What follows are two areas that are pretty wide open for Bodyweight Trainers to put their own personal spin on things. Diet and how to set up your schedule. I'll give you my own ideas, but your own lifestyle and individual needs may call for something a bit different. Either way Bodyweight Training as described in this Guide will get the job done much more efficiently than any Crunch Fitness circuit of machine training ever will!
Broad But Effective Diet Ideas
Your diet is dictated by just what type of shape you are in now and what your end goals are. If you are too fat and looking to get lean obviously your diet strategy is not going to be in line with someone who is a tooth pick and looking to put on mass.
* For the Overweight. The most important thing is to establish a calorie deficit. There's many different ways to achieve this and quite a few "specialty" diet plans that will absolutely work for you to lose weight. One that fits perfectly with the minimalist approach of Bodyweight Training and is near miraculous as far as torching body fat goes is intermittent fasting. I've wrote quite extensively about it please feel free to check out my work on the subject and shoot me any questions you may have. Low (or no) carb diets ala the Ketogenic Diet or Atkins also have been shown again and again to produce solid weight loss results in most dieters should fasting not be your thing. They aren't easy to follow, but they do work.
* For those looking to Bulk Up. If you are looking to put on mass, up your calorie intake and make especially sure you are consuming enough protein - the building blocks of muscles. I'd suggest aiming for roughly 1 gram of protein per pound you weigh split over five or six meals. When in doubt eat (or drink) more protein!
How to Set up Your Training Schedule
I'm going to suggest while you take a shot at Bodyweight Training and ignore other training methods, you also ignore any of the ideas on how to schedule your work outs you picked up from mainstream body building and fitness sources.
Try this instead...
* "A" Days. Full body Bodyweight Training and choice of cardio.
1. Warm up and stretching.
2. Push ups. 5 sets.
3. Choice of Dips. 3 sets.
4. Pull Ups. 5 sets.
5. Back Bridges. 3 sets.
6. Bodyweight Squats. 5 sets.
7. Bodyweight Lunges. 3 sets.
8. Leg Raises. 5 sets.
9. Choice of Ab exercise. 3 sets.
10. Choice of Ab exercise. 3 sets.
* "B" Days. Rest - light stretching possibly cardio depending on level of fatigue and need to cut body fat.
Now this is hardly the only choice of how you can set up your Bodyweight Training sessions - you can choose to do your split according to body parts or by some other criteria, but this simple schedule sky rockets metabolism and conditioning levels in everyone I've ever seen use it. Think outside the box and give it a shot before you try something else. I think you will be seriously glad you did!
