The reason it’s tough is that to build more mass with just bodyweight training means you’ll have to have a TON of patience, commitment, and dedication. Shoot, this goes with any training.

However, when it comes to building mass with bodyweight training it’s all about progression and if you want to get yourself stronger, faster, and in this case, BIGGER, you’ve got to force your body to adapt by making things harder over time.

Now, before I get into sharing my top 3 methods on how you can build up more athletic muscle with just bodyweight training alone, let me make myself clear in stating the fact that if you truly want to build more athletic mass in the fastest time possible, bodyweight training alone isn’t going to be your best bet for this.

Obviously training with external weights like barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells will always be your best way to slap on functional mass quick, but that doesn’t mean you can’t put those tools aside for a while and still achieve gains in powerful muscle.

So, with that being said, let me dig into some of my favorite methods for adding mass onto your frame with just bodyweight training.

Bodyweight Workout For Mass #1 – Bodyweight POWER / STRENGTH Contrast Training.

This method is by far one of my favorite ways to train in general.

Start off with a low rep power-based exercise first to get the body firing on all cylinders, then finish the set off with a strength-based exercise that works the same movement pattern second to add more volume.

I like to do this with weighted movements a TON, but I love doing it with just bodyweight training as well. One of my favorite examples of this is when I train specifically to build up the chest.

A go-to set up for this would be first to hit a set of 5-10 explosive plyo push ups where you’d want each of these reps to be as explosive as possible.

After you finish those you’d then move directly to a strength-based movement working the same plane of motion where in this case you’d go to some regular push ups or ring push ups to increase the intensity and crank these out for as many reps as you could get done just stopping a few reps short of failure.

Here’s some other example of this set up:

Lower Body

A1: Squat Jump x 6-10
A2: Bodyweight Pause Squats x 20

B1: Lunge Jumps x 5-8 / Leg
B2: Step Ups x 10 / Leg

C1: Broad Jumps x 5-10
C2: Single Leg RDL x 15 / Leg

Upper Body

A1: Plyo Push Ups x 5-10
A2: Bar or Ring Strict Dips x sub max

B1: Kipping Chest To Bar Pull Up x 5
B2: Strict Pull Up x sub max

C1: Explosive Recline Row x 5-10
C2: Feet Elevated Recline Row x sub max

***Quick Notes on this method –It’s best to try and go directly from the power movement right into the 2nd movement with little to no rest – Do anywhere from 3-5 sets with 60-90 secs between sets and AVOID taking any of your movements to failure – we want QUALITY reps NOT, slow, grinding reps – there’s a time an place for that which I go into in Method #3 below.

Bodyweight Workout For Mass #2 – Density Acclimation Training.

My next go-to method for building up more mass with just bodyweight training is what I like to call, “Density Acclimation Training.” This set up is all about forcing your body to grow via progressive gains in volume over time.

The more volume you add in over time, the more you force your body to adapt by either growing bigger or getting itself stronger.

I many cases, you get BOTH. Take a look at some of the bodies that Olympic Gymnasts have.

These guys do LOADS and LOADS of volume of the same movements over and over and what happens over time is they grow because their bodies are forced to deal with the amount of volume they have to take on overtime.

Now, the set up for this method is pretty simple – pick two movements that work different planes of motion then use them in a classic superset fashion.

For example, You’d do 10 push ups then immediately do five pull ups back to back with little to no rest between movements. Repeat that 4-5 sets total taking about a full minute for rest in between sets.

BOOM. Lots of work done in a short period. Kind of cool I know, but this isn’t anything entirely new. The KEY to making this work for you is in how you use it over time in a progressive manner because again, that’s what it’s all about if we want to build mass = Increasing the amount of total volume you get done over time.

So, using the example above this is how we’d get this done.

● Week 1 – You’d do 5 sets of each movement (push ups x 10 / pull ups x 5).
● Week 2 – You’d do 6 sets of each movement with the SAME reps on each.
● Week 3 – You’d go back down to 5 sets of each movement but INCREASE the REPS of each to 15 and 10.
● Week 4 – You’d now go with 6 sets of each movement with the SAME reps on each from Week 3.
● Week 5 – (DELOAD) 4 Sets of each movement at the original reps you did in Week 1.

See where this is going?? In short what you do is slowly increase the amount of total volume you’d do each week, which makes it increasingly harder and harder over time.

You stick with this, and you’ll grow like a weed. I usually use this set up for around 4-6 weeks max then change things up or take a DELOAD week by cutting back the total volume (as you can see I added in for Week 5).

Something to keep in mind for when it comes to gaining mass is how it’s not just about the work you put in, but rather about the amount of REST and RECOVERY you allow yourself to get.

YES, you need to put in the work to beat your muscles down, but it’s only when we allow ourselves to recover when we truly grow new mass and strength.

