So I've been doing bodyweight exercises semi-frequently for the past few months, and while I definitely feel stronger and can do way more reps of push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and lunges than before, I feel like I look no different and I've only gained one pound. I want to have less scrawny looking arms and shoulders, and for my butt to not be a pancake for once in my life. Not sure if this is shallow, but it would help a lot with motivation if doing this shit that my body really doesn't enjoy doing actually left some visible impact.
I know these things take time, but I'm wondering if my approach is wrong. What's usually the best way to actually build visible muscle? Is it about how much weight you lift or what? I feel frustrated. Hope this doesn't count as doomposting, just saw that's against the rules, I'm just looking for tips and venting at the same time.
I've been doing bodyweight exercises for about 2 months now and I've put 5kg of solid muscle on. I don't track my diet, I know that some days I undereat massively. Follow the recommended routine on the bodyweightfitness subreddit. Do it 3 times per week.
The general rule is that once you can comfortably do 8 reps of an exercise, you need to make the exercise harder. In bodyweightfitness this either means changing the exercise or adding weights to yourself with a belt or whatever. Being able to do lots and lots of reps won't give you size. It'll just make your muscles more endurable. Doing low reps high intensity is where size is at.
Okay this is solid advice I like this.
"Recommended routine" seems to mention a lot of equipment like rings and dip bars? Idk if I'm reading the right thing, but what would you recommend I use if I don't have rings or a sturdy table? I could probably figure something out, I've got some rope and a pull up bar, but if you have a recommendation I'd like to hear it before accidentally breaking something or ruining the exercise.
You can snag a walker with no wheels from thrift stores or Amazon, if you're solidly under it's max weight capacity. It's perfect for dips
The RR can seem to be full of jargon to a newcomer by the way, so if you need any help figuring stuff out just ask. I still haven't quite figured out how to structure the ab triplet part of the workout.
It's all somewhat doable without all the equipment but they won't be nearly as good as the real thing. Look up bedsheet/door incline rows - they're fucking tough on the grip strength but they're as close as you'll get to rows. Dips you can do off a chair, but honestly that version never felt like they were doing much for me. This could be different for you - I was already quite sporty before I started so I've progressed through the progressions quite quickly I think.
I ended up finding my local outdoor gym area and doing the full workout with proper dips and rows and it was a hell of a lot better. Did it rain or shine, and after about a month I decided that I was motivated enough to start buying some equipment.
Bought a pair of rings for £20, and it was a bloody good purchase. Means I can do rows, dips, special pushup variations, different ab moves, all from the comfort of my doorframe pull-up bar.
Take the plunge, maybe spending 20 quid will give you the impetus to keep going, for the sunken cost fallacy.
If you set up what you think your ideal recommended routine would be, I can help you find alternative exercises until you buy a set of rings. Obvs I can help set one up for you if the RR looks like jargon.
Oh wow thank you so much 🤩
Wait there's a children's playground right near my apartment and it's super well lit and near a bunch of houses, so maybe I can go there after work to use their monkey bars and stuff lol.
Might take your advice on the rings purchase, I definitely am that kind of person.
just want to say- I've done this routine both in an outdoor jungle gym and at home w/ some rings and a pull up bar. if you can swing the $$ on the rings and pull up bar, they're not too expensive and can save some time, but doing it outdoors is huge. I also overtrained my pushing muscles, got injured, and I'm now training my back heavily to make up for it. make sure you're doing a lot of back work, pushups accentuate a lot of the problems posture-wise that come from the desk.
Ya definitely do that if you can. When lockdown first started the outdoor gym area got barricaded off, but the kids play area didn't. Saw all the local meatheads making good use of the monkey bars and whatnot.
Just a caution with the big lift stuff: Once you build bulky muscle you must keep lifting to maintain it. If you don't those muscles will quickly balloon into fat and you'll look like every gym teacher who can't hold a phone to their ear.
Lift to get yoked, keep lifting or you'll get thiccc.
If you've got 30 bucks, rings to hang from your pullup bar are a great investment.
Look in actual street fighting the fash terms being able to run and having endurance is going to count for as much or more than being super fucking swole. You don't need to be able to bench 300 lbs to knock some chud out, you need to be able to land a solid punch in the jaw, and then dance out of the way of any counter attack. You need to be able to run from the police. Being bulk is cool and all but for fighting you want cardio and endurance as much as muscle.
rtfq
she didn't ask what's the best routine for smashing fash heads in with lead pipes and then leading a guerilla warfare campaign in the mountains
she asked how she can get some visible gains
Personally, I will shoot myself in the face before I ever start doing lots of cardio. Fuck cardio.
My workout in rehab was pyraminds of bodyweight squats and pushups. Sometimes they're called "ladders" or whatever but the concept is the same.
For a pyramid of ten you do 10 pushups, wait ten seconds. do 9 pushups. wait 9. do 8, rest 8. all the way down to 1. Then do 1 again, and work your way back up to 10.
