How to build muscle by exercising with your own weight

Rule 1. Increase the load

All bodybuilders gradually increase the load to keep the muscles growing. When you use external resistance, it doesn't take imagination and creativity. You just need to add weight to the barbell, take dumbbells or heavier weights.

For those with their own weight, this is a little more difficult. Since you cannot instantly increase your body weight, you will have to modify the exercise itself. Here are some options:

Increase the difficulty of the exercises … Upland push-ups can be replaced with handstand push-ups. There is always a more difficult exercise.
Increase the final limb load … Replace lunges with one-legged squats. The load on the leg will increase.
Increase your range of motion … If you are good at pulling up to the chin, try the chest pull-up.

Rule 2: Use Medium Reps

Absolute strength training uses a low number of repetitions with a high load. This means that you need to choose such a difficult version of the exercise that you do it no more than five times in the approach.

When it comes to bodybuilding with your own weight, you need more reps. Danny Cavadlo recommends using 8-12 reps with 60-80% of your 1RM. It is important that the last repetitions in the set are really hard for you. This will increase the damage to the muscle fibers, which will trigger the muscle hypertrophy mechanism.

It seems that it is very difficult to determine the percentage of the maximum load on the horizontal bar. In fact, this is not the case. Just choose the difficulty with which you can only do the exercise 8-12 times, keeping the correct technique. This will be 60-80% of your 1RM.

If you can do the exercise 20 times, it's time to make it harder. If, on the contrary, after three repetitions the technique begins to suffer, choose the simpler option.

Rule 3. Share the load

Most calisthenics exercises involve all muscle groups at the same time. This is great if you just want to keep yourself toned and develop functional strength, but it can get in the way if your goal is to build muscle.

For muscles to grow, you need to work harder on them. Workouts that target specific muscle groups or bodybuilding splits work well for this.

Here are two classic splits:

Upper body / lower body.
Push-ups / pull-ups / legs.

If you use the first split, it's simple: when you train your legs, your arms are resting, and vice versa. In the second classic split, you train your chest and triceps separately on the day of the push-up, the back and biceps on the day of the pull-up, and the legs on the third day. During this time, your muscles will just have time to recover.

Rule 4. Don't be afraid to gain weight

To gain muscle mass, you need to increase your calorie intake. But be prepared for the fact that along with the muscles you will gain fat.

Of course, each person has their own physiological characteristics, but gaining lean muscle mass without some amount of fat is unrealistic. This is why people gain muscle mass first and then lose fat. You cannot do this at the same time, so build your diet depending on what you are doing at the moment - gaining muscle mass or drying out.

Accept that the appearance of your dry, sculpted body may deteriorate slightly when you are on weight. Just remember that you are doing this to build muscle. When you change your diet, the fat will go away, but the muscle mass remains.

Rule 5. Be creative with classics

Danny Cavadlo was once approached by a young worker, Alex Ceban. He was a true purist in calisthenics training and prepared for his first bodybuilding competition using his body weight exclusively.

Alex could do anything from one-arm push-ups to one-legged squats, but he lacked the knowledge of isolated training. He turned to Kavadlo to find out the most effective bodyweight exercises to help him work the trapezoid.

Danny Cavadlo advised him to do a modified version of the handstand push-up. To use the trapezoid more, he suggested putting your hands on high stops. This helped to increase the range of motion and shift the load from the deltas to the trapezoid. He also advised wide-grip pull-ups.

Using only his body weight, Alex prepared for the competition and took first place at the WNBF Amateur Men’s Physique.

As you can see, bodyweight training is enough to unleash your body's potential. Stay creative, then you can always load the desired muscle groups more.

Rule 6. Training must be hard

This is the most important rule on the list. Without hard work, there will be no results. If you do not feel tension during training, then you are sparing yourself.

You should not just perform some movements, but make efforts and waste your time. Only intense and regular exercise combined with proper nutrition will help you achieve your goals.