Military-ish: body resistance exercises?

[GrosPoisson]

I'm looking to increase tone and bulk in my (fairly scrawny) arm muscles, and I was wondering if there was a way to do so without having to go to the gym or use any kind of special equipment. I'm already doing a fair amount of pushups each morning, but I'm thinking that I've reached the terminal limit for increasing arm muscle bulk; I noticed a good increase during the first two months, but not much at all these days.

Other effective body reistance exercises would be greatly appreciated.

Note: I figured military would be a good place to ask seeing as how all that PT seems to involve a good deal of body resistance exercises.

[Ch33zy]

Pullups do wonders. Those and crunches.

[meifunk]

What kind of push-ups are you doing? Try some tricep push-ups, diamonds, and wide base. You could also do some dive-bombers, those are fun. To keep tone up, I swim. A lot. It's a great work-out, and to me it's more interesting than just lifting all the time. If you don't have a municipal pool available to you, then you can run or do something highly aerobic. That will lean you up real quick. Anything that's a solid full body work-out will help.

What used to work real well for me before I joined the USCG was skateboarding. I have to be a bit more careful with my body now though, as I'm not as much of the owner as I used to be.

[gYmBaG]

oh yeah, diamonds are my favorite pushups, wide base suck :( lol jk those are good for you but i hate them. and meifunk was right, a really good work out is dive bombers, those work wonders in your shoulders, arms and chest i think, maybe even alittle back? i dunno but those work wonders. also, if you have a recruiter, which i dont think you do, but if you know a friend that has a recruiter, ask him for like a little notebook of excersises, i know the marines has one stricketly to nutrition and stretching and excersising, i dont know about the other ones. also you're not too far from me :p i could mail you one since i have 2

[GrosPoisson]

Dive-bombers sound interesting. Can someone explain what those are?

oh yeah, diamonds are my favorite pushups, wide base suck :(

I'm the exact opposite, I like doing wide base pushups. I think it's because I've built up my shoulders and neck a good deal from all the tennis and the training I did to strengthen those parts.

also you're not too far from me :p i could mail you one since i have 2

Thanks for the offer, but save yourself the trouble; the postal system down here is absolutely retarded. I'd probably be gone by the time it arrived, and they wouldn't bother telling me about it, let alone forward it.

[phatace51]

If you want to bulk up, you are gonna have to do some weightraining.

Pushups and all variations of pushups are great for toning, slimming, and gaining a great base strength. However, to gain more muscle mass and weight, you have to hit the weights.....at least in my opinion and from the experience I have had with this question.

Work on the often neglected muscles. Traps, delts, and your upper and middle back muscles. Most people who weight train nowadays, often tend to do all of the "pretty boy" exercises like butterflies and curls which work well, however tend to pull your body forward. If you constantly neglect your back and shoulders, you are going to have major back problems and such later in life because all of your muscles are pulling your body forward and toward your center. A guy a coach with is a chirpractor and he pointed that out to me one time.....which I feel makes a lot of sense.

I lift three days a week. I do not lift on off days but merely do stretching, pushups, situps, and crunches. A "cat" is a good form of a pushup as well because it exercises delts, traps, triceps, chest, and lower back. Leg lifts with weight and timed resistance is very very very good for abdominals.

Don't forget simple leg exercises like lunges, squats, presses, power clean, hang clean which will incorporate upper body strength as well. Power and hang clean are great indicators of overall body strength.

Reverse crunches are a sweet exercise too. Dips are very good as well...but can be very hard on your shoulders.

And don't try to be Hercules when you just start a lifting program. Take it day by day and increase as necessary to get your reps. Oh, and if you do your lifts correctly....you should be able to complete your regiment in 25-30 minutes tops. Any more than that, you are aiming to hurt yourself.

To Paraphrase the "governator": "more weight = more muscle" (<<<< when lifting).

[SWATJester_os]

He's right....after a certain point, you're going to need more weight to increase your muscle mass than your body alone can provide. For pushup increasing, try doing them slower, holding at halfway down for a second or two, then going all the way down, then holding at halfway up for a second or two, then all the way up, or try doing wide arms or diamonds, trains different portions of your muscles.

Then, try doing those same things, with your legs elevated when doing pushups, like on a chair, or a bed. lie on the floor, put your legs up on the chair, and do the pushups like that. It's harder. If you have a buddy, put your legs on his back while he does pushups, and do elevated ones like that.

[gYmBaG]

whats fun , me and my friends used to do this when i went to school, we would have our backpacks full of our books and whatnot, and we would do push ups , that was fun added not alot of weight but enough to feel it after awhile. also when you do push ups, do what swat said, go like down, not resting on the ground but having your elbows at a 45 degree angle, hold for like a second or two, then use all your strenght to push up, dont hop in the air, dont let your hands leave the ground, just push up hard, hold then go down, again and repeat. but go slow when you go down. we used to do this in football , helped us alot

[SWATJester_os]

Wouldn't work for me, books for me weigh 40+ pounds

[akodo]

as mentioned, vary your pushup style. Get 9 2x4s a foot long, (i.e. buy a 10 foot long 2x4 and a saw) nail them together to make a 6x4. Place your hands on them when oyu do pushups to go below where your body normally would hit the ground. If youve got a spot where oyu can do it, use one on your toes as well. 1 handed pushups increase the challenge greatly.

