Can Body Weight Exercises Replace Weighted Exercises

This will probably turn out looking like I hate body weight exercises and I believe that anything not involving a barbell is a waste of time. That isn’t completely true. There is a time and place for both, though I definitely prefer weighted exercises because they are just so much more fun to do. I just wanted to say that first before I got into this article. Anyway, today I want to look at the two and show why body weight exercises absolutely cannot replace any weighted exercise. By weighted, I mean a barbell that is loaded onto the body’s skeletal system in some way. Not grabbing 3 pound dumbells in your hand and doing squats, that’s practically a body weight exercise.

Benefits of Weighted Exercises

Bone Density Increases

A mechanical stress is a stress where a force causes a deformation. Placing your bones under a loaded barbell causes a mechanical stress. But don’t freak out! I’ll admit the idea of weight deforming your bones sounds absolutely horrible but this stress leads to your skeleton getting stronger. Through the bone remodeling process your body puts down calcium deposits as and adaptation when your body is put under this type of stress. Your bones get more dense and get stronger which leads to you being a stronger person and can withstand more without getting hurt. It is a great benefit of lifting weights.

Joints

Your joints get two major benefits from weight. The first benefit comes from stronger muscles. Every muscle crosses a joint, that is how your body is able to move. These muscles get stronger which leads to the joint getting stronger. For example let’s look at the knee joint. Your quads and hamstrings cross your knee joint. If these muscles are correctly contracting to stabilize the joint, the tibia, fibula, and femur can’t move. A problem can arise when the amount of force being applied on the joint is greater than what the quads and hamstrings can withstand. This is how people tear ligaments in their knee. Of course, there are other external factors that can’t be avoided but having greater joint stability will lead to more durable joints and less injuries. The second benefit from lifting weights is the efficiency of the neuromuscular system. One big aspect of training heavy is that your neuromuscular system gets more effective and can contract muscles more efficiently. By the way this is another reason why only lifting light weights doesn’t work. A more efficient neuromuscular system leads to stronger muscle contractions and this also leads to stronger joints. Which, again, prevents injuries.

The Mental Benefits of Pushing Through Something Hard

It is hard to explain the feeling of pushing against a weight that feels like it isn’t going anywhere. The amount of willpower it takes to lift heavy is very underrated. Lifting heavy with a barbell can be uncomfortable and it is definitely against the norm in fitness centers across America where you will see the treadmills and exercise machines filled up but the free weight area remains relatively empty. People try to avoid physical exertion in all aspects of life. It is a sad fact of modern life. By lifting heavy you will build a level of mental fortitude that most people don’t have because they aren’t training for it. For the younger lifters out there, this is one of the biggest benefits early on from training.

So How Do These Things Make These Exercises Better Than Body Weight Exercises?

Strength

You can only build so much strength through body weight exercises. One principle that has been mentioned plenty of times in previous articles is the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle. This is the idea that you need to cause enough of a stress that needs a recovery period and then an adaptation is produced. Eventually, no strength gains will be made by only body weight exercises because the body has already produced an adaptation for the amount of force you are putting on your body (which is your body weight). Because of this, you can’t produce a stress great enough to disrupt your body and cause the recovery and adaptation phases of the cycle. As opposed to lifting weights, when a weight gets too easy you add weight and produce a whole new level of force that your body has to try to adapt to. Then you add more weight, and this cycle continues. Sure, your arms and chest might burn really bad from doing 250 push ups and you might be getting a muscular endurance benefit from it, but you probably aren’t getting stronger (unless you are new to resistance training). Anyone who tells you that strength can be improved by only body weight exercises is lying to you. That’s not to say you can’t get “fit” or “in shape” depending on your definition of the two, but strength development won’t happen.

Transferable to Life

Let’s be honest, holding your 30 second planks isn’t going to transfer to much in life. And don’t even get me started on the whole new “functional training” BS where apparently standing on a ball and doing isolation exercises is supposed to do something for you. Functional training is picking something heavy off of the ground correctly in a way that prevents injuries. If there is one thing that I strongly believe in, it is that most back injuries could be prevented with correct training. How do most people pick something up off of the ground? Extended knees and bending at the hip with a rounded spine. This is not how you lift weights and it certainly shouldn’t be the way you pick something up off of the ground. This skill, and strength, is developed from lifting heavy not from doing planks or body weight squats.

No, Body Weight Exercises Aren’t All Bad

This really wasn’t supposed to be a rant against body weight exercises, I just can’t stand to here people talk about only doing exercises to get “toned” or to make their stomach look better or some other stupid crap they hear from people who look like they workout. So I do want to end with one major benefit of body weight exercises. Although this is mainly for those who are either new to weight training or can’t perform the movement correctly. This benefit is learning correct movement patterns. I would never, ever, try to get someone who has never squatted to squat with weight on their back right away. A body weight squat is a great way to learn how to engage your hips, sit back, and drive your hips up. This also can be applied to those people who struggle with the correct form when adding weight. You can ingrain the correct movement pattern in your brain without weight, that way when you add weight you don’t have to worry about engaging your hips first, driving your hips out of the bottom position, or any other cue to squat correctly. It just happens automatically since you practiced it over and over again.

But nothing replaces a well performed barbell squat, bench press, and deadlift. Nothing could ever replace serious strength development.

This article was originally published on nicolasbolt.com