This Is How You Can Build Muscle Without Weights
You already know that lifting weights will help you build muscle. But if you're working out at home with no equipment except your own body, you might wonder whether you'll still see gains — or, frankly, lose some you worked hard to get when you were hitting the weight room on the regular. The simple answer: You certainly can still build muscle without weights such as plates and barbells. But, of course, there's a little more to the story about using bodyweight training to add muscle. Here's what you need to know.
The Benefits of Using Bodyweight to Build Muscle Without Weights
If you're used to lifting super heavy at the gym, hefting barbells, or moving weight on machines, replicating that at home can prove somewhat difficult, says Alexis Colvin, M.D., an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon at the Mount Sinai Health System. But that doesn't mean you can't build muscle if you're limited to bodyweight exercises; it just means you'll have to switch up the way you typically train. For you, that might mean moving through exercises much more slowly or upping the reps, sets, or timing of each move. "In order to build muscle, you need to challenge the muscle," says Dr. Colvin. So, whatever change it takes to challenge your muscles, that's the goal. And figuring out what works best for you or what tests your body that most? Well, that'll take some trial and error.
An advantage of doing bodyweight exercises is that you're performing functional, compound movements that let you focus on form without the added resistance. You'll get stronger in movement patterns you use in everyday life, plus you'll work multiple joints and muscles at one time with exercises such as squats, push-ups, and lunges, says Dr. Colvin. You also work many smaller muscles, particularly when doing stabilizing exercises such as bird dogs, planks, and single-sided moves, she adds. These types of moves target your upper and lower body along with your core, challenging muscles you don't always work with weights.
Some research has compared loaded exercises with bodyweight moves, showing similar results in how much muscle the participants gained. For example, one small study comparing a loaded bench press to a bodyweight push-up demonstrated similar muscle gains in the pecs and triceps after an eight-week period. Another small study on post-menopausal women at high risk for type 2 diabetes found that twelve weeks of high-intensity bodyweight interval training increased muscle mass to a similar extent as a combination of aerobic and resistance training. And, in yet another study, one group did a series of elbow flexion exercises (think: bicep curls) with a heavy load, and the other did the exercises with body weight, making sure to maintain tension throughout the full range of motion. The bodyweight group had a comparable increase in muscle size to the group with a heavy load.
To help you understand exactly how bodyweight exercises can build muscle, though, it's important to know how your muscles get bigger in the first place.
How the Body Builds Muscle
Building muscle mass — known in science as hypertrophy — involves challenging muscle tissue and increasing protein synthesis, which is the process of cells building new proteins, explains Molly Galbraith, C.S.C.S., co-founder of Girls Gone Strong. You can do this via exercise in three ways: creating mechanical tension, metabolic stress, or microtrauma. While most types of training will incorporate all three ways to induce hypertrophy — resulting in the biggest benefit (plus, these systems tend to work together) — different workout techniques may target one method more than the other, says Galbraith. You don't need to design your workouts to focus on one or another, but it can be helpful to understand precisely how each method builds muscle.
Mechanical tension
Mechanical tension typically comes into play during weightlifting. You're loading the muscle with enough resistance to create tension, causing cellular and molecular responses that then lead to gains, says Galbraith. Upping the number of reps and sets (aka the total volume) you do of each exercise can increase mechanical tension, too, which provides muscle-building benefits. (This is also part of the science behind progressive overload.) Slowing down the eccentric action or downward phase of a move, such as when lowering into a squat, might also provide some extra tension. For some people, certain bodyweight exercises offer enough resistance on their own, such as a push-up or a pull-up.
Metabolic stress
That fiery sensation you feel when you're pulsing through squats, holding the bottom of a push-up, or finishing that final rep of sit-ups? That's a result of metabolic stress, which occurs when metabolites (aka waste products that form as a result of exercise, such as lactate) build up in the muscle tissue, explains Galbraith. This causes hormonal, cellular, and growth factor reactions, offering another way to pump up your muscles. Specifically, it can increase anabolic hormone release (such as testosterone and growth hormone, which stimulate protein synthesis), lead to cell swelling, and induce an increase in growth factors — proteins that can stimulate tissue growth by promoting cell reproduction. (Related: How to Improve Your Lactate Threshold)
Microtrauma
This is when you get small tears in muscle tissue thanks to exercising — namely, resistance training. When this happens, your body responds by working to repair that damage, which jumpstarts muscle growth, says Galbraith. While any exercise can do this to your muscles (squats, planks, deadlifts, you name it), new moves you haven't done before can also cause this microtrauma. And it's not always a result of mechanical tension — dance, running, bodyweight moves, and more can cause microtrauma.
