Bodyweight Exercises

The variety of bodyweight exercises is mind boggling.  Pushups, for example.  You've got regular pushups, pushups with your feet raised, handstand pushups, Hindu pushups, dive bombers, spiderman pushups, close grip pushups, wide grip pushups - whew!  And each one of them is someone's favorite, and someone will swear that this pushup or that pushup offers the fastest or quickest or most efficient way to strengthen, lor ose weight, or increase muscle mass.  So how are you to choose which ones to use in your routine?

You could try various combinations of exercises, based on routines you design yourself.  If you have a lot of experience with the various exercises, this is not a bad way to go.  You are going to know how your body responds to which exercises.  You are the best person to see which combinations give you the best results.  You can vary your routine, switching up the schedule or order of exercises.

Another option is to use a routine recommended by an experienced teacher or coach.  The advantage of this method is that you have a base routine to work from while you learn more exercises, or learn variations on the various exercises.  It also should have the exercises organized in a fashion that will maximize your results.  You need to take care to select an expert that will meet your goals.

Another advantage is that you can select several routines, depending on how you want to use them.  You may have one routine for weight loss, another for conditioning, and another for increasing muscle mass.  You can have a Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday, and a Sunday routine (remember - a tremendous advantage of bodyweight exercises is that they can be done every day and on consecutive days).

Finally, the routines from experts provide you a skeleton of a routine that you can add to or switch up, as you develop in your abilities.  For example, you can replace the "regular pushups" in your routine with "Hindu pushups" or spiderman pushups, as you become stronger.  Or you want to take a "muscle building" routine and, with some slight changes, make it more of an aerobic or conditioning routine. 

Bodyeight exercises by their nature fight the body's natural tendency to adapt to stress and plateau.  However, it is still a good idea to use routines from several experts, and to occassionally use another routine for a period of time, to "shock" your body into new growth.

While multiple routines from the same expert may each be different, all the routines will reflect that expert's philosophy or approach to fitness and exercise.  Some experts build their philosophy around a core group of exercises, while other experts may build their routines around aerobic conditioning as opposed to mucle mass building.  By selecting routines from a variety of experts, you will pick up a variety of philosophies and approaches to the use of bodyweight exercises.  Eventually, you will be designing your own routines that fit your body and your schedule.  Having the broadest and deepest body of knowledge and experience at your disposal will assist you in designing the best routines for you.

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