Great, Quick Ways to Build Muscle Without Weights
You know, you can build muscle without weights. It’s true. Some of the most famous athletes of all time looked like they could bench press a truck, yet never touched a weight. Probably the best known of these is NFL star Herschel Walker,
Herschel Walker, when playing football for the University of Georgia. You can see that he definitely had muscles, although he had not lifted weights yet.
who built plenty of muscle using only bodyweight resistance exercises. He didn’t use weights at all until he entered the NFL, but by then, his physique was already incredibly well developed.
Unless you have similar genes, and follow a workout similar to Herschel’s, don’t expect to look like him unless you follow a high intensity weight training program for years. However, even with no weights, you can still make some tremendous progress, and develop a nice symmetrical build with a fair amount of muscle, and low body fat (requires the proper diet).
Here is a great program to build muscle without weights. If you don’t have access to weights or any fitness equipment, these exercise will pack on the good pounds. You’ll have to train a bit differently that you would with traditional weight training, though. One disadvantage is that you may find your workouts take a bit longer, and you may have to use some creativity.
Decline Push Ups With Blocks – These are push ups with your feet elevated. Getting them about a foot off the floor works great, but you can change it up every so often to keep your muscles guessing and growing. This exercise is analogous to doing incline bench presses, except that you’re pushing up your body weight. Place your hands on wide, stable blocks about 4” high. This lets you go down farther without your head hitting the ground for a greater range of motion. You can also use raised push up handles if you happen to have some laying around. If you can do more than 25 of these with no added weight, you will really benefit from wearing a backpack loaded with books, soup cans, or rocks to increase the intensity.
Dips are great for building chest, triceps, and delts. You can do them on a bench, like this woman, or using dip bars.
Dips – Dips are one of the best upper body exercises of all time. One huge bonus, and essential for the purposes of this post, is that you need no other weights to get a great workout. You can change the angle of your body and the width of your hands to hit your muscles differently. Lean forward more to shift the emphasis from the triceps to the chest. You can do them using a bench, or with some sort of parallel bar arrangement. Each will target your chest, shoulders, and triceps differently.
If you start getting to where you can do 20 or 25 of these, put on that backpack, and try it again. One caveat with respect to dips. Make sure you go down far enough, so that your upper arms are past parallel with the ground. Be careful however, dips can aggravate shoulder problems with some people. Take it slow and easy, and discontinue doing them if you start having shoulder problems.
Wide Grip Pull Ups In Front - One of the all time great back builders. This will get you that “V” back look. Most people never need to add any weight for these, because to do them correctly your body weight will usually suffice. If you can do more than 15 of these, use the backpack trick to add some weight.
Just what is “doing them correctly”, anyway? Make sure you get full range of motion. Grab the bar about 3 feet apart, with your palms away from you. Hang until you are at full extension, then pull yourself up so the the bar touches your upper chest. Concentrate on feeling your lats squeeze as you go up. Use good form on this one. There is a strong tendency to cheat and use all sorts of other body movements to complete your reps. Make sure your legs don’t move during these. Let them hang straight down, or keep them bent, but don’t use leg movement to help you. NOTE: You can actually use some additional movement to help you complete a few extra reps, but only after you have gone to failure using good form.
Chin Ups – Another great back exercise, with more emphasis shifted from the lats to the biceps. This time grab the bar with your palms facing you about body width apart (about 14” – 18”). As with wide grip pull ups, let yourself hang all the way down, and make sure you come all the way up. Concentrate on feeling the contraction in the muscles you’re trying to work, i.e. the back and biceps. At the completion of the “up’ phase, your chin should be above the bar. No cheating please, except to squeeze out a couple of intensity boosting reps.
You can do squats with no weights in your hands. If you need to use weights, grab a 5 gallon bucket full of water, rocks or sand, just as the illustrated person is using the dumbbells.
Squats – Keep your feet a few inches wider than your natural standing posture. Normally about 12” – 18” is fine. It si very important to concentrate on using good form so you do not injure your lower back. You want to squat down so that your upper thighs are parallel with the floor. Do not let your butt come up first, then use your lower back to lift the rest of the way. Decrease the angles of both your hips and your knees evenly when performing each rep. Hold a 5 gal bucket of water in each hand to increase intensity if your rep range starts getting too high.
This is one exercise where you may be held back by not using additional weight. If you are overweight, or have not trained your legs very much, your body weight may be all you need. Your legs have a tremendous capacity for strength however, so before too long you may need to use the backpack trick to add some weight.
Hill Sprints – If you have access to a relatively steep hill, a few (4 – 6) sets of 50 yard sprints up it will definitely pack some muscle on your lower body. You’ll get cardio benefits too, as hill sprints amount to interval training. Sprint up for about 50 meters as fast as you can, then walk down and repeat the process. You’ll notice your quads a’ burnin’ during the trip back down. If you’re running these on grass, wearing football or soccer cleats really helps with the traction.
Crunches – While not, as I demonstrated in my post on most effective ab exercise as few weeks ago, the most effective ab exercise, the basic crunch still a lot going for it, and if you don’t have access to any fitness equipment, you can still get some benefit from doing them, as your abs will no doubt attest to after a few sets..
Chair Knee Raises - Sit on the front edge of a dining room chair. Grasp the edges of the chair by your butt, lean back so your body is about 15 degrees away from vertical. Keep your feet together and extend your legs out., then retract them back until your thighs are vertical. This is great for both your obliques and abs. Do about 20 or 25 reps. It’s about as close to captain’s chair knee raises as you can get without having a captain’s chair.
Here is the Build Muscle Without Weights program: (remember to warm up first, then take it slow to avoid injury)
Day 1
Dips – 5 sets to failure
Decline Push Ups With Blocks – 3 sets to failure
Wide Grip Pull Ups In Front – 5 sets to failure
Chin Ups – 3 sets to failure
Day 2 – rest
Day 3
Hill Sprints – 6 x 50 meter sprints
Squats – 8 sets to failure
Crunches – 4 sets to failure
Chair Knee Raises – 4 sets to failure
Day 4 – rest
Day 5 -
Crunches – 4 sets to failure
Chair Knee Raises – 4 sets to failure
Day 6
Dips – 5 sets to failure
Decline Push Ups With Blocks – 3 sets to failure
Wide Grip Pull Ups In Front – 5 sets to failure
Chin Ups – 3 sets to failure
Day 7 – rest
Remember to eat properly if you are trying to build muscle without weights (or with them, for that matter). Have a protein supplement before going to bed, and one after your workout. Eat protein in the morning as well, either eggs, or a protein supplement of some kind. Many people that are training do not get adequate protein distribution.
You want your protein intake well distributed throughout the day, taking in the amount your body can assimilate at any one time, but no more. This is different for every person, but a general rule is 1/4g/lb of lean body mass at any one sitting. So, for example, if you are 200lb man with 15% body fat, you have a lean body mass of approximately 170 lbs. 170/4 = 42.5g. That means you can eat roughly 42 grams of protein at each meal.
The point with regards to eating is that you should spread your meals out so that your body can maximize nutrient assimilation and metabolic rate, and minimize fat storage. Strive for at least 5 meals every day.
Get at least 7 hours of sleep every night, preferably 8. I posted about the importance of getting enough sleep a few weeks ago. You muscles grow when you sleep, and your HGH secretion happens then as well.
That about wraps it up for today. So, you really can get pretty darn ripped, and build substantial muscle without weights. You’ll have to change up your workout obviously, but if you do everything right, you will gain muscle.
Have a great Christmas!
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