Ok, so we are stuck at home with little to no weight to throw around and we want to build some muscle mass, can this still be done?. Yes, it can be. Now it’s not ideal but at the bare minimum it will get you up and running while we are isolated.
Building muscle mass with body weight exercises is possible. This is primarily done through muscle hypertrophy. Muscles grow when micro tears occur. The body repairs these micro tears which then leads to the muscle becoming bigger and stronger.
How do we do that with just our body weight? As I mentioned it is not ideal, however we are currently living in non ideal times. To gain mass with body weight exercises you can approach this with a combination of the following, high rep sets, time under tension and tempo reps
Nutrition plays a huge part in putting on mass, but for this blog we will stick to body weight exercises. An example, you want to hit up your chest and arms. We will complete a superset of two exercises. A superset is completing one exercise followed by another exercise right after with no rest in-between
15 Push Ups then 15 Dips rest 30s and complete 5 sets.
You can vary the push up in many way’s, incline, decline, wide grip, narrow grip, slow ascend (concentric) or slow descend (eccentric), pause in the bottom with thighs off the ground and pause with arms extended in a plank position
Now for the dips, you can have your legs straight, have them bent and vary the speed as we did with the push up
This will certainly leave you with that “muscle pump” in your chest and arms!
This is a quick example of how body weight exercises will help build mass. We are breaking down the muscle then we would allow the body to do it’s thing and repair the muscle and boom, the muscle is bigger!
As I mentioned before nutrition plays a huge role in this and having that dialed in first ,would be the best plan of attack.
Give the work out a shot and let us know how it goes
Stay strong