Today I want to share with you a video blog on whether bodyweight exercises are good natural bodybuilding choices for gaining muscle mass.
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Are Bodyweight Exercises Good For Muscle Mass Gains?
Yes. Bodyweight exercises are great for gaining muscle mass. Since you have to carry your own bodyweigh through space you activate more muscle fibers and thus, that activates more muscle fibers than doing the exercise in a machine which constricts you to a 2-dimensional universe where not nearly the amount of muscle fibers is needed in order to move the resistance.
How to Make Bodyweight Exercises More Effective and Challenging
You can do this by slowing down the motion and using perfect form! So for example, take 4 seconds to go down, hold yourself as you contract the muscles at the bottom of the movement, go back up taking 2-3 seconds and then taking a full 1 second contraction at the top of the movement.
Remember that Time Under Tension is one of the key variables for gaining muscle mass. At the beginning it may be hard for you to feel your muscle contractions but as the brain learns how to activate your muscle fibers you will feel your contractions that much better.
What Are Good Natural Bodybuilding Bodyweight Exercises?
Bodyweight exercises are an awesome way to train at home when you have no equipment available. Below are a list of exercises that you can do at home:
Chest: various push-ups
Back: various pull-ups (do need a pull-up bar for this)
Shoulders: Hand stand press
Biceps: close grip chins
Triceps: close grip push ups, triceps dips
Quads: squats (press with ball of the foot), various lunges (press with ball of the foot), sissy squats
Hamstrings: squats (press with ball of the foot), various lunges (press with ball of the foot), sissy squats
Calves: standing two-legged calf raises, one legged calf raises
Abs: various forms of crunches and leg raises
Advice For Beginners
Just do 1 set of each of these exercises 3 times a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday for example). After 3 weeks you can go up to 2 sets. By week 6, you can increase again your sets to 3.
As you get more advanced, depending on what your goals are, you can opt to split your exercises by having an upper body day and a lower body day. At this time you can add more sets as well (4-5 per exercise doing between 10-15 reps and resting 40 sec to 1 min in between sets).
If you have found this knowledge useful you may want to check out the MI-40 program, which is jam packed with muscle building information. And if you choose to get it, I will also give you my Body Re-Engineering program (with over 21 weeks worth of workouts) for FR E E. For details and review of the MI-40 program click here.
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