I know there are many people out there who will use the excuse of not being able to afford a gym pass so therefore they can't workout. Now they are either A) Able to afford it but just don't wanna goto the gym, or B) Legitimately cannot afford it. I have sympathy for people who feel intimidated by the gym atmosphere with all the big muscle guys grunting and the shredded fitness girls strutting their stuff, but what I don't have sympathy for is people who just are too lazy too workout.
"But you need weights and machines to workout!?!"
NO! You are wrong! The weights are your body and the resistance of gravity; and the machine is what your body turns into when you put the effort into training.
I myself used to have the mindset that you could never get a good enough workout to gain muscle without using weights. Once I decided to try out MMA training for a couple months though, I quickly saw that I was very wrong. The bonus about this style of training is that you are usually doing things in a circuit type fashion, so there is very little, if any rest. This means that your heart, lungs, and muscles will all be working together to maintain this intensity. So you are gaining the entire range of health benefits due to conditioning the whole body.
" Ok great Mr. science guy, shut up and tell me how to build mass without the gym!"
Alright, alright people I'll stop yapping and get to the tricks you can use to build mass for free.
1) Speed of reps- Now since you are using bodyweight and gravity as your means of resistance, then you need to find ways to make things harder. One of the best ways is to play around with your rep speed. Now this could either mean going down very slow during a pushup, or jumping as high and as fast as you can during jump knee tucks. Going slow or fast will enable different fiber types and also force your body to use more muscle fibers. Remember that the body likes to adapt to things so playing with the speed will really confuse it, thus disallowing adaptation.
2)Using 1 limb- Now this is pretty self explanatory. The body likes to walk on both legs at once, do pushups with both sides, and pullups with both sides as well. So trying to do the same things using just one side will be much harder for the body. It will cause your body to use fibers that it wouldn't usually use during regular movements, or cause certain fibers to be used to a greater extent. Also since you don't have the other side to stabilize you, you're core will be forced to work harder.
3) Make your own weights- Who in the hell needs dumbells and barbells that weigh exactly a certain amount!? Pffffttt. Gimme a couple of sandbags and throw them over my shoulders and make me squat!
Use soup cans or jam jars ( shout out to Steph Mervyn) . Pick up your grandma and carry her around.
If you got some old tires go flip them around the yard or throw them around.
Get some paint buckets ...clean ones....and fill them up with water. Use them for arms curls or doing a farmers walk. "That's easy" . Well how bout you fill them up until they're close to the top and try going as fast as you can without spilling any? or do that but up a set of stairs.Let me know how that goes for ya....
4) Goto a playground- Now I don't suggest you go there if you have a sleazy looking van, a dirty mustache, overcoat, and dark glasses. Well, now that we cleared that up, lets explain. You ever look at the male gymnasts....and now I don't mean that way you sick minded people! Those guys are compact, defined, and JACKED! Now I can tell you right now that they don't goto the gym and hit up some bench press then do some arm curls to look like that. They do many exercises that involve balance, constant resistance on the muscles/joints, and explosiveness. They do the Still Rings, Floor, Pommel Horse , Vault, Parallel Bars, and High Bar. Now at your typical jungle gym, there are usually monkey bars, rings, and other various bars and poles....lol poles....AHEM....so why not go test your balance on the monkey bars, do dips, do chin ups on the rings, try doing the human flag on the pole....actually maybe don't try that one, you may get hurt. But you get my point!
5) Workout with a friend- I guess this sort of fits in with make your own weights, but I felt like it needed it's own section. If you look online there are many great exercises that can be performed with a partner. Along with that you can obviously modify exercises that you would usually do solo, with the weight of your friend as resistance. For example, the classic piggy back. Try doing squats with someone hanging off your back. It is much harder than having a perfectly straight bar resting nicely on your back. Working out with a friend also is very helpful psychologically. It will motivate you to work harder, and make things more enjoyable if you have great people in your life like I do. Hell you can make a competition out of it if you want, or even have like 2 minute wrestling matches.....and I don't mean busting out a Rock Bottom or Stone Cold stunner.
Now just like in many of my other articles, I am in no way saying that these are the only ways, and that I am some expert in these things. I am speaking from my personal experiences along with my knowledge of Kinesiology. I am also not going to list every single exercise and modification that you can do with just bodyweight and partners. This is the age of the internet and alot of the times there is great information out there for these types of things......along with a steaming heap of bullshit lol. Thankfully if you are following my blog and reading these articles, you should be confident to know that I don't fuck around. I do my research and verify that what I'm saying is true. Hence why I don't hold back from my use of explicit language at times, or show how I truly feel about something.
So get out in your yard, basement, local park, playground, school field, WHEREVER ! Try some of these things out and GET CREATIVE and HAVE FUN!
Demon
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