How Effective are Bodyweight Workouts for Fat Loss?

Bodyweight workouts are becoming popular because they are easy to do at home, don't require any equipment, and can be done anywhere. But what do all those air squats really do for you?

There is some debate about whether a bodyweight workout routine can work for fat loss. Some people argue that you need heavy weights to stimulate muscle growth. Others argue that a no-equipment workout plan will get the job done just fine!

In this blog post, you will learn all about using your own body weight for workouts, if it works for fat loss, and how to incorporate bodyweight training tips into your fitness routine for maximum effectiveness.

• ELI5: How Effective are Bodyweight Workouts for Fat Loss?

  Weight training is better than bodyweight exercises when trying to lose weight. Both types of exercise will work, but weight training works better.

  Bodyweight exercises work your muscles against resistance, which makes the muscles bigger, stronger. This helps fat loss by preserving muscle mass. But at some point, your body may stop changing because it is no longer challenged.

  You need to keep challenging your body. You can do that by lifting heavier weights. It might seem scary at first, but it is important that you keep challenging yourself and progressing towards your goals. It is about working smarter, not harder.

The Benefits of Bodyweight Workouts

Bodyweight workouts are fitness routines that use the weight of your body as resistance. No equipment is necessary! 

Bodyweight workouts are a great way to get started with fitness because they are free, highly accessible, and easy to do. As you become more skilled at bodyweight exercises, you can make them more difficult and achieve even better results. (we'll go through how to do that in a bit).

There are a lot of different bodyweight exercises that you can do. Some of the most popular exercises are push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and lunges. But there are hundreds of other exercises that you can do to keep variety in your routine.

Another advantage of bodyweight workouts is that they can be done almost anywhere. Because they require no equipment and little room, bodyweight exercises are ideal for travel workouts.

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Bodyweight exercises are a great way to get back to the basics of fitness. This is something all skill sets can benefit from. While bodyweight workouts are better than nothing at all, they may not be the best for fat loss. For faster fat loss results- you might need to be lifting some heavier weights too.

Do Bodyweight Workouts Work for Fat Loss?

The first thing to remember about exercise for fat loss is that your goal should not be to just lose weight. Instead, it should be to lose fat. In other words, you want any weight loss to come from your body fat stores, not muscle mass.

The truth is that the best exercise plan for fat loss is more simple than most people realize. It should. . . 

• Preserve or build muscle mass to improve your body composition.

• Burn calories to make weight loss easier.

• Improve your internal health and be enjoyable, sustainable, and challenging. 

With this in mind: the best exercise for weight loss is a balance between cardio and strength training.

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Cardio for Fat Loss

When it comes to fat loss, the main benefit of cardio is that it burns a lot of calories. When you do cardio, your heart rate increases. As a result, your body burns more calories. This helps to increase the caloric deficit that causes fat loss.

Outside fat loss, cardio also offers many health and fitness benefits. These benefits include better metabolic health, more stamina, and possibly faster post-workout recovery.

Are Bodyweight Workouts Good for Cardio?

One place where bodyweight workouts shine are as cardio workouts! Doing bodyweight cardio circuits or bodyweight HIIT workouts are great ways to reap the benefits of cardio and build strength training skills at once.

Don't forget that traditional steady-state cardio is a type of bodyweight workout. Walking and running, for example, only require your body weight and are both effective cardio workouts!

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Strength Training for Fat Loss

It would be a mistake to only do cardio for fat loss. To achieve fat loss, you need to be in a caloric deficit. When you’re in a calorie deficit, your body is primed for muscle loss. Strength training counteracts this effect by increasing the size of your muscles.

One illustration of the “muscle sparing” effect of strength training comes from research conducted by West Virginia University researchers. They discovered that people who engaged in resistance training were able to keep all of their muscle mass, regardless of only eating 800 calories each day.

Another study showed that when overweight or obese participants performed eight weeks of resistance training, they lost more belly fat and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) than those who only did cardio. 

The bodyweight group in this study also increased muscle mass. This goes to show how a bodyweight strength training program can certainly have its place in a weight loss program.

Do Bodyweight Workouts Build Muscle Mass?

If you've never exercised before, bodyweight workout plans are a great place to start. Air squats, push-ups, and planks will help you start learning the basics of exercise mechanics.

At some point in time, your muscles will have become conditioned enough that they are able to move your body weight with ease. To continue making progress in growing your muscles, you'll need to continue to challenge them.

So yes, you can build muscle mass using bodyweight exercises. But eventually, you will need to add resistance to continue to do so.

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Taking Bodyweight Workouts to The Next Level

At the heart of every successful fitness program is progressive overload. It's a simple concept: If you do the same thing over and over, your body adapts to it. In time, you'll reach a plateau. Your body will be no longer challenged to make changes.

At this point, you need to introduce new exercises and increase the amount of weight or repetitions in order to keep progressing towards your goals. This is called “progressive overload”. It gradually increases stress on the body to encourage change (aka muscle growth).

There are four ways to add progressive overload to your workouts:

1. Increasing Volume: Doing more reps, sets or exercises in your next workout will increase the load on your muscles and challenge them to grow.

2. Increasing Frequency: Doing more training sessions than the week before.

3. Increasing Tension: Increasing the duration of each repetition within an exercise. A common technique for this is to prolong the time under tension (TUT) of a muscle by focusing on slowing down the exercise.

4. Increasing Intensity: Lifting more weight in your next training session.

Even if you’re able to do 100 squats, or do a daily bodyweight workout, eventually to keep progressing, you’ll need to increase the intensity. This means lifting more than your bodyweight. There’s only so much you can do to strengthen your body with bodyweight workouts before you need to add weight with weight training.

The Benefits of Weight Training for Fat Loss

Weight training is more effective than bodyweight workouts for fat loss because it allows you to apply progressive overload to your muscles simply by choosing heavier weights than before. This results in greater muscle growth and fat burning potential. In addition, weight training also helps to increase your metabolic rate. This can help you burn more calories throughout the day.

Adding weightlifting to your program can seem intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. You can start by lifting just the barbell or adding a couple of dumbbells to your current bodyweight workout. As you get stronger, you can add more weight. The key is to make sure that you're constantly challenging yourself and progressing towards your goals.

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Conclusion

Bodyweight exercises can be appealing because of how convenient and easy for beginners they are.

Regarding fat loss, bodyweight workouts will work. They train your muscles against resistance. This improves muscle size, strength, and fat metabolism.

However, the limitations of progressive strength on a bodyweight-only workout regimen make lifting weights worth pursuing.

Workouts for fat loss don't have to be complicated to be effective. All you need is someone who knows how to design effective exercise programs (that’s me!) 

I’ll meet you where you are currently at in your fitness journey. Even if you are just starting out with bodyweight workouts! What is most important is that you get started. Apply today for CBM 1:1 Coaching, so we can get started designing an individualized program just for you.

• References

  1. Bryner RW;Ullrich IH;Sauers J;Donley D;Hornsby G;Kolar M;Yeater R; (n.d.). Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate. Journal of the American College of Nutrition. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10204826/

  2. Vissers, D., Hens, W., Taeymans, J., Baeyens, J.-P., Poortmans, J., & Van Gaal, L. (2013). The effect of exercise on visceral adipose tissue in overweight adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PloS one. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3568069/

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