Gaining Muscle By Using Your Body Weight – The BW Workout

The other day, I got an interesting question:  Is it possible to get jacked by working out at home with my own body weight?

Before I go through the logic of my thinking, I’m going to Tarantino this post, and give you an answer right off the bat…yes.  Picture male gymnasts, or inmates….Jacked.

When it comes to gaining muscle, there are four factors that determine if you will reach your goals or not:

  1. Volume – How many sets and reps you do.
  2. Frequency – How often you workout.
  3. Intensity – How heavy you lift (loading).
  4. Nutrition – Eat to Win.
Let’s Tarantino things again and start at #4.
Nutrition
You won’t reach any of your goals unless your nutrition is dialed in.  If there’s a theme going on in any of my articles, it’s this: practice good nutrition, and look good naked.
Intensity
The easiest way to build muscle is to lift heavy weights.  This gets you strong.  With strength, comes size.  This is the reason that powerlifters are forced into higher weight classes.  They get stronger, but gain more muscle.  There’s no way getting around it (unless you’re a girl).  Once you are stronger, you can handle higher volume with heavier weights, and ultimately get swole.

All of the great classic bodybuilders lifted heavy. Franco Columbu was no exception.

Frequency
Frequency is a funny one.  If you increase frequency in accordance with volume and/or intensity, you won’t recover optimally.  Yet, if intensity is low, frequency needs to be high (you need to workout more often).  This is important for working out with your bodyweight, as it is difficult to keep intensity high with calisthenics.
Volume
Most lifters don’t need high volume until they are an intermediate/advanced lifter.  The exception to the rule is during bodyweight workouts.  Once you get reasonably strong with your own bodyweight, you will need to increase volume in order to increase the work done.  In other words, if your workout is too easy, step things up.
Now, how do we manipulate these four factors in order to build muscle with our own bodyweight?  Well, in the start (first week of working out), you will be relatively weak doing bodyweight movements.  Since you are weak, this means that for the first week or so, the intensity is high (everything is relative).  This means that you can afford to keep volume low, and possibly frequency as well.
As you get stronger, intensity will decrease, and you will have to increase your number of sets and reps (volume), and frequency.  This means possibly working out with your own bodyweight six days a week.
To take the guesswork out of the equation, I wrote the workout program for you.  This is a habit based program; meaning that you will gradually increase intensity, volume, and frequency, and build muscle over time.  It is actually a variation of the Travel Workout that I wrote a while back.
Here’s what you do:
Week 1 (4 days of working out this week):
A sample day’s workout will look like the following:
  • 1 Pushup
  • 1 Lunge on each leg
  • 1 Pullup
Do this whole workout four days this week.
Week 2 (4 days of working out this week):
Now you’ll be using a ladder rep scheme of: 1,2,1.
  • 1 Pushup
  • 1 Lunge on each leg
  • 1 Pullup
  • 2 Pushups
  • 2 Lunges on each leg
  • 2 Pullups
  • 1 Pushup
  • 1 Lunge on each leg
  • 1 Pullup

Week 3 (4 days)

Now you’ll be using a ladder rep scheme of: 1,2,3,2,1.

Week 4 (4 days)
Now you’ll be using a ladder rep scheme of: 1,2,3, 4, 3, 2,1.
As you can see, the first four weeks is all about building work capacity.  You should now be reasonably strong with your bodyweight.  The next month gets a little tougher:
Week 5 (5 days of working out this week)
Now you’ll be using a ladder rep scheme of: 1,2,3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2,1.
Week 6 (5 days of working out this week)
Now you’ll be using a ladder rep scheme of: 1,2,3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,1.
Week 7 (5 days of working out this week)
Now you’ll be using a ladder rep scheme of: 1,2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,1.
This is a total of 49 reps for pullups, lunges (each leg), and pushups.  Week 5 is the mark of incredible progress.
Week 8 (6 days of working out this week)
Now you’ll be using a ladder rep scheme of: 1,2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,1.
Notice how you will be working out 6 days this week.  This may seem like a lot, but the workout you are performing only take about 10 minutes, so suck it up.
Now you’re on your own.  Every two weeks, increase the ladder by one rung.  If your workout only takes 10 minutes to perform in Week 8, by the end of the year, your workout will probably be 30 minutes per day.  This is a small investment for big size gains.
Also, it is important to note that you probably won’t gain a whole hell of a lot of muscle in the first month.  This is a good thing, as it gives you more time to focus on your nutrition.
Good luck and feel free to send me your before and after shots.

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