I am not doubting the usefulness of bodyweight exercises, but to truly get overall muscle growth and strength you have to lift weights. As and instructor and trainer if the use of bodyweight were good enough to gain raw animal power I would have everyone doing them and throw out all of the equipment in the gym. If the comparison of bodybuilders is outside the scope of what we are looking at then I will bring up fitness competitors or any number of NHB fighters that train with weights. I actually have not seen to many gymnasts that don't supplement their training with weight training. Boxers also have went to using weight training to get the edge needed to win fights. Wrestlers are the same way. The ideology behind the use of bodyweight only exercises is slightly out-dated, very 70's-ish.
Most gymnasts do not compliment their training programs with weights. They use bodyweight exercises and leverage to increase resistance. The same goes for Russian wrestlers and sambo practitioners.
To gain a good overall build and uasble strength you need to have a complete workout and it must have: weight training, bodyweight exercises, plyometrics, and the use of heavy bag. To leave out any one of these areas will lead to mediocre performance from your body.
I don't consider that a complete workout. I advocate the use of kettlebells for weight training, but I think my point has been made concerning traditional weight lifting. The strongmen and pugilists of old often implemented bodyweight exercises into their routines, and made excellent use of kettlebells and movement based exercises.
The Gambetta method is a great guide on how to set up a workout, but using only bodyweight exercises for the workout is a great injustice to it's principles. Train your body in that manour, but you need to work with weights.
As I said before, I strongly support the use of kettlebells, which could be considered weight training, but I've been using the lingo that most people are familiar with, and I differentiate kettlebell use from free weight training as its usually found in gyms. Introduce yourself to Pavel Tsatsouline and the kettlebell. Look at the Spetznaz and Vladimir Vasiliev.
I used to be of the same mentality as you Floating Egg, but then I got this crazy idea of trying weight training to help my MA's. Having lifted for football and track gave me an idea of what I needed to do. It is all history from there.
Matt Furey thought the same as you until he met Karl Gotch. I started off with the weightlifting mentality and progressed to the approach that I have now. Once I stopped dismissing bodyweight training programs as outdated I knew that I'd never go back.
If some of you are at least curious about moving away from traditional weightlifting programs, I recommend
Pushing Yourself to Power . It's what introduced me to the possibilities of bodyweight exercises. It also makes use of Matt Furey's stuff so you don't have to buy more than one book. You can also preview some of the
exercises included in the book.
I understand that I'm fighting an uphill battle here, but that's fine with me. This debate won't end anytime soon, but I'm bowing out of this thread. If some of your are convinced by what I've said, that's great. The world isn't going to end if you're not.
