Body Weight Resisted Exercise (BWRE)-- why I heart!

photo credit: obo bobolina

• Why I'm an advocate of BWRE?
  
  Body weight resisted exercise is mobile!
  You can ditch that gym membership and further save yourself from the possibility of picking up the swine flu from the gym pigs.
  It will enable you to work out in the comfort of your pj's, er... own home.
  
  BWRE is functional! How, you ask? Well, the nature of using your own body weight as a resistive force makes you activate your entire body to perform the action. Hence the reason that it is often times MORE DIFFICULT than spot training.
  
  Understand that this is the means by which our body was meant to function: AS A WHOLE rather than a sum of the strength in each muscle.
  
  Performing BWRE such as pull-ups, push-ups, lunges and squats allows you to activate muscles in a specific sequence which will directly transfer to daily activities such as walking, running up stairs and climbing the buildings (if you are this Shadowhare--if you have not heard of him, I strongly encourage you to click this link and check out the new generation of crime fighters).
  
  Muscle firing that occurs as a result of efficient motor planning (the ability of the brain to determine which muscle should fire at what time in order to achieve a task) ensures maximal strengthening and minimal injury.



• How is it different from spot training?
  
  With isolation training, often times if the exerciser is not incorporating a full body workout, their muscles become asymmetrical and unbalanced, leading to altered strain patterns on the bones and potential for injury.
  
  By incorporating whole body training or BWRE, your body is forced to utilize the small stabilizing muscles that you would never train via isolation moves.



• What exercises does this incorporate? And can it form a full workout?
  
  Sure it can be a full workout! Form a circuit with 6 to 8 of these and voila- instant work-out!
  Push-ups Variation I II
  Pull-ups and loads of variations
  Squat
  Lunge, Dynamic Lunge, Lunge with trunk rotation, backwards lunge
  Burpees
  
  ...and there are a TON more! Just google it!
  

How about you guys? Do you prefer weights over body weight resisted exercises?