Herschel Walker claims to have bench pressed 375 the first time he ever tried. His workout involved 750-100 push-ups and 2000 sit-ups daily. I've read elsewhere that he once managed 500lbs, but it was a long time ago and I can't find a reliable source.
The other example I have is from Christopher Sommer, a famous U.S. gymnastics coach. He mentioned an athlete that could benchpress 400lbs either in an online article or his book. I can't remember which, but I haven't been able to find it. I did find an article where he mentions a young athlete trained solely through bodyweight exercise, that managed to deadlift 400lbs at a bodyweight of 135.
I forgot another source. When I was in the military we had a martial arts instructor that was about 6'3" and 250lbs of muscle. He claimed that his only other source of exercise was Yoga.
It seems like these people represent exceptions to the rule more often than what is achievable by ordinary people within an ordinary time period. If I had as my goal to bench press 400 lbs within 2-3 years I wouldn't rely on body weight exercises alone.
There are ways to get incredibly strong using only body weight exercises (inmates and yoga practitioners do it, after all), but to my knowledge these all require a greater time investment due to the higher number of reps, and the results materialize over a much longer time span. I imagine that most HN readers are more interested in a time-efficient form of exercise.
Unless you want to avoid sports or paying for a gym membership entirely, the only real benefit seems to be that you can move up very slowly and conservatively, with little risk of injury.
> It seems like these people represent exceptions to the rule
Basically this.
I was a gymnast for 18 years (from 2 - 20 years old). Obviously, it wasn't professional level the entire time, but starting a bit before high school, workouts would be 5 or 6 times a week, for 4-5 hours. There was never any weightlifting, only body weight exercises. Those guys you see on TV doing Still Rings, Pommel Horse, etc., they didn't get that strong through weight training. It's just hours and hours of practice and so-called 'endurance' conditioning. I say 'so-called endurance' because most gymnasts that I met were pretty bad endurance wise, judging on ability to run for awhile. A lot of us topped out at a couple of miles, before we needed to walk.
Gymnastics is a sport that isn't assisted by weight training. There are a few exercises that use weights, like wrist therapy using 5-10 pound free weights. But all those physiques you see on TV are just thousands of hours of work, and those hours make for some of the leanest, strongest people.
Here are two videos of some good, professional-level routines:
You literally can not learn to do that through weightlifting. You cannot gain the strength those two use through weightlifting. It's not because the positions themselves are difficult, those are usually the easy parts to train and practice. It's the transitions between two different positions that is difficult, and cannot be trained by weightlifting. Gymnastics is a dynamic sport, weightlifting is a static exercise. The best that weightlifting can do is make the holds a bit easier, but that isn't really necessary, because those aren't as hard to train as the fluid transitions.
I admire and respect the difficulty of gymnastics, but people are good at what they do most of. Give me a gymnast and powerlifter who weigh the same and I expect that the PLer will smoke the gymnast at bench press and the gymnast will smoke the PLer at planche pushups.
> Gymnastics is a dynamic sport, weightlifting is a static exercise.
I dunno, man. The snatch seems to happen fairly quickly.
A genetic freak doesn't need to do anything to be strong, they just are.
The fact is that any given person will be significantly stronger after N months of training using "optimal" barbell training than using "optimal" bodyweight exercises assuming an appropriate diet.
You will get stronger using bodyweight exercises or P90x but it will take longer and you will never get as strong as using barbell training so why do it?
professional gymnasts heavily abuse PEDs. Taking enough test you can build more muscle sitting on your ass than someone lifting heavy weights naturally.
Has coach sommer or any of his athletes been linked to PED scandals? I haven't heard of any, but it's possible.
Also, couldn't you say the same thing about professional weightlifters?
The pissing contest between weightlifting and other types of strength training is pretty ridiculous. As I said in one of my original comments, both methods are completely viable. Whether you use weights or bodyweight exercise, a person who exercises is going to be far better off than someone who doesn't.
of course not, their entire existence revolves around not getting caught.
Edit: I looked up some of the claims about strength gains of Sommer's athletes. He's bragging about 400lb deadlifts, 75lb pullups after years and years of training. For reference I hit those numbers for reps in less than 18 months at a bodyweight of 145 with an actual lifting routine, and I consider my progress to be slightly slow compared to a lot of other lifting logs on fitness sites. I expect any other numbers I find to be similarly unimpressive. In general I find that the claims about bodyweight exercise follow this pattern, proponents simply do not understand what constitutes genuine impressive numbers once you are talking about a legitimate strength training program (one used by professional athletes across many sports).
Edit2 found some more claims:
Double bodyweight dead lift
Military press with 110% bodyweight
Chins with 50% of his bodyweight for reps
Dips + 60% of his bodyweight for reps
There's nothing here not reachable within 2 years by a young male following a decent program (and that's assuming a start from sedentary).
I wasn't trying to say that body weight exercise trumps weightlifting when the focus is on strength, I was simply saying that you can build strength in other ways too.
If I woke up one day and decided that the most important thing in my life was to one day bench-press 400 lbs, I would grab a copy of Starting Strength and hit the weights. There really isn't any debate about that.
The original argument against bodyweight exercise was that it's a complete waste of time. It clearly isn't. When I started basic training, about 20 percent of us could actually pass a PT test. Some people could only perform a couple of push-ups. After 8-9 weeks of doing nothing but running and body-weight exercise, nearly everyone passed.
If you took a cycle of recruits, tested them on the bench-press on day 1 of basic training, and then did so again on the last day, I'd be willing to bet that on average, their numbers would be significantly higher.
