extended period of time to heal up i could maybe still do bodyweight workouts to keep my musclemass up or at least minimize loss.
In that case sure i'll tell you what i've been up to.
latly i have found a way to actualy build mass using bodyweight exercisses. Bsicaly it works on the pricipal that the resistance is an unchangeable variable so simply doing repetitions in the same way that you would in your wieghted moves would be of little to no effect.
so what else can you change to iniciate muscle adaptaion? This leaves repetitions, frequency and force. it's obvious that taking repetitions anything beyond 20 will do you no good for strength and size because you switch over largy to endurance work at that point. But what will force your muscles to grow is changing the frequency of your workouts and the force that is applied in each set.
Let me explain the force end. In classic endurance sets you move at a slow to moderate pace to increase the max amount of reps that you can do. So when your goal is strength and size it only makes sence to do the exact opposite of this. Currently i do sets of 5 on my harder bodywieght exercisses and sets of 20 on the simple ones. I do this because once you pass these points no matter how hard you try you'll start to slow down and it becomes endurance work. So it's best to keep the sets short and fast instead of long and slow. Remember no bouncing during reps
So if before you did 50 reps of pushups in one set, split it up into 5 sets of 10 and do them as forcfully as possible.
As for the frequency end, you really have to play around with this and find out what is right for you. Basics of this is the more times you can workout within the week the better, within your bodies recovery capability. Currently i do 2 days on 1 - 2 days off depending on my soreness. just listen to your body.
anything else?
oh yeah and EAT! just because they are bodywieght exercisses dosen't mean there no demanding.
edit: one more tip, in my harder exercisses i have found it helpfull to use my weakest exercise to set the benchmark for how many sets i will do for the rest of the hard workouts that session. doing this allows me to focus on force without worry of going over that strength endurance barrier. it can also even out lagging body parts.
