Picture this: You’re crushing it at the gym, bench pressing your bodyweight with ease. You’re feeling pretty good about yourself, right?
But then you decide to try a set of push-ups, and suddenly you’re struggling to bang out more than a few reps!
If you’ve ever found yourself in this perplexing situation, know that many fitness enthusiasts wonder why are bodyweight exercises harder than weights.
But why is that?
I can tell you that this phenomenon is both real and fascinating. In fact, a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that certain bodyweight exercises can activate muscles more effectively than similar weighted movements!
In this article, we’ll explore the science behind this counterintuitive challenge and uncover 7 surprising factors that make bodyweight training uniquely demanding.
Understanding these principles will help you maximize your workouts and achieve better results and probably make you love bodyweight training
Let’s get started!
The Science Behind Bodyweight Exercise Difficulty
Bodyweight exercises, also known as calisthenics, rely on a complex interplay of biomechanics, physiology, and neuromuscular control. Here’s a breakdown of the key scientific principles at play:
1. Biomechanics: Bodyweight exercises often involve multi-joint movements that require coordination across several muscle groups. This complexity can increase the difficulty of the exercise.
2. Force Production: In weighted exercises, the load is external and constant. In bodyweight exercises, your own body mass provides the resistance, which can be more challenging to manipulate and control.
3. Muscle Fiber Recruitment: Bodyweight exercises often require high muscle fiber recruitment, especially in exercises that challenge your balance or require explosive movements.
4. Energy Systems: Many bodyweight exercises are performed in quick succession or held for extended periods, challenging both your aerobic and anaerobic energy systems.
5. Proprioception: The awareness of your body’s position in space is crucial in bodyweight training, requiring more neural engagement than many weighted exercises.
6. Motor Unit Activation: Complex bodyweight movements often require greater motor unit activation and coordination compared to more isolated weighted exercises.
7. Range of Motion: Bodyweight exercises frequently involve a fuller range of motion compared to some machine-based or weighted exercises, increasing the work by your muscles.
Understanding these scientific principles helps explain why bodyweight exercises can feel more challenging, despite not involving external loads. It’s the combination of these factors that makes bodyweight training a uniquely demanding and effective form of exercise.
Why Are Bodyweight Exercises Harder Than Weights: 7 Reasons?
1 Leverage and Mechanical Disadvantage
In bodyweight exercises, you’re often working against mechanical disadvantages. Your limbs act as long levers, increasing the torque your muscles need to generate. This means your muscles have to work harder to move the same amount of weight.
Take the push-up, for example.
Your body forms a long lever from your toes to your hands, and your chest, shoulders, and triceps have to work overtime to lift nearly your entire body weight.
Compare this to a bench press, where the bar travels a shorter distance and your back is supported. No wonder push-ups can feel like a Herculean task!
Pro tip: If you’re struggling with full push-ups, try elevating your hands on a bench or sturdy chair. This reduces the lever length and makes the exercise more manageable as you build strength.
2 Full Body Engagement
One of the coolest (and most challenging) aspects of bodyweight training is how it forces your entire body to get in on the action.
Unlike isolated weight training exercises, many bodyweight movements require full-body coordination and engagement.
Take a pull-up, for instance.
Sure, your back and biceps are doing the heavy lifting, but your core is working overtime to keep you stable, your legs are engaged to prevent swinging, and even your grip strength is getting a serious workout. It’s like a full-body orchestra, with every muscle playing its part!
This full-body engagement not only makes the exercises more difficult, but also more functional.
After all, in real life, we rarely use muscles in isolation. This is why bodyweight training can be so
3 Stability and Balance Challenges
When you’re lifting weights, especially on machines, you’re often working in a fixed plane of motion.
The barbell or machine guides your movement, reducing the need for stabilization.
But with bodyweight exercises?
You’re the machine, and stability becomes your new best friend (or worst enemy, depending on how you look at it!).
Take the pistol squat, for example. Not only are you lowering your entire body weight on one leg, but you’re also fighting to maintain balance throughout the entire movement.
Your core, ankle stabilizers, and smaller supporting muscles are all firing on overdrive to keep you from toppling over.
This increased demand for stability and balance does two things:
1. It makes the exercise significantly more challenging
2. It engages a wider range of muscles, especially smaller stabilizing muscles that might be neglected in traditional weight training
Pro tip: If you’re new to bodyweight training, don’t get discouraged if you struggle with balance at first. Start with easier variations and progressively challenge your stability. Your body will adapt, and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your balance improves!
4 Limited Rest Between Reps
Here’s something that often catches people off guard when transitioning from weights to bodyweight exercises: the lack of built-in rest between reps.
When you’re doing bicep curls with dumbbells, there’s a moment of rest at the bottom of each rep where your muscles can slightly relax. But try doing pull-ups, and you’ll quickly realize there’s no true rest until you’re back on the ground!
This continuous tension throughout the exercise means your muscles are working harder for longer. It’s like the difference between sprinting 100 meters with breaks versus running a 5K non-stop.
The sustained effort in bodyweight exercises can lead to quicker muscle fatigue and a serious cardio challenge.
Fun fact: This continuous tension is one reason why bodyweight exercises can be so effective for building muscle endurance and improving cardiovascular fitness alongside strength gains.
Remember: If you’re finding the lack of rest between reps tough, it’s okay to take short pauses or do fewer reps with perfect form. Quality always trumps quantity in bodyweight training!
5 Constant Tension Throughout Movements
One of the unique challenges of bodyweight exercises is the constant tension they place on your muscles throughout the entire range of motion. This constant tension is a key factor in why bodyweight exercises can feel more difficult than their weighted counterparts.
