Social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic has us all trying to stay healthy at home. That means a whole lot of body weight routines will be circulating through the internet. But should body weight training be seen as a replacement for strength training with weights? Is it the same?
Let’s Get Back To Basics: What Is Strength?
Strength training movements that utilize body weight are, technically speaking, strength training. You are using your muscles to move a load. That being said, air squats and push ups are to barbell back squat and bench press what dancing at the club is to dancing the lead in the Nutcracker. They can be put in the same general category but we all know they aren’t really the same. This isn’t a perfect analogy, of course, since a big part of the difference between the two dance forms has to do with training and talent rather than physical attributes, but the sentiment is correct: Just because two things look the same doesn’t mean that they are.
You can understand the difference between body weight training and training with weights if you just focus on the definition of strength. Strength is defined as the amount of force you can produce against gravity. Imagine, for example, that you want to pick up a two hundred pound barbell from the floor. Gravity pulls the weight down and you pull back, away from the ground. It’s a tug-of-war between you and gravity! To win, you’ll have to pull harder than it does. That’s it; that’s the whole game.
Now, the key concept here—and this is where many people get confused—is that force production is not cumulative. The amount of force you need to overcome gravity and pick up two hundred pounds is the same whether you do it once, twice, or ten times. It might get harder for your muscles to produce that force due to fatigue, but that’s a whole different topic. The force output itself stays the same, no matter how tired your muscles are when they do it. This is not a surprising concept if you just take a moment to think about it. I’m sure you don’t need to be told that lifting five pounds one hundred times is not going to be the same as lifting five hundred pounds once.
This is the heart of why body weight routines can not be viewed as comparable to routines that involve weights. If you want to increase the amount of force your body can generate in any meaningful way, you will eventually have to add load. More reps of air squats or chin ups does not change the equation.*
What Body Weight Exercises Are Good For
None of this is to say that body weight exercises are useless or that you should not do them. On the contrary, they can help in a lot of ways. First and foremost, they can help you work on mobility and neuromuscular control (basically, coordination) which are both useful things that ultimately play a role in strength. If you do lots of reps, body weight exercises also condition the muscles, making them more efficient at nutrient utilization and energy production. Plus, there is nothing wrong with good old fashioned movement, period.
All of that said, the point is that body weight is limited when it comes to the most important part of strength training, which is challenging your body to produce lots of force. To do that, you need load. There just isn’t any way around it.
Related: How To Tell The Difference Between Strength And Endurance
*Ok, technically you can get improvements in force output without using weights, such as through the use of plyometrics. However, this is also going to be limited by simple practicalities, which is a bit more than we want to get into right now.