How to Maximize Your Workout to Build Muscle Without Weights
The opportunities are endless, TBH. There are numerous methods for switching up your typical bodyweight workout — even small changes can lead to bigger muscle gains. But here are a few concrete tips for challenging your body and encouraging muscle building, courtesy of Galbraith. These are in no particular order and the best way to incorporate these strategies is individualized, so try one or all five of these tactics in your next workout and see what tests your muscles the most. (Related: The Best Bodyweight Exercises for Getting Fit Anywhere)
Increase reps and sets; decrease rest time.
The more you do an exercise, the more you'll increase the metabolic stress you put on your muscles. Do more reps and sets of bodyweight exercises than you'd typically do at the gym with weights for similar results. You'll also want to limit breaks between those reps and sets, but without sacrificing proper form. This puts more stress on the muscle, promoting growth. In fact, research shows that low-load resistance training (with a light weight or bodyweight) combined with little rest may enhance metabolic stress and increase muscle size even more than lifting heavy weights and taking longer breaks. If you typically lift weights for about eight reps in the gym, try doing that same move for 20 reps at home with just your body.
Change the angle or tempo of the exercise.
To increase microtrauma, try taking your lunges for a walk or stepping out on a diagonal — or add an incline or decline to your push-ups, suggests Galbraith. Changing the angle can not only incorporate other muscles into the move but also work different parts of the same muscle group. As well, it's a good idea to slow down the eccentric or downward phase of an exercise, as mentioned earlier, and then explode up.
Another option: Slow down the entire exercise. For example, lower into a squat on a count of three, hold at the bottom for three, and then stand up on another count of three. This increases the time your muscle is under tension, meaning you're more likely to create microtraumas within your slow-twitch muscle fibers, which have more endurance capacity than fast-twitch fibers.
Add some holds and half-reps.
This can add more metabolic stress to the muscles, thus resulting in more gains. For example, if lunges feel easy, hold the bottom of the movement (keeping both knees bent 90 degrees) for a few seconds before standing up. Or, step back into your lunge, lift halfway up, then drop back down before you come back up to standing.
Also, try stopping short of standing all the way up from a squat or lunge, or stop short of lowering all the way down in a glute bridge. This works because you're putting the muscle under tension for longer, or eliminating any points in the movement where the working muscle gets a break. (Related: Why You Should Add Partial Reps to Your Training and How to Do It)
Do more plyometrics.
To increase the tension on your muscles, add some explosiveness to your moves. Squat jumps, lunge jumps, hinge jumps, burpees — they all count toward more muscle building. When a muscle is stretched, it leads to nerve firing that signals a concentric contraction (aka the shortening of the muscle). A quicker stretch (which is what happens during the explosive portion of a plyometric exercise) leads to a stronger nerve firing and greater resulting contraction of the muscle. That stronger contraction means your muscle is working harder, and will likely result in more microtrauma and thus more gains. One study on young soccer players found that those who performed plyometric moves had similar muscle gains to those who did resistance training.
Perform single-sided exercises.
Switch up your typical bilateral (or two-sided) exercises to unilateral (or one-sided) movements. That can mean turning a regular squat into a pistol squat, making your glute bridge a single-leg bridge, or turning your plank into a single arm (and/or leg) plank. These simple switches can increase the microtrauma to a muscle, as well as add more tension or load to that muscle, says Galbraith. It makes sense, as one side of the body is handling all the weight rather than splitting it. (Related: What Is Unilateral Training and Why Is It Important?)
Importantly, Never Stop Progressing
As with any type of exercise, there's always a risk of hitting a plateau if you keep doing it over and over again without playing around with any variables or continuing to test your muscles in new ways. That's why it's important to progress your program, adding variations to the exercises and increasing the challenge on moves with the methods above — that's how muscle building continues to happen.
"If everything starts to feel really easy, you're probably not gaining much [muscle]," adds Dr. Colvin. Keep that in mind as a sign to switch up your routine. (And if you're working out at home and looking for a way to add external load, you can always try these moves with household items that trainers love.)