Build Muscle Without Weights

If you're someone who does not belong to a public gym and prefers to workout in the comfort of your own home, but have minimal equipment to do so with, one question that you might be asking yourself is if you can really build muscle without weights.

Are those heavy weights really necessary to create the body that you're going for or can you get away without weights and still see great results?

Here are a few of the top things that you must consider to answer this question properly.

What Level Are You Currently At?

The very first question that will really determine whether or not you can build muscle without weights is what level you're currently at. Were you a regular gym-goer in the past and have now just decided to move away from it? Or are you a brand spanking new beginner who is just getting started with working out and resistance training? In the case of this building muscle without weights, the latter person will see much greater gains then the former due to the fact that their muscles are not already used to the stimulus of heavy resistance training.

If you take someone who was regularly going into the gym and performing lifts at 50, 80, or even 100 pounds, and then move them away from this and get them to do some push-ups, you can rest assured that they won't really feel all that challenged by this.

They'll be so strong already from all that weight lifting that they're doing that bodyweight exercises simply won't provide enough of a stimulus for them to really spark any new growth.

The beginner though, they will see some good gains since their muscles haven't been exposed to any stimulus yet so everything is new to them. They'll begin performing some bodyweight exercises and this will act as a good form of resistance that their body has never encountered before and thus, strength and size gains will begin to take place. Generally speaking, the more advanced you are with your training, the more you are going to need to lift heavier and heavier and the more important having those weights there will be.

What Type Of Goals Do You Hope To Attain?

Second, also ask yourself what type of goals you hope to attain. Are you looking to build up maximum strength and really increase your size? Or are you looking for a relatively small amount of muscle gain but you just want to refine your muscles and possibly enhance your agility, speed, and balance?

If you answered the latter, again, you can get great results training without weights. Since you can still definitely find ways to stress the muscles through bodyweight training and if you work hard enough burn off a number of calories, this can be a great method for bringing out maximum muscle definition and getting small size gains if the diet is in order.

But, on the other hand if you have the goal to get as strong as possible as quick as possible, working against as large of a resistance as you can will be key and you simply won't be doing that if you aren't lifting weights.

Do You Have Other Methods Of Resistance?

Also consider if you have any other methods of resistance available. If you happen to have very strong exercise bands, that too will help improve your progress. While bodyweight exercises are good, working with bands can be better because they will stimulate the body in much the same manner as weights would.

But with this one keep in mind too that there will come a point, especially in the case of males and their training, where you will outgrow resistance bands and they will simply not provide enough of a resistance to continually challenge those muscles.

At first you'll see great results, but as time goes on, those results will begin to slow and may even come to a full stop.

It's also important to note here too that those who are slightly overweight and who are carrying more body fat, hence have more body resistance, will be able to build muscle better than those who are much leaner and of a lower weight. Again this boils down to how much of a load is being placed on those muscles and if you have a high amount of fat mass, that equates to a higher load level.

What's Your Diet Like?

Finally, the last thing to consider is what your diet is like. If you don't have your diet in order then you won't build muscle regardless of whether you're lifting weights or not, so that will be a limiting factor.

If you're performing bodyweight exercises that are working you at a high intensity and are eating enough calories that the body can easily begin to generate lean muscle mass, you will see some progress.

If you are performing a high intensity bodyweight conditioning program but aren't eating enough calories, then you'll get leaner and more defined, but you won't get any bigger.

Getting size gains and getting leaner require two opposing calorie intakes so it's going to be best to decide which is your primary goal and work towards that for the time being.

So there you have the key points that you should always aim to remember about whether you can build muscle without weights. It definitely is possible to see some results without adding the weight stimulus, especially if you're new to working out and are just easing yourself into it, but for most people, the results will be superior over time, especially for the advanced trainee, when that weight stimulus is added.

That's not to say you can't do some workouts that don't involve weights and some that do, as mixing it up like this is a great way to keep the body responding and also prevent overtraining from setting in, but to really get maximum size and strength gains, a high resistance load should be in place.

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