So before I move onto my final bodyweight training method for mass, I thought I’d share another way I like to use “Density Acclimation Training” which is with the “AMRAP” method.

If you don’t yet now, “AMRAP” stands for “As Many Rounds (or reps) As Possible” and it’s truly one of my favorite methods to use. This setup is also simple (but can get BRUTAL).

Taking the example I used above with doing 10 push-ups immediately followed up 5 pull ups back to back, instead of just doing a fixed amount of sets, you’d now do the two movements for a set amount of time.

So, in other words, you’d crank 10 push ups then 5 pull ups and keep doing so for a let’s say 5 minutes. Maybe you get 4 sets of each in that time, perhaps not. You just get As Many Rounds As Possible in 5 minutes.

The week after you’d keep the reps the same and try to increase the total amount of volume you got the week before.

This adds an extra bit of challenge that always makes things more fun and exciting as when you have a set amount of volume you know you were able to get the week before; it pushes you hard to get to that same number or better.

After you’re able to increase the volume with the same amount of time, you can then increase the time up to 6 minutes, OR you increase the reps to 12 push ups and 6 pull up and keep the time the same.

Either way works as there’re many ways you could switch things up to progress.

The bottom line is to make sure and increase your overall volume each time, so you earn the right to advance ahead.

Good stuff.

***Quick Notes on this method –It’s important to focus in on QUALITY reps NOT, slow, grinding reps – Just like with Method #1 – avoid pushing your body into failure when you’re doing movements – there’s a time and place for that which I go into more detail next…

Bodyweight Workout For Mass #3 – Using Failure To Your Advantage

With this last method, it’s all about knowing when to take your bodyweight training movements to failure and when not to.

Most people train to failure every single set which is a major mistake that actually can cause you to go ass backward with your progress in strength and muscle gain.

YES – we want to go to failure now and then, but NOT all the time. The primary reason why you want to avoid this is, so you give yourself a better chance of recovering from your workouts especially if you’re trying to get a ton of progressive volume over time.

Trust me, if you always go to failure, your progress in adding more volume week after week is NOT going to go well. I know how it goes first hand…

Now, as I mentioned before, this isn’t to say you shouldn’t ever take your bodyweight training to failure. It is after all “the struggle” we put ourselves through from time to time that ultimately helps us grow.

If you’re going to go to failure with your bodyweight training movements, I always recommend you cut back on your total sets or make sure to decrease your overall volume. The rule of thumb here is it’s either training to failure OR volume.

You can’t have both and expect great results in return.

So, how do you use FAILURE to your advantage?? Well, you use the minimum effective dose to get the job done. With this, the saying, “More is Never Better” needs to come into play.

Because when it comes down to training to failure, “BETTER is BETTER.”

That’s the ONLY way it works. So with that being said, let’s look at how I would use training to failure properly.

I’ll just use push-ups as an example:

● Week 1 – Push Ups 4 sets x sub max reps
● Week 2 – Push Ups 5 x sub max
● Week 3 – Push Ups 2 x MAX FAILURE reps each set
● Week 4 – (DELOAD) – Push Ups 3 x sub max

For the 1st two weeks, you train using a fixed amount of sets while only going to sub max reps and AVOIDING failure. You’d increase the volume for Week 2 then on Week 3; you’d hammer the movement with just 2 MAX FAILURE sets.

These need to be ALL-OUT to complete failure for it to work. Push the limits.

The week after you’d come back with a tapered week to allow for a bit of recovery than from there, you could get back into the same set up as Week 1 to 3 is while increasing total volume for all weeks.

So something like this:

● Week 1 – Push Ups 5 x sub max
● Week 2 – Push Ups 6 x sub max
● Week 3 – Push Ups 3 x MAX FAILURE each set
● Week 4 – (DELOAD) – Push Ups 3 x sub max

The over scope of training to failure is to help you totally break down your muscles, so they come back stronger and bigger, but if you’re always doing this week after week, you’ll not going to allow enough time for recovery.

Remember at the beginning of this article how I hit on the importance of having a TON of patience, commitment, and dedication…

Well, there it is. So, there’s 3 of my go-to Bodyweight Training Methods for Mass. Have fun using these methods for new gains in athletic muscle!

The post 3 Ways to Set Up Your Bodyweight Workout For Mass appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Bodyweight training is all about the basics and the truth is, no matter how advanced you are, your body will always fall back on its base level of strength. Your overall bodyweight strength will always serve as the foundation and bridge to your other strengths.

When it comes to the basics of bodyweight training, you should be familiar with all of the essential movements: squats, lunges, push ups, pull ups, rows, and plank variations. You should also have the ability to climb, crawl, sprint, and jump. These are primal movements.

Obviously there are hundreds, if not thousands of different variations for each of the basic bodyweight training movements out there, but no matter what, all of them come back to being able to perform the basics.

