Do You Prefer Lifting Weights, or Is Bodyweight Training Enough?

There are many ways to train. Two of the most popular are bodyweight training and training with weights. What are their benefits?

How to start

First, take stock of your body, muscles, tendons and joints. It's good to know where your limitations and weak points are. A trainer or physiotherapist can help you best with this. If you can't bend down to pick up dropped keys without pain, the problem is probably flexibility and mobility. Read more about why flexibility and mobility matter. If you can't lift a bag of shopping, you may be lacking strength and muscle mass. Think about your goal, too. Are you getting beach-ready, or do you want to be the strongest mate everyone calls when they're moving house?

Bodyweight training

This type of training gives you room to get to know your body and perfect your technique. You focus on functional movements that engage several muscle groups at once. To create resistance against gravity, you use your own body weight, which builds your strength, power, endurance, speed, flexibility, coordination and balance. You need little or no equipment, and it's ideal when you can't make it to the gym but still want to move. It's a versatile and accessible form of exercise for everyone.

Popular bodyweight exercises include planks, squats, lunges, burpees, pull-ups and push-ups.

A strong core is the foundation of every exercise. If you feel you still need to work on it, add corrective exercises using your body weight to your training plan, such as rotations with a gym ball, stability and breathing exercises, resistance band pulls or pelvic tilts.

Strength training with weights

This is where you spice things up a little by adding extra resistance with dumbbells, barbells and weights. This builds strength, anaerobic endurance and the size of your skeletal muscles.

The movement causes microscopic damage to the muscle fibres, which triggers muscle protein synthesis. The muscles repair themselves and the muscle fibres grow faster, giving you more strength and endurance.

When you train with weights, you burn more calories in the long run. The effect lasts after your workout, even when you're just sitting at work. In a recent study, researchers found that although an hour of cardio burns more calories than an hour of lifting weights, your calorie burn doesn't stay elevated once the cardio is over. After weightlifting, the body stays in an oxygenated state and keeps burning for the following hours. If you're seeing fewer and fewer people on the treadmills at the gym and more and more in front of the mirror with a dumbbell in hand, now you know why.

Benefits of strength training with weights

• a firmer body,
• improved bone density,
• more stable joints,
• better cardiovascular health,
• a lower risk of injury

The most popular weighted exercises include squats, deadlifts, bench press, hip thrusts and even Olympic weightlifting.

With the right technique, you can lift, push or pull up to three times your body weight. But that only holds if your technique is spot on. At the same time, heavier weights take a bigger physical and mental toll on your body, so make sure you get enough recovery and rest.

Your training, your call

Of course, you can also combine these two types of training. Plan it so that you actually enjoy your workouts. There's no point in someone drilling into you that you should bench 50 kilos and sweat out last week too, if you last 3 days and then can only look at the gym from your car with trauma in your eyes. Remember that small progress is still progress, and training is a marathon, not a sprint. So you don't have to pump iron if you enjoy bodyweight training more. And the reverse is true too. Whatever mix of strength training you choose, don't forget about good technique. Make sure you warm up, stretch and get your body going before every workout. And of course the classics: don't forget about quality sleep, enough of the right food and quality supplements.

Happy training!