How to Progress (without weights)

A friend asked me a really good question recently. So good in fact, after I typed up my answer to him I have decided to post it instead of messaging him back.

He asked:

"If I did workouts only doing push ups and squats, is there any sort of progression I could do weekly or daily?"

Now, this friend knows his way around the gym and is a veteran lifter. To clarify, you’re a veteran if you’ve been in the game for at least 10 years. I’m telling you that to relay the fact that he understands progress, and how it works in the gym. We add more weight over time and therefore become stronger. Progress in the weight room is easy, do more weight over time.

But to address his question, how do we make progress when only working with our own bodyweight? Can we still get stronger and improve if there’s no weight to add to a bar? Can we even progress?

My text back:

We just need to be strategic about the variables we’re manipulating. Specifically, to get better at bodyweight movements, we’re going to focus on increasing volume, or total reps, and time under tension, which we’ll do by way of tempo movements.

So let’s say you’re going to do push ups and squats 4 times per week.

I would set this up so that we would change focus on the variables every 2 weeks. This would add variety, keep it fresh, and really allow us to notice the progress.

Week 1

Every training day for week 1 you’re going to hit 50 total reps of both squats and push ups. Break it up however you need to. The first couple days might take a lot of sets and hopefully by the end of the week you’re getting it done in less time with fewer sets.

Week 2

Easy progress this week. Add 10 reps to each movement and complete them on all 4 days again.

Week 3

Now, if we were to add 10 reps every week, you would probably make some progress but only in the short term. At some point, the benefit will wear off, the workouts will take too long and you could risk overuse injuries. So this week we’re shifting gears and are going to make the movements harder by going slower, or with a controlled tempo. This way, we increase the challenge to our muscles by making them be “on” longer than they were if you just did the reps. More time under tension means more adaptation for the muscles and more results for you.

This week we’ll do only 30 total reps per workout, but for the squats you’re going to lower for 3 seconds and pause for 3 seconds on the bottom before exploding up. Same for the push ups.

Week 4

So this week, we’ll keep the reps at 30, but slow you down even further. Squats will be 5 seconds lowering and 3 seconds pausing. Push ups will be 5 seconds lowering with a 3 second pause as well.

Week 5

Now you’ll start to see the pattern. This week we get back to increasing the volume. Your body is ready for it after two lower volume (but higher stress) weeks of training. Let’s get back to adding 10 reps and start this week at 70.

Week 6

You guessed it, 80 reps of both. More volume, more training stimulus, more progress.

Week 7
Back to tempo. This time, we can increase two things at once. We can bump up the volume from our last tempo week, and we can slow the tempo down. Double progress!

35 reps of each movement with a 6 second lower and 4 second pause.

Week 8

35 reps with 6 second lower and 6 second pause on the bottom.

By progressing this way, we’re ensuring you never hit the dreaded plateau. Alternating by increasing the challenge by way to tempo and volume let’s the body properly recover and prevents you from trying to do too much too soon. Without extra weight to add on, volume and tempo and the best way to keep these simple movements challenging and ensure that you’ll actually build some strength without weights at all.

Justin Miner