It took me a month doing these every other day to reach a full pyramid of 10, coming out to 110 pushups. The next month, I was up to 12. In three months, I was doing 21. That's over 460 pushups in less than 20 minutes. You will not look huge. But you will be big stronk
Do you do a pyramid of squats and one of pushups on the same day or alternating?
I alternated, and I would recommend that as well. Working your entire body that hard every day will not be pleasant, especially when the soreness kicks in.
Once I got really comfy, instead of resting, I'd swap to crunches. Or wear a backpack with extra weight in it. But don't worry about that shit now. Focus on reaching 10.
You need rest days. That's when your muscle fibers repair themselves and you actually get stronger. If you don't have rest days you're just fucking yourself up.
Yes, this is true, but as long as you aren't working the same groups of muscles for 24-48 hours you're good.
In my previous post when I said "instead of resting" i was referring to the moments in between pyramid sets, which would normally be spent doing nothing.
I eat a fuck ton of chicken. You really need a lot of protein to build muscle. Probably way more than you think. I don't know where people are getting this "drink a gallon of milk" stuff from but I am going to pass on shitting my pants.
Didn't Arnold always used to say "milk is for babies" whenever they'd ask him if he was a milk drinker? Yeah I see it's a thing after I googled. There's no way my body would tolerate that though.
It doesn't sound healthy to drink that much milk. Milk has a lot of hormones and stuff in it.
You don't do bodybuilding to be healthy. That shit is hell on your kidneys and heart. You do it to be swole af. If you want to be old-school healthy eat a diet with almost no sugar in it and walk 20 miles every day.
walk 20 miles every day
For the John Muir bonus, walk ten miles up a mountain and ten back down every day
I miss the gym so much. The burning social pressure to be strong and thin just hits different from inside my home. 👀
On topic: Getting toned takes a long ass time. And you need a good diet to go along with it. I remember getting stuck because I didn't eat enough. Oh how the times have changed.
See I'm weak and thin, going for strong and thicc 👀. But I've been having some great chats in this thread about food and workout plans, I think I'm well prepared for making a more focused effort at it.
A good rule of thumb is more weight = bigger muscles. For bodyweight exercises that means harder exercises. What you eat is also extremely important, you can't build muscle without eating more. A quick and easy way is GOMAD, gallon of milk a day, but that's not for everyone :D
Also I am not a professional, this is is just what I have read and remember.
that's what the brodudes do lol, they eat their regular meals and this. If you just eat more than you usually do you should be fine, just make sure you get what your muscles need, protein and stuff.
I used to live with a guy who would wander around all day with a jug of milk in his hand. Which was fine, whatever, he was a bit eccentric anyways. The problem was he would never rinse and recycle them, and they would just pile up in his room...
Then the dude would have the audacity to wonder why he couldn't seal the deal with girls in his milk-stank bedroom, and would just work out harder.
I've been getting the eat more advice from everyone in the thread, I guess that's what I gotta try for now 😑
it's a bit of a meme, does work but a lot of people also get pretty fat doing it at the same time. If you're a scrawny woman you won't need to do something so drastic, simply an extra meal or slightly larger portion sizes will do
I’ve been trying to motivate myself to start working out. I have a 25 lb dumbbell but I’ll have to do mainly body weight stuff. Just never can find motivation to actually start doing it
In our "exercise testing and prescription" class in college we looked at a study where people were made to resistance train a muscle group 2x per week, and the results were that it took something like 6-8 weeks for individuals to start seeing increase in cross-sectional area (e.g. increase in actual muscle mass [muscular hypertrophy]).
It turns out that the path of least resistance for an 'untrained individual' to adapt to a challenging physical stimulus is to make a number of "neural adaptations" before cross sectional area in the tissues needs to increase (motor neuron recruitment, frequency coding changes, decreased activity in antagonist muscle groups, reduction in protective mechanisms like golgi tendon organ, etc.)
This is one of the hardest things to overcome IMHO, because you have to ask someone basically to commit to something like 12-16 challenging training sessions on average before they start to look better (which seems to be what most people want, myself included). It is a pretty big ask to have someone commit to that on faith alone, and I think, one of the reasons that most people will drop out of a new exercise program.
Of course, it is also critically important to continue to supply a progressively challenging stimulus to each muscle group/exercise/motion, so you may need to find ways to add resistance like incorporating therabands/rubber tubing or other ways of adding mass to your body for body weight exercises. For example, you might use a chain and carabiner to hang a 25 lb weight around your hips while doing dips or pull ups.
I know a lot of ppl are all about body weight fitness but I didn't start actually building a ton of muscle until I started lifting. Got a barbell and some weights. Lift heavy shit.
Yeah, I'd like that ideally, Covid just makes it difficult. Barbell and weights is spendy so bodyweight feels easier to get into I guess.
