It’s no longer a mystery that bodyweight exercise is an effective way to gain muscle. People all over the internet have proven this time and time again, yet there is still some misinformation out there.
Understanding that your bodyweight is merely another form of resistance is important to gaining muscle with bodyweight.
Essentially, your body doesn’t know the difference between using a barbell, kettlebells, or your own weight. To be precise, there is a difference in terms of competence for your body, but in terms of intensity, you can replace a barbell workout with a bodyweight replacement with practically no detrimental hypertrophic consequences.
Progressive Overload
You must follow the time-honored idea of progressive overload if you want to grow muscular utilizing only your bodyweight. It claims that in order to become larger, stronger, and better, you must gradually raise the complexity of your workout.
When it comes to bodyweight training, this means increasing reps, sets, and, most crucially, exercise difficulty with time.
As an application of the progressive overload, more experienced bodyweight strength trainers might consider improved technique, shorter rest times between sets, and other small improvements.
Training Volume
Building muscle, according to many fitness experts, is heavily dependent on the quantity of exercise volume. Most people have to have higher training volume to reach the desired gains. It’s fantastic if you can gain muscle with low-volume strength exercise but not many people can.
If you don’t grow for whatever reason, you may need to adjust your workout amount. The general guideline is that you should do approximately 25 repetitions per muscle group each week with sufficient intensity. You may require more or less. To figure this out, you’ll have to experiment.
Compound Exercises
In weight training, it’s a no-brainer that larger compound actions that require vast motor units create far more muscle than tiny isolated activities.
Fortunately, there are few methods to isolate a specific muscle group in bodyweight strength training, and most exercises require you to use your entire body, which is excellent for growth. This should be a guiding concept in your workout choices.
Consume More Calories
Despite popular belief, diet is significantly more essential than exercising for muscle growth. You can have the best program in the world, but if your food isn’t right, you won’t develop any muscle after the beginner gains.
If you’ve been exercising for a while and haven’t gained any significant muscle, you’ll need to track your calories and macronutrients. You must calculate your daily “maintenance” calories and then raise that number by 10% to 20%.
Sleep
Finally, if you do not adequately invest in recuperation, putting on substantial muscle will be difficult. Sleeping for at least 8 hours every night is the single most important thing you can do.
Forget about the other supplements that claim to help with healing. Nothing beats getting a good 8 hours of sleep each night plus a power nap throughout the day.