There are several variations of workouts. Typically, most people will either do cardio or some sort of weightlifting. The third option that incorporates both the best is bodyweight training. This allows the athlete to use the weight of their own body to get a workout. This is often the best because it provides the most functional results. By using your own bodyweight to work out you are able to have better control of your body and better coordination when doing any other type of activity. The other two forms have their own advantages and disadvantages as well. One major advantage to doing strictly cardio is building up stamina and endurance. This is almost impossible to do, doing any other sort of work out other than cardio. A disadvantage is if you do too much cardio you can often lose some of the strength that you have acquired from weight lifting and body weight exercises. The advantage to weightlifting is building up strength quickly. When someone starts to wait lift they are able to see you really quick progress at the beginning. As they learn the movements the amount of weight that they can lift will go up drastically. A major disadvantage to weightlifting is it can be limiting to certain activities. For example, if you want to get good at Shotput, football, or wrestling, weightlifting could be very beneficial. But somebody that wants to become faster in track at the one hundred meter would want to focus more on cardio. Too much strength could limit their speed.
While doing a comparison there are a few things that I want to dive into, these are; convenience, progression, safety, flexibility of movements, and overall muscle building. First of all, the convenience aspect, time is money. Lots of people will always say if I had time to go to the gym I would but with bodyweight exercises your gym is anywhere large enough to get down on the floor and do push-ups. Also as part of convenience, there is the financial aspect. Bodyweight exercises can be done without a gym membership or any weights. In the category of progression, I feel like weightlifting wins. This is because it is a lot easier to see your progress, as the amount of weight that you can lift increases you are progressing. Bodyweight training is much safer. The safety aspect is huge because often people will lift far more weight than their technique can handle, even if their muscles can handle it. This will lead to sprains, tendinitis, or even worse broken bones. Most bodyweight exercises come innately by nature.
Flexibility of movement that you do with weights is impacted by gravity. Because gravity only pulls straight down this limits the type of movements you can do with weights. When doing bodyweight exercises you can do different motions at different angles which will increase flexibility. The last thing to compare is overall muscle building. Both methods can lead to building muscle, but the increase in muscle mass is often greater with bodybuilding. This is where weightlifting outshines bodyweight exercises. When you become comfortable lifting your own body weight, your only option is to increase repetitions. When doing weight lifting you can just increase the weight and stick to the same amount of repetitions.
As you can see there are several disadvantages and advantages to each type of exercise. That’s why it is always good to be diverse and try and get the most benefits you can from each style.
Power Calisthenics 