I made a starting bar out of steel pipe and pvc. https://barbell-logic.com/diy-training-bar-and-plates/ Weights out of some sets of old brake disks I got from friends and family that work on vehicles. Put a piece of 2" PVC in the center of them and filled the disk with concrete. Course this is all because I have the resources to do that. Not everyone has the tools to do it.
I actually just ordered a real bar cause the one I made can't handle higher weights. But that starter bar did a good job.
Maybe look into a kettlebell? You can do most movements that you can do with a barbell, as well as others (turkish get up!) that are really good. Also it's small and cheap.
Will a dumbell do? I tried Turkish getups a bit, but they didn't really feel like they were doing much, think I'd need someone to show me how to do them correctly in person.
Were you doing them with just body weight, or weighted? A dumbell can work, I just think that for at home a kettlebell works better for compound movements. Squads, deadlifts, etc. are possible with a kettlebell, where they're a little more awkward with a dumbell. I also think on average kettlebells are more affordable than dumbells? Though it might depend on where you are. Think about it this way, you can do pretty much everything a dumbell can with a kettlebell (and the kettlebell is better bc since the weight is off-center you have to stabalize it, making it more "work", which is a good thing) but you can't do everything a kettlebell can with a dumbell.
Yeah, with my dumbells. Kettlebells always felt awkward to use, but maybe the stabilizing thing you said is why.
Oh you already have dumbells? I thought you didn't have anything. If you already have dumbells then I wouldn't worry about a kettlebell, though if you need to upgrade weight look into it. Were you holding them correctly? There's a certain grip that makes it feel more natural IMO. I can't reccomend kettlebells enough, you won't end up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger with them but you can certainly gain weight and "fill in the gaps" that focusing on non-compound movements can give you.
How much protein are you eating? I've worked out while eating normally and while making a conscious effort to eat on something approaching a bodybuilder's diet, and it makes a difference in terms of muscle mass.
I've got some protein powder I put in a fruit smoothie after workouts. Like a half or 3/4 scoop worth. Other than that Idk, I know my eating is pretty inconsistent but I'm trying to eat more.
You probably need to eat a LOT more. There are many ways to calculate that but here's one from a quick search just to give you an idea
https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macronutcal.htm
Hm, it says 2100 calories for working out with a sedantry job, that doesn't sound like a ton, nutritional facts say a 2000 calorie diet is standard right? But I haven't been counting calories, maybe I've actually been way under that.
Oh fuck, my bike commute, I bet that burns hella calories.
Edit: Wait, an entire cup of white rice is only 200 calories?? Howwwww I thought it would be like twice that 😑 Okay I'm definitely underfed, we've discovered the problem.
Protein powder is a good way to go -- it's quick, and you can add more pretty easily. As for how much protein is optimal for building muscle:
To increase muscle mass in combination with physical activity, it is recommended that a person that lifts weights regularly or is training for a running or cycling event eat a range of 1.2-1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, or 0.5 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight.
https://www.acsm.org/docs/default-source/files-for-resource-library/protein-intake-for-optimal-muscle-maintenance.pdf
Some studies show that consuming more than 0.8 grams per pound (1.8 grams per kg) has no benefit, while others indicate that intakes slightly higher than 1 gram of protein per pound (2.2 grams per kg) are best. Though it’s hard to give exact figures due to conflicting study results, about 0.7–1 gram per pound (1.6–2.2 grams per kg) of body weight seems to be a reasonable estimate.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-protein-per-day#muscles-strength
This is in line with what I've seen before, and with what's worked for me. I usually aim for 1 gram per pound of body weight (just because it makes the math so easy) and if I come up a bit short some days I don't sweat it. It sounds like that would be significantly more than what you're currently doing, though, so hopefully this is a simple way to get more out of your workouts.
I'll try, I guess I gotta get a kitchen scale too to measure my protein powder
Does your protein powder container come with a scoop? A lot do, and it'll tell you on the package that one scoop = 25 grams of protein or whatever. That's probably the easiest way to do it, and then I just google stuff like "protein in a half pound of chicken" or look on the nutritional facts for other foods.
Okay I am baby thank you for walking me through this
I will read the scoop when I get home
Hey, you're already doing the hard part -- working out. Hope this helps.
You're gaining weight slowly, you're doing a proven program, you're doing everything right. I didn't start to see my body change until about 6 months in, so keep that in mind.
If you want to make any adjustments, my two recommendations are getting a pair of rings for your pullup bar, and doing the 5/3/1 accessories in addition:
50 pull, 50 push, 50 of each leg in as many sets as you need. Do an easy exercise, like if you can do 10 pullups, do 50 bodyweight rows. If you can do 10 muscleups, do 50 pullups. Get it?
That kind of volume is what you need to do to get bigger.
Wait I have people in this exact threat telling me that low volume high intensity is for getting bigger, how do I know what to believe??
Either way I do like this routine idea, I will save this
Do both. Do heavy and a few for your main exercises (pullups, pushup variations, dips, etc.) Then lots and light for the 50, 50, 50
