[porcupine]

I have read in Mark Lauren's You Are Your Own Gym as well as Paul Wade's Convict Conditioning that one can become stronger much more effectively (as well as save money) with an exclusively calisthenics/bodyweight exercise regimen as opposed to working out with weights/gym equipment.

Has anyone ever tried one? If so, how did it work out for you?

[Neo]

I'm currently doing Rushfit, which is an MMA style at home training program. It's lots of body weight exercises with some light dumbbell work. With that said the workouts are no joke. I'm in pretty good shape, grapple 3-4 times a week, lift, and I had trouble with some of them.

I'm a few weeks in and I feel great. It's not getting my muscles much bigger, but for overall conditioning, strength/endurance, and to compliment my training it's awesome.

[SamBellamy]

If you are going the body weight route may I recommend that you don't limit yourself to doing countless reps of pushups or pistols. You should try to do some advanced calisthenics and gymnastics movements. I am assuming here that you are interested in building strength and muscle mass and not merely into "getting in shape". Top level gymnasts of course have amazing upper body strength but such skills are quite difficult or near impossible for most adults to learn. For most people and especially the scrawny; the easiest, most efficient and time effective way to build a decent body and strength would be through weight training. But you need to try things out for yourself to see what works for you.

Please check out these resources for advanced bodyweight training:

- http://www.amazon.com/Building-Gymnastic...340&sr=8-1
The author also has a website by the same name

- Beastskills.com

- I really like this guy
http://www.youtube.com/user/closetoimpossible

[RichieP]

Currently doing mostly bodyweight - pistols, chinups and various hard types of pushup (1-handed assisted, or pseudo-planche).

Finding them good for steady increase in strength, and the upper body are as good for size as the weights equivalents. The key is to keep intensity high and stay in a muscle/strength rep range, obviously. Easily done with pushups via hand position, for chinups ill have to add weight. Im doing them at the gym so thats no problem. HOWEVER the pistols are not good for leg size or general overall raw muscle/"hard fucker" -ness. For that you need squat and/or deadlifts IMO

[ElJefe]

Personal favorite home-gym exercise:

Quad-blasters. Go to the bottom of a flight of stairs, squat to below parallel, then blast up and forwards as far as you can go. 30-50 consecutive reps will leave your legs toast!