How Constant Tension Works in Bodyweight Exercises
1. Full Range of Motion: Many bodyweight exercises require you to move through a complete range of motion, keeping your muscles engaged from start to finish.
2. No Momentum: Without external weights, it’s harder to use momentum to your advantage. This forces your muscles to work continuously throughout the exercise.
3. Eccentric Load: In bodyweight exercises, the eccentric (lowering) phase of the movement is often just as challenging as the concentric (lifting) phase, creating constant work for your muscles.
4. Isometric Contractions: Many bodyweight exercises involve holding positions (like planks or L-sits), which create sustained isometric muscle contractions.
Examples of Constant Tension in Popular Bodyweight Exercises
– Pull-ups: Your muscles are under tension from the dead hang at the bottom to the top of the movement and back down.
– Bodyweight Squats: Your legs are working throughout the entire movement, with no rest at the top or bottom of the squat.
– Planks: Your core and supporting muscles are under constant isometric tension for the duration of the hold.
Benefits of Constant Tension
1. Increased Time Under Tension: This can lead to greater muscle growth and strength gains.
2. Improved Muscular Endurance: The sustained effort builds stamina in the working muscles.
3. Enhanced Mind-Muscle Connection: The continuous engagement helps you focus on the working muscles throughout the exercise.
This constant tension throughout bodyweight movements is a key factor in their difficulty and effectiveness. It’s one reason why a set of 20 bodyweight squats can leave you more breathless than a set of 10 heavy barbell squats!
3.6 Difficulty in Progressive Overload
If you’ve spent any time in the world of fitness, you’ve probably heard about progressive overload – the gradual increase of weight, frequency, or number of repetitions in your strength training routine.
It’s a cornerstone of building strength and muscle.
With weights, it’s straightforward: just add more plates to the bar. But with bodyweight exercises? That’s where things get tricky.
In bodyweight training, progressive overload isn’t as simple as adding more weight. You can’t just strap on an extra arm or leg when push-ups get too easy!
This challenge in progression is part of what makes bodyweight exercises continually difficult. You have to be creative with how you increase the difficulty of your workouts.
Here are some ways to achieve progressive overload in bodyweight training:
1. Increase reps or sets
2. Decrease rest time between sets
3. Slow down the tempo of each rep
4. Progress to more difficult variations (e.g., regular push-ups to diamond push-ups)
5. Add pauses or holds within the movement
6. Increase range of motion
The creativity required to progress in bodyweight exercises keeps your body guessing and your mind engaged. It’s like solving a puzzle with your own body as the pieces!
Pro tip: Keep a workout journal to track your progress. It’s incredibly satisfying to look back and see how you’ve advanced from knee push-ups to one-arm push-ups over time!
7 Mental Challenge and Focus Required
Last but definitely not least, let’s talk about the mental game.
Bodyweight exercises aren’t just physically demanding – they’re a serious mental challenge too.
When you’re lifting weights, you can often “check out” mentally to some degree. The weight is external, and the movement path is often fixed.
But with bodyweight exercises, you need to maintain intense focus throughout the entire movement.
Take the handstand, for example. It’s not just about strength – it requires an incredible amount of body awareness, balance, and mental fortitude. You need to be fully present, making micro-adjustments constantly to maintain your position.
This mental engagement extends to other bodyweight exercises, too:
– In a planche, you’re constantly thinking about keeping your body rigid and your scapulae protracted.
– During a muscle-up, you’re focusing on the precise moment to transition from the pull to the push.
– Even in a simple push-up, you’re thinking about keeping your core tight, your glutes squeezed, and your body in a straight line.
This constant mental engagement can make bodyweight exercises feel more challenging, but it also offers unique benefits.
It improves your mind-muscle connection, enhances your proprioception (your sense of your body’s position in space), and can even serve as a form of moving meditation.
How to Incorporate Both Bodyweight and Weight Training
Combining bodyweight exercises with traditional weight training can give you the best of both worlds.
Here’s how you can create a balanced routine that leverages the unique benefits of each:
1. Alternate Training Days
Consider dedicating specific days to bodyweight training and others to weight training. For example:
– Monday: Upper Body Weights
– Tuesday: Lower Body Bodyweight
– Wednesday: Rest
– Thursday: Full Body Weights
– Friday: Full Body Bodyweight
– Saturday: Active Recovery (light bodyweight exercises)
– Sunday: Rest
2. Combine Within Workouts
Mix bodyweight and weighted exercises within the same workout. This can be especially effective for circuit training or supersets. For instance:
– Superset 1: Barbell Squats + Bodyweight Pull-ups
– Superset 2: Dumbbell Bench Press + Bodyweight Dips
3. Progressive Overload with Both
As you get stronger, increase the difficulty of both your bodyweight and weighted exercises. For bodyweight, this might mean progressing to harder variations, while for weights, you’d increase the load.
4. Periodization
Consider using different training blocks where you focus more heavily on one style of training, then switch. For example, 8 weeks of weight-focused training followed by 8 weeks of bodyweight-focused training.
Pro Tip: Keep a training log to track your progress in both bodyweight and weighted exercises. This will help you see improvements and identify areas that need more focus.
Conclusion
We’ve uncovered why these simple bodyweight exercises can often feel more challenging than lifting weights.
From the science behind the difficulty to the unique benefits they offer, it’s clear that bodyweight exercises not only deserve a place in every fitness enthusiast’s routine, but they school be the No 1 priority.
Now, I have a challenge for you: Try incorporating one new bodyweight exercise into your routine this week. It could be as simple as adding a set of bodyweight squats to your morning routine or attempting your first pull-up.
Whatever you choose, embrace the challenge and enjoy the journey of discovering what your body is capable of!
Remember, in the world of fitness, the most important weight you’ll ever lift is your own body!
