Bodyweight Training vs Training in the Gym

As much as we all loved doing endless amounts of push-ups, squats, and weird covid created exercises there are some things that just can not be accomplished without a gym.

Let’s start off by saying both training at home and training in the gym have their own unique benefits. When you put both side by side, training in the gym win’s in terms of health and longevity and training at home wins in terms of consistency. Combine the two and you may just have the perfect system.

Let’s start with a quick pro’s and con’s list:

​Gym	Gym	At Home
Pros	Better for Health & Longevity Wider Variety of Activity Enhanced Social & Psychological Benefits	Convient & Cost Effective
Cons	Increased Travel Time Small Monthly Fee for Enhanced Quality of Life	No Professional Advice or Guidance Difficult to Make Long Term Progress Harder to Focus Lack of Variety

Now let’s dive into some science…

It is widely known that building muscular strength and power is extremely important for the anti-aging process. 

The best way to build muscular strength and power is to lift moderately heavy weights, with great technique, consistently over a long period of time. 

A recent study presented at EuroPrevent 2019 was one of the first to link muscular power to longevity. In the study, those that presented maximal muscular power above the median for each respective gender had the lowest mortality rate and up to 13 times less chance of dying. Strength and power decrease at around 10% every 10 years after the age of 40. This process can be delayed and sometimes even improved upon using CONSISTENT and PROGRESSIVE strength and power training. 

Lifting moderately heavy weights can help decrease the anti-aging process in the following ways:

1. Increases balance and coordination
2. Improve flexibility 
3. Improve cognitive function 
4. Improve bone density 
5. Increase muscle mass 
6. Activate anti-inflammatory properties 
7. Decrease chances of metabolic disorder and cancers 
8. Increase cardiovascular health 
9. Increase strength and power 
10. Improve body composition

Raise your hand if you want 1 of the above? How about 3? Why not take all 10? To do so, you need to train for muscular strength and power. 

So, what is muscular strength and power?  

Muscular strength is the amount of force you can put out and the amount of weight you can lift. It is difficult to produce sufficient amounts of force using only your bodyweight. To elicit the type of adaptation needed to reap the true benefits of strength training you need to go to the gym.

Muscular power is the ability to exert a maximal amount of force in minimal time. To an extent, this can be done with your bodyweight, but oftentimes requires jumping and movements that place stress on the joints. A more user-friendly approach is to lift relatively heavy weights at a high speed. To do this, perform functional movements using relatively heavy weights at a high speed. If you know your 1 rep max for squat, hip hinges, presses, and pulls you can use between 50-65% of your 1 rep max for weight. If you have no clue what I am talking about then we have the perfect program for you. It’s called Return to You. During this program, a Certified Personal Trainer will walk you through how to reap all the benefits of Strength Training and Muscular Power.
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What we learned during quarantine:

Upper Body Training 

We found that most individuals that we worked with from a trainer or group exercise perspective during the “at home workouts” only phase, were able to maintain or only slightly decrease their upper body strength and muscle mass. That being said, most of this wasn’t done with zero equipment. Many people used TRX straps, rings, weighted back-packs, dumbbells and bands. So, if you are going to workout at home and want to reap the benefits of strength and power training, invest in a TRX, rings, and bands, and throw some stuff in your back-pack when training to progress on push-ups, rows and pull-ups. 

Lower Body Training 

This is a tough one. After a certain amount of time you need weights to maintain your lower body strength and specifically train your posterior chain. We highly recommend using weights to train your lower body to take advantage of the benefits of strength training. Power can be trained by jumping, sprinting, stair climbing, and hill running. 

So, what does this mean for you? 

I am a big fan of keeping it simple and I think we can all agree, you are doing yourself a disservice if you are not taking advantage of true strength and power training. 

Strength and power training should be done in the gym.

Training for muscular hypertrophy and conditioning can be accomplished at home. 

To truly reap the benefits of Strength and Power Training for health and longevity, it's important to come back to the gym. If you aren’t sure where to start, the Return to You program is the perfect program for you!
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