As mentioned, put a chin-up bar in a garage or somewhere. A guy who is pounding out the pushups should be able to do 10-20 no problem, try for 50!

so you odn't want to go to a gym? well, there are a lot of other ways to build muscle mass with increased resistance. Move to a farm and stack haybales for 12 hours a day for 3 weeks straight! okay, probably not an option. However, you can choose summer jobs that will help strengthen you up. Help some guys who do a lot of bricklaying. Nothing like carrying pairs or quads of cinderblock around to toughen up your arms and your grip. Get a job at UPS loading trucks. Or simply gather materials to replicate these tasks. i.e. put a shelf up in your garage about 7 feet high. Build a wooden box, fill with rocks up to 50 pounds. Put it on shelf, put it on floor, put it on shelf, etc.

[gYmBaG]

Wouldn't work for me, books for me weigh 40+ pounds
all the better :p, when i was in rotc, i was in a group of about 7 guys, we were all over 18 and after school we had mini ruck sacks, and would put anywhere from 20 to 30 pounds of weight in our rucksacks, we would run the track at school and we wouldnt know where but our co would yell , and we would stop, get on the grass and do 10 push ups, he normally did this about 3 to 4 times a lap. normally only did about 2 or 3 laps sometimes if we hadnt run in awhile 4 laps :( this got us into shape really fast. but i found it better to just do alot of pushups, like 20 with lighter weight, for a more tone build

[phatace51]

Or simply gather materials to replicate these tasks. i.e. put a shelf up in your garage about 7 feet high. Build a wooden box, fill with rocks up to 50 pounds. Put it on shelf, put it on floor, put it on shelf, etc.

haha funny story

I'm laughing really hard right now at that piece of interesting advice. Are you actually serious? People do this? :D

[nojmaster]

When you think about it it makes no more or less sense than moving heavy iron lollypops around :p

[phatace51]

When you think about it it makes no more or less sense than moving heavy iron lollypops around :p

Why would you want to simulate heavy lifting in a work atmosphere....when you could just weight train for a controlled and calibrated workout? I just dont see the advantage.

I understand what he is saying, but it just seems odd.

[Ch33zy]

Why would you want to simulate heavy lifting in a work atmosphere....when you could just weight train for a controlled and calibrated workout? I just dont see the advantage.

I understand what he is saying, but it just seems odd.

One's a helluva lot cheaper.

[nojmaster]

Gym memberships aren't that expensive, leastways not around here. You're looking at around £40 a month depending on where you go. The trick is to actually go though, my greatest failing is that I'm an utterly lazy slob, haven't been in two weeks.

[phatace51]

Gym memberships aren't that expensive, leastways not around here. You're looking at around £40 a month depending on where you go. The trick is to actually go though, my greatest failing is that I'm an utterly lazy slob, haven't been in two weeks.

I coach football. I use the high school's gym. It works out nicely.

But I have dumbells, a curl bar, and one straight bar at home.

Basically allows me to do everything I need except certain things like lat pull downs and the like.

[Degree:N]

I lift three days a week. I do not lift on off days but merely do stretching, pushups, situps, and crunches. A "cat" is a good form of a pushup as well because it exercises delts, traps, triceps, chest, and lower back.How do you do Cat Pushups? Also, do you or anyone else know of a website that has illustrations of back/shoulder exercises that do not require gym equipment? I have searched using Google but only seem to get sites that have poorly worded descriptions or require gym equipment.

[rovens]

Have you tried www.bodybuilding.com it has step by step guides to exercises and lists them by muscle groups. Im no expert but i found it informative.

[Degree:N]

Have you tried www.bodybuilding.com it has step by step guides to exercises and lists them by muscle groups. Im no expert but i found it informative.
Thanks for the link, I'll take a look.

[GrosPoisson]

Thanks for all the replies so far everyone. Checked out the link, pretty good site. I like the search functionality, lets me limit it to body weight exercises only and such. Good descriptions and pictures too.

[Col. Psycho]

try this:

take a long piece of wood, like that of a broom handle.

secure a piece of string to either end.

attach a brick to each string.

place hands about 10cm apart, in the middle of the piece of wood.

roll the bricks up, then down. do this at your own pace and your forearms and arms get fucking worked. seriously.

[GrosPoisson]

I've been doing elevated pushups for only a couple of days now, and I'm already noticing that the upper part of my arms near the shoulder blades are firming up and gaining a tad of width very nicely. Triceps are improving as well, albeit much more slowly.

Anyone know of some good body resistance exercises to work the abs? So far I'm just doing situps and raising my legs from 0 to 90 degrees using the abs.

[phatace51]

try this:

take a long piece of wood, like that of a broom handle.

secure a piece of string to either end.

attach a brick to each string.

place hands about 10cm apart, in the middle of the piece of wood.

roll the bricks up, then down. do this at your own pace and your forearms and arms get fucking worked. seriously.

Good exercise. Nice input. I do that as well.

[SWATJester_os]

Hold a brick in each hand, arms outstretched, standing up straight. See how long it is till you're smoked.

[gYmBaG]

Hold a brick in each hand, arms outstretched, standing up straight. See how long it is till you're smoked.
oh i hated stuff like that lol. in rotc we used to have replica m1's and we would always have to hold them out, straight armed in front of us if we did anything wrong, and those beast were heavy, well heavyer then our 03's for some reason

[SWATJester_os]

You don't even need a heavy object...just hold your own arms out like that, palms up....after 5 minutes you'll be hurting

[meifunk]

Thinking position, take!

[SWATJester_os]

Oh god, thinker pose sucks too... It's like doing a power squat.....forever.

[meifunk]

Yeah, but it straightens disrespectful E-2s out real quick.