Bodyweight training serves as your foundation and is the driver of all of your other strengths and skills. Strength tools such as kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, and sandbags are useless without having the proper bodyweight strength and conditioning foundation.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when young athletes or new clients come into my gym and they get frustrated when I don’t quickly put them under a heavy barbell to see how much weight they can lift.

Most of my clients (and even advanced athletes) have HORRIBLE form and technique when they first come in; this is totally normal, and quite frankly, all too common.

I’ve always made it a point to go bodyweight training first and to make my clients prove to me and themselves that they are strong enough to handle their own bodyweight correctly and efficiently before using other strength tools extensively.

Bodyweight Workout Program for Strength and Conditioning: Bodyweight Standard

Duration: 30-40 minutes
Frequency: 3x per week
Exercise Type: Strength training
Intensity: Steady, deliberate
Repetitions: Varies by workout
Rest: As needed

The rule of thumb I have for my clients and athletes is that they have a solid level of bodyweight strength before they go on to any external types of resistance. You should easily be able to perform the following:

1. Standing Poses – Build leg strength as well as flexibility in the hips and hamstrings.
2. 25 “Ass to Grass” Bodyweight Squats.
3. 5 Chest-to-Bar Pull Ups (any variation).
4. 25 Chest-to-Deck Push Ups
5. 25 Lunges per Leg Non-Stop.
6. 3 Handstand Push Ups OR 5 Pike Presses.
7. 20 Recline Rows.
8. 10 Hanging Knee Tucks.
9. 90 sec Basic Plank Hold.

The Bodyweight Gauntlet

One of the best types of tests that I like to put my athletes and clients through challenge their general bodyweight conditioning and strength levels is the Bodyweight Gauntlet.

I’ve always been a huge believer of training aggressively and pushing your body to the limit in order to take your results to the next level. Yes, there are progressions to follow, but the bottom line is that in order to get the best results possible, you must attack your workouts relentlessly.

Basics are always important, but intensity and focus should be number one over everything else!

The Bodyweight Gauntlet features four essential movements:

1. Push Ups – any variation

2. Strict Pull Ups – all grips and variations 

3. Squats – ass to grass only!

4. Burpees  – chest to floor with a jump at the top

Perform an all out, three minute set of each exercise and keep track of all of your reps.

For a beginner, this can get brutal real quick. As a person progresses overtime, they’ll start to see the differences in strength and overall conditioning quickly.

I don’t recommend an absolute beginner to take this on. I’ll usually have a complete beginner progress through each of the four basic movements first to get a solid base of bodyweight strength and conditioning built up before I let them loose on the Bodyweight Gauntlet.

While this may look like nothing more than a simple conditioning test, the real key to success is having a solid base of bodyweight strength to begin with. From there, it’s all about improving on this strength and increasing your efficiency of each movement over time.

Try it out and take the test to see where you’re at. Are you a BEAST or just a Proven Soldier? Leave your comments and score!

Beyond Bodyweight Training Basics

Now, beyond the basics of bodyweight training, you must understand that in order to get stronger with your own bodyweight, you must start to progress in difficulty.

Being able to bang out squats, push-ups, lunges, and pull-ups by the dozens or even hundreds is pretty good, but to what point? This will indeed help you achieve more conditioning-wise, but overtime, you won’t get that much stronger maximum strength-wise.

In order for your training to be truly effective in helping you gain more strength, you must start to build more strength with more progressed movements over time.

This is where different forms of advanced bodyweight exercises come into play.

A great way to enhance your training and make it more advanced is to make it explosive by increasing the speed of the movement.

While this won’t work strength directly, it will help the body move with more force and speed which will ultimately crossover into helping you increase in overall strength. The faster you can move, the better.

One of my main coaching cues to my athletes and clients is to always be as explosive as possible with your movements during the concentric phase. I want my people to be thinking about lifting fast, never slow.

Obviously, I want people to be under control during the eccentric portion of the movement, but when it’s time to contract, you must contract with speed!

An example of this would be the push-up. Imagine yourself at the top of the movement; as you descend down into the push-up, you want to keep your whole body tight from head to toe (core especially).

A key point is that your whole body should work as one solid unit, never in parts, so keep your whole body engaged throughout the movement. As you come down you want to be in control.

You don’t have to go slow, but make sure to be under control. This is the eccentric portion of the movement. Now, as you come back up, you want to imagine moving your body as fast and as explosively as possible.

This is the concentric portion of the movement and you always want to focus on moving as fast as possible here.

Once you start to really slow down with your movement and you can’t move as fast as you know you can, (i.e. you start to grind out your reps), that’s a good point to stop your set.

This is known as “submax” training and this is a very important key to focus on to help increase bodyweight strength overtime. I refer to this point a lot when training push ups, pull ups, and rows.

