No equipment necessary, imagination optional.

So what are the benefits of bodyweight training?

• No equipment necessary: This is perhaps a double benefit. A bodyweight workout can be done virtually anywhere, preferably outdoors, and you can find countless places to do things like pull ups or dips.  Better yet, all you need for a push up is the ground.  Aside from that, the absence of equipment also eliminates the possibility of being able to make excuses for missing a workout.  At some point, almost everyone is guilty of talking them self  out of a workout because they’re too busy and the drive to the gym is too far or the weather is too bad, etc.  With bodyweight workouts, there is no excuse.  Weather’s too bad to drive? You can work out in a hallway.  Too busy?  Everyone has 5 minutes for some push ups.  It’s that convenient.
• Best muscle recruitment: Bodyweight exercises involve the full body no matter what the main focus of the exercise is.  Take a push up vs. the bench press.  Instead of lying down on a bench and using only your chest, arms, and possibly abs, a push up requires the use of all of the above ass well as your legs, glutes, back, and countless other muscles to stabilize the body as the main movement is being done.  Similarly, a well executed pull up is a great ab exercise, as opposed to a machine lat pulldown.  Unles most freeweight exercises, using your own bodyweight forces you to use the body as a single unit, and that means the rest of the body can’t slack off while one part does all the work.
• Good for athletes: Very few sports involve moving large amounts of weight in a single direction.  They usually involve running around, being agile, and generally being able to maneuver one’s entire body.  As opposed to lifting weights, which makes a body strong but also grooves a 1 dimensional, unnatural movement, bodyweight movements have the best carryover to most sports.  They increase kinesthetic sense and get you used to moving yourself around.
• You can use it for any goal:  Since these exercises can be made easier or harder with just a little thought, they can be used in many different ways.  A fast bodyweight circuit is great for losing fat.  Push ups and pull ups are effective muscle building exercises, and if they get easy, a quick adjustment like elevating your feet for push ups or adding a weighted backpack for pull ups is a great way to increase the difficulty to keep the gains coming.
• It’s the best fitness benchmark: This may be my favorite part of bodyweight exercises, especially pull ups.  Absolute measures of strength in the weight room don’t take the body into account.  Someone can add 50 lbs to their bench press, but if they put on 15 pounds of fat in the process [gaining weight, even non-muscle, can make lifting heavier weights easier], then that strength gain is not very useful.  However, bodyweight benchmarks are the true test of positive progress.  If someone goes from being able to do 10 pull ups to being able to do 15, that’s a good indicator of an increase in fitness.  The person either lost fat, gained muscle, or both.  Even if in this particular case the person gained 15 pounds, the increase in pull up numbers means the weight gain was productive – if the weight was fat, the pull up numbers would go down, not up.  Conversely, if a person is trying to lose weight, and manages to shed 10 lbs but goes from being able to do 10 pullups to just 6 or 7 in the process, then the weight lost was most likely muscle, which is counterproductive to fitness.  In the long term, people who train gain and lose either fat or muscle at different times depending on their current routine.  Using a bodyweight benchmark is a great way to monitor whether you’re moving backward or forward in your training.
• And finally, it’s just really cool: Some people find the physiques of bodybuilders and other similarly built people impressive, and to each his own.  On the other hand, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t find the incredible mastery of the body displayed by a gymnast to be absolutely awe-inspiring.  The effortless ways in which gymnasts and others who excel at bodyweight exercises move themselves around in midair or on rings or on the ground is something that is just seriously awesome.  As a plus, these people are often built as well as bodybuilders, without even trying to train for aesthetics.  Form follows function, and it’s impossible to get that good at moving yourself around while having a beer gut and skinny arms.

How often do you use bodyweight exercises? Any unique bodyweight exercises you’ve come across? Any unique ways to do traditional exercises like pull ups or dips either indoors or out? Leave it in the comments.

Also, a great way to catch a few more sunrises.

Morning workouts, before breakfast, are particularly effective fasted workouts since your last meal was presumably much longer than four hours ago.  This is the first benefit.  After a night of sleep, the body has switched from food energy to using stored energy, since the last nights meal was done digesting several hours into the night.  The body has already been using its fat and, to a much lesser extent, glycogen stores for energy.  Fat loss training in the morning prolongs this stored energy drain. Also, although most high intensity training will use glycogen (the form in which the body stored carbohydrates) more than fat, training in the morning can encourage the use of body fat due to the lack of food and, therefore, insulin. Insulin, which is released by eating carbs and protein, is a storage hormone, and it encourages the body to siphon away nutrients like fat and carbs from the bloodstream.  Without insulin, the body more readily releases fat into the bloodstream to be used by the body for work.

Along with releasing and using more fat during training, an intense workout raises metabolism for hours following training [anywhere from 8 to 15 hours depending on the study].  The benefit of getting this metabolic effect early in the morning is that it can last longer into the day.  Training later in the day, perhaps in the evening after work or school, will end up raising your metabolism but only for a few hours before you go to bed and the body winds down the metabolism as you sleep.  Training in the morning will ensure that the boost in metabolism last the full 8-15 hours.

Training in the morning is also beneficial for carbohydrate storage.  Glycogen, after being converted from carbs, is stored and used by muscle to do work.  When the stores are full, excess carbs are stored as fat.  However, an intense workout empties the glycogen stores, which means carbs eaten later in the day will go to muscle.  The body is also more insulin sensitive in the morning and after a workout, which means it directs carbs to muscle more readily.  Couple these two facts, and not only does the body burn more fat because of morning workouts, but it also makes sure nutrients and calories eaten later in the day are put to better use so they don’t negate the workout you just completed.  Generally speaking, it is best to get most of your calories for the day after your workout.  Training in the morning ensures this.

Training in the morning can have its drawbacks and restrictions. Most people are pressed for time in the morning, with school and work.  People hate the idea of waking up earlier, even when they go to sleep earlier to get the same amount of sleep.  A way around this is to keep workouts short and intense and to develop the habit of waking up earlier to train until it no longer feels like a pain in the ass (I know, easier said than done).  Resources can also be a problem, if you’re used to training in a gym.  However, simpler workouts involving running or bodyweight exercises can still be done.

Also, a note: in the morning, the spinal discs are filled with fluid because there is less pressure on the spine when lying down.  This enlarges the discs and can sometimes make the back stiff, especially with age.  It is important to warm up properly before training, and advisable to wait around 30 minutes after waking to do any exercise that loads the back.  This generally means heavy lifting, so things that don’t load the back heavily aren’t too much cause for concern.

Morning workouts are not a magic bullet that will burn 200% more calories or some such ridiculous figure.  It is simply a way to optimize the effect and effort of your workout.  However, if you already train, you may notice that changing the timing provides a little added benefit, and makes the effort more worthwhile.

Experiences?  Observations? Questions? Comments.