The No Gizmo Workout

The benefits of body-weight exercises
By Perry Gil S. Mallari, Reporter

In the realm of physical culture, there are practitioners who prefer the exclusive use of body-weight exercises to condition their bodies and to gain strength. By definition, body-weight exercises are physical workouts that use the weight of the practitioner’s body as resistance in training the muscles.

The greatest advantage of body-weight exercises over other fitness programs like weight lifting is that it requires zero equipment and it can be done almost anytime and anywhere.

There are certain things that body-weight exercises can and can’t do. While it is capable of building and increasing muscle mass, body-weight exercises can only do such task on a limited basis. Since the body weights of full-grown adults are more or less fixed, the intensity of the resistance cannot be increased. So if the goal is continuous build up of muscle mass, a person is better off using weights training where the intensity of the resistance could be adjusted as desired.

Body-weight exercises have a long and honorable history. Warriors and combat athletes have used it through the ages because of two reasons: potency and practicality. A good example is the training regimen of wrestlers of old India. Physical culture is part and parcel of Indian tradition for thousands of years. India was known for traditional physical training implements such as heavy Indian clubs, gadas (maces) and nals (stone weights). But a staple in a traditional Indian wrestlers training program were two body-weight exercises: the Hindu pushup or dand and the Hindu squat or baithak. The execution of the dand is different from the simple upward and downward movement of a regular pushup. The Hindu pushup is done with a downward scooping motion that ends with a backward arcing of the spine. Its purpose is to build upper body strength and endurance. On the other hand, the baithak is meant to develop leg power and cardiovascular stamina. The Hindu squat is characterized by an upward and downward squatting motion coordinated with the raising of the heels and circular swinging of the arms.

Both the dand and the baithak were part of the training regimen of the legendary martial artist and actor Bruce Lee.

The Great Gama (Ghulam Muhammad), known as the greatest of the Indian wrestlers, was said to crank thousands of repetitions of dands and baithaks on a daily basis. If his professional record would be the sole basis, then it looks like body-weight exercises worked pretty well with Gama. With a career spanning 50 years, he is the only wrestler in history to have died undefeated.

People whose dwellings have limited space for exercise equipments and professionals who travel frequently can benefit a lot from body-weight exercise. Demanding only a few square-feet of space to practice, one can achieve muscular and cardiovascular conditioning with body-weight exercises. As in any other fitness program, a doctor’s evaluation and prudence are essential for safety in practicing these exercise routines.

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