As Miss Way mentioned in Frugal Fitness, bodyweight fitness (BWF) is a form of strength training. I wanted to create this separate post to give you a bit more detail on BWF, because I love it so much!
So What Actually Is Bodyweight Fitness?!
Essentially, BWF involves using your own bodyweight to perform resistance training. This type of training can accommodate anyone – from absolute beginners to Olympic level athletes. Exercises range from simple push-ups, squats and dips to advanced movements like the planche, front lever or one arm pullup.
These movements cover all of the major muscle groups in your body. If you already have experience in strength training they may sounds easy, but can all be progressed to very high levels. They are combined into sets and reps, similar to weights based training, to form a workout.
Why Do BWF?
1. It’s Cheap!
One of the main reasons I started bodyweight fitness was as a frugal alternative to the many expensive exercise options available. As we mentioned in A Way to Less……. Spending! (Frugality), being frugal involves getting maximum value for every pound spent. BWF really fits this goal as it can essentially be done for free if you wish.
All of the basic movements in BWF can be carried out with no equipment. As you progress, you are likely to want somewhere to perform pullups. This can be as simple as a doorframe pullup bar or free-standing frame. In comparison to gym memberships, these are incredibly good value for money. Especially when you factor in the fact the equipment should last for years!
Due to the lack of equipment required, BWF can be done at home. This makes it a great fit for FIRE types, who are often introverts! Going to a gym full of people to do your workout can be just another reason not to bother if you aren’t feeling 100%. This certainly fits my personality type, but also works with my car free lifestyle!
I know a lot of people who travel to an expensive gym and back for their exercise. To me, this seems wasteful in both money and time senses. You aren’t only paying for a gym membership but you’re also paying to get there and back, all of which takes time!
In Frugal Fitness Miss Way summarised the equipment we use including costs. Most of this we have actually got – or given to each other – as presents over the last few years!
2. Functional strength
Another big draw for starting BWF was the functionality of the exercises. Often with weight training you can be isolating individual movements, or moving in movement patterns which don’t really transfer to real life. This is particularly relevant for some of the weight machines at gyms.
With bodyweight exercises, you generally use a much wider group of muscles and perform movements which mimic real life. There’s a lot of stability required so you’re almost always training your core at the same time!
3. Posture
Something I’ve always struggled with is posture. This isn’t helped by a long term back injury!
Having a good level of strength, particularly core strength, is vital to maintain good posture. This is particularly important for those with office based jobs like me.
4. Cool skills!
Let’s be honest, some of the skills you can unlock through bodyweight fitness are pretty cool! Since I started I’ve been able to achieve pullups, tuck front levers, skin the cats, ring push-ups and many more! The handstand is still something I’m working on and I can’t wait to be able to do it consistently! Advanced level skills like front lever, iron cross and planche are very impressive to see!
5. Fun!
Above all, the reason I have managed to consistently train twice per week for the last 2.5 years is because I enjoy it! I love the constant progress I have seen and I’ve really noticed a difference in my body. I look and feel much better.
It’s important to find something YOU enjoy because it will be different for everyone. But bodyweight fitness is something I really think you should give a go. You never know, you might get hooked too!
My BWF Journey
As Miss Way mentioned in Frugal Fitness, I started getting into bodyweight fitness after finding a link to the Bodyweight Fitness Sub-Reddit in the comments section of a Mr Money Mustache post in 2016! A bit of a random way to find it, but once I did I was addicted! After quite a lot of reading I decided it was something I really wanted to give a go! Not only did it sound fun, but it was also frugal!!
I hadn’t had a particular fitness goal in mind since giving up my expensive gym membership. This had led me to feel lethargic and low on energy. I knew I needed to find a new focus and had decided BWF was the way to go!
– Recommended Routine
So having read up on BWF through Reddit, I decided to give their ‘Recommended Routine’ a go. This is a great routine which has been developed by some really knowledgeable people. The routine can be adapted to most levels and lets you progress through different exercises as you get stronger.