I see too many people do these movements to failure, and when you train like this all the time, you fry out your central nervous system.

To make a long story short, it takes your central nervous system a lot longer to recover than it does for your muscles, so whenever you train to failure, it’s going to take your body a lot longer to recover from your workout.

Recovery and Bodyweight Training

Getting stronger requires your body to recover, and if you’re always cashed out from taking all of your movements to clear failure, you’ll be struggling at getting stronger, faster.

The overall point of this is to focus on being FAST with your movements and avoiding taking your sets to failure most of the time. Be efficient and crisp with your movements and you’ll continue to progress. Just think: quality over quantity.

Another way to increase your overall strength is to use advanced variations of movements. Obviously, if you’re not someone who can do advanced movements, you need to work through your progressions.

When it comes to building up more strength via bodyweight movements, it should be a no-brainer to make the movement harder.

One of the simplest ways to make a bodyweight movement more advanced is by moving the positioning of your feet or hands.

I’ll use the push up as an example again: a simple beginner’s push up would be your regular push up from the floor, the next level would be a push up with your feet elevated on a box.

You could also implement the use of a suspension trainer and do push ups while holding the straps or having your feet suspended in the straps. You could also do extended range of motion push ups with your hands on medicine balls or boxes.

There’s pretty much a limitless amount of things you can do to progress.

You can implement speed and power into the mix by doing explosive plyometric push-ups which would be another way to make your normal push-ups even harder.

One of the top progressions would be to totally remove the opposite arm out of play and perform single arm push ups.

The point is, there are literally thousands of ways you could progress your different bodyweight training movements to make them harder. The harder you make them, the more strength you’ll build up in the end.

Switching over to the lower body, another example would be squat progressions. Obviously, you would start off with your basic bodyweight squat, making sure to always get your “ass to the grass” first and then progress from there.

One of the first things you could do to make it more difficult is to add an explosive jump at the end of your squat. This would be another example of manipulating the speed of your movement.

You could also hold your hands overhead in a prisoner position or an overhead position to make it more difficult. To take things up another notch, implement the single leg squat (also known as a pistol squat).

Bodyweight Standard Tips and Tricks

1. Focus On The Basics First

Master your basic squat, push up, pull up, row, lunge, and your abilities to sprint, jump, climb, and crawl. Once you get those down, you can then move on to the more advanced movements.

2. Train FAST

Focus on performing your movements as crisp, clean, and explosive as possible.

3. Avoid Failure

Grinding out reps by going to complete failure will have you regressing in the long run. Leave a few reps left in your tank each set. This will keep you fresh and allow you to train aggressively more often.

4. In Reference To The Bodyweight Gauntlet

Make sure you only do this type of challenge every 4-6 weeks since you will be pushing yourself beyond failure when doing so. Doing the Bodyweight Gauntlet or a similar type of extreme workout too much and too often will result in a decrease in overall results.

How To Stretch For A Bodyweight Workout

Follow the videos below for routines to warm up your entire body before a workout. For more tips on mobility and stretching, follow Onnit’s Durability Coach, Cristian Plascencia, on Instagram (@cristian_thedurableathlete).

Bodyweight Exercises and Workouts

The following are three different levels of workouts: Beginner A and B, Intermediate A and B, and Advanced A and B. The workouts are progressive in nature, so if you are a beginner, you would want to start on the beginner workouts A and B and then progress to the intermediates then hit up the advanced.

The workouts are set up in such a way that you’ll first hit an explosive/plyo-type movement to get the body moving fast, hyping it up for the rest of the workout.

From there, you’ll hit a few non-combative supersets using a mixture of upper and lower body strength movements, then you’ll end your sessions off with some core work. The advanced workouts end off with a short conditioning interval via a Tabata set.

If you wanted to use these workouts as a whole program, spend four weeks on each level like this:

Week 1 – A, B, A
Week 2 – B, A, B
Week 3 – A, B, A
Week 4 – B, A, B

With this, you would hit each workout six times, giving you plenty of time to increase efficiency on the different movements contained in each workout. After the fourth week, I would take an off-week to allow the body to recover, then come back with the next set of workouts at the next level.

Beginners Bodyweight Workout A

Muscles Worked: Legs, back, rear delts, core.

Beginners Bodyweight Workout B

Muscles Worked: Back, legs, shoulders, core.

Intermediate Bodyweight Workout A

Muscles Worked: Legs, chest, back, core.

Intermediate Bodyweight Workout B

Muscles Worked: Legs, chest, shoulders, core.

Advanced Bodyweight Workout A

Muscles Worked: Legs, chest, shoulders, back, core.

Advanced Bodyweight Workout B

Muscles Worked: Legs, chest, shoulders, back, core.

The post Basic to Beast Complete Bodyweight Workout Program appeared first on Onnit Academy.