Initially, I had no equipment to use! I would use our staircase for pullups (to be accurate, pullup negatives as I couldn’t do a single pullup to start with!). Two chairs were a makeshift dip station. There are loads of ideas on how you can perform these exercises without equipment within the Reddit forum so get creative!
After a while, I felt justified in buying a Pull Up Mate free-standing frame. Not only was this great for pullups, it can be used for all sorts of exercises! At £110 (has increased slightly since), it was a big initial outlay, but it’s still going strong now and has been used very regularly!
As you get more experienced you can create your own routine in order to focus on specific goals. As a beginner, the Recommended Routine is a great introduction and its progressions can last you a very long time!
The more we do, the more we can do
William Hazlitt
– Create a Habit
The key to success for me was getting into a regular routine with my exercise. I knew I would be too tired to do this after work so decided to fit the routine in before work.
At the same time, I had started preparing for a big exam for work. I used this opportunity to start getting up at 6am every weekday morning. 2 mornings would be spent on BWF, with the other 3 doing exam prep. This was a really successful process and made sure I stuck to both aspects!
I’ve carried on with this ever since, but was luckily able to drop the exam prep after passing first time! Bodyweight training has become a habit. It’s just something I do on autopilot and don’t question.
Another part of this process was creating timetables specifically for my BWF. I plan my progressions within the Recommended Routine each workout. This allows me to track my progress, as well as encouraging me to push myself! I create a spreadsheet detailing my workouts 3-4 months at a time. This allows me to run on auto-pilot and also factors in rest weeks every 4-6 weeks.
This is another factor in maintaining my consistency. Once it’s written down on a timetable it’s much harder to skip a workout because it would ruin the plan!
– Morning Boost
An added bonus of exercising early on a morning is the effect it has on the rest of your day. A morning workout gets the blood flowing and the adrenaline pumping, immediately getting rid of the groggy feeling I would often wake up with. I find I am much more alert and productive on BWF mornings than other days!
All in all, the routine takes me almost exactly 1 hour. That includes the warm-up and all strength aspects including abs. I split the ‘skills’ section out and do this on other mornings, to save time. This also gives me ample time to really focus on my skills (mainly handstand!) which should hopefully mean more progress!
– Progress
Since starting with BWF, I’ve made huge amounts of progress. The exciting thing is that there’s still so far to go! I started off not being able to do a single pullup and I’m now doing sets of 8 with a weighted backpack on my back, working towards a one arm pullup! I’ve gone from only being able to do a few normal pushups to doing sets of 8 pseudo planche pushups on the rings. I could only do a few bodyweight rows but can now hold a solid 20 second tucked front lever.
This kind of progression is what really keeps BWF interesting. To me, it’s so much more motivating to unlock new complex skills rather than just keep adding weight to the same old exercises.
Diet
A huge factoring in progressing with any form of training is down to diet. I’m not going to go into detail here as this is a whole different subject, but if your diet isn’t right your training won’t be either! It’s another topic we’re passionate about so a full detailed post will probably follow!
BWF Resources
Just like the FIRE community, the bodyweight fitness community is fast growing and full of incredibly helpful people willing to share their knowledge. I’ve created a short list here of those who I’ve learnt most from over the last few years.
So how about you, have you ever tried a bodyweight fitness workout? Are you going to? Let me know if you need any help or advice! This is a pretty vast subject and I didn’t want to go into too much detail here!
* Links marked with an asterisk are affiliate links. We will earn a small commission if you purchase through them. Thanks in advance!!
As per my most recent post, I’m not a FIRE introvert and have always enjoyed working out in the gym.
As well as using weights, I also do some BWF exercises, some of which I do at home occasionally.
I do pushups every morning (around 30 full ones) and at the end of every gym workout, I do static hangs which have really helped with a long-term shoulder injury – I’m at 2 x 1min hangs – and feels great on my posture after I’ve been sat down in the office all day. I suffer from golfer’s elbow (never played golf before though!) so can only do a few pullups before it gets too uncomfortable. I used to be able to do around 8-10 but was younger back then! Not sure I’d ever be able to do a single one-handed one so good luck with that goal!