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Actually, doing high reps of light bodyweight calisthenics will do wear and tear on the joints; that is why you should not do loads and loads of regular pushups, because it will wear out the shoulders over time.
As for bodyweight exercises, you can work virtually every muscle in the body with bodyweight exercises and gain tremendous strength, except for the lower back, the hamstrings, and the calves. These require weights or a machine of some sort. Now if you do a lot of power tumbling (back handsprings and backflips), a lot, you do not need weights for the lower back because these movements put such stress on the lower back that it will build up a lot of strength.
For example, many gymnasts who have been doing full planche pushups for a long time can benchpress twice their weight or more upon first trying, as well as do loads of pushups. But guys who can bench twice their weight cannot just do planche pushups on the first try.
You can literally very severely work all of the upper-body muscles and abdominals with rings and calisthenics. For the lower back and legs, you can work those too, but you're more limited (most people don't do power tumbling for their lower back).
Pistols (single-leg squats) are very good for the quadriceps and glutes, and to work the adductor muscles of the quads (the inner thigh muscles), you work at doing the Chinese split.
Development of the split with your legs out 180 degrees means you have very strong, yet loose, hips. If you cannot do a 180 degree split, your legs are too weak or you just haven't trained for the flexibility. You cannot do the 180 degree Chinese split with weak legs; if you can, you have no stretch reflex and that is dangerous.
That is how they do Chinese splits with each foot on a chair and nothing under their groin; their adductor muscles are strong enough to support their bodyweight.
If you follow a regimen of muscle ups (these require the ability to do 15 full pullups and 15 full dips to start), which is a combination pullup-dip exercise, along with static holds like the iron cross, inverted iron cross, planche, maltese if you can get it (that is like superhuman there, the maltese is hard for short guys with short legs!), handstand pushups on the rings, planche pushups, abdominal exercises like the L-sit and the hanging leg raise, lever pullups, etc... you will develop upper-body strength and core abdominal strength that far exceeds that which weight training will give you.
Resistance is resistance training, there is nothing magically different with such bodyweight movements then with weights, it's just that bodyweight movements on the rings put so little leverage on the muscles in such odd positions, that you work muscles to gain strength in a way that you simply cannot do with weights.
For example, to gain strength for an iron cross with weights, you could hang upside-down from a pullup bar and hold some dumbells and, with arms straight, lift those dumbells up and hold them out 180 degrees. But each of those dumbells would have to weigh about half your bodyweight overall, so if you weigh 170 pounds, you'd need the strength to hold an 85 pound dumbell in each arm with your arms locked straight out.
For an inverted iron cross strength workout, you'd invert the dumbell movement, but you'd still be cheating a bit as an inverted iron cross will be taxing the abdominals a lot to stabilize the legs and so forth, something doing it with weights on the ground won't do. To simulate this fully, put a dumbell in each arm that weighs half your bodyweight, then lift each arm out with the arms locked straight and hold them out at 180 degrees for about 5 seconds.
For something like a full planche, there really is no weight-training alternative. You can't really simulate the movement. Planche pushups are a great exercise, so are tucked planche pushups.
Now for legs, yeah pistols are great, weighted pistols are great, flexibility (like Chinese splits) really shows you have strong and flexible legs (muscles that are strong in a stretched position), but your hamstring and calves are still limited. You need external weights for that. And as always, the barbell squat is a KING exercise!
And if you don't do lots of tumbling, you need deadlifts for the lower back.
There are other exercise too, like one-arm Dive-Bomber pushups anyone, or better yet, one-arm Dive-Bombers on the fingertips! There's one-arm pullups, there's a one-arm lever hold for the really crazy insane, there's probably a one-arm lever pullup for the super-insane (never seen that one). Handstand pushups on the ground are good, but you want full-range handstand pushups, so doing them on chairs or something is much better, plus, unlike a military press with a barbell that weighs as much as you do, your abs and lower back have to work harder to balance and stabilize your body through your handstand pushups on something like chairs.
If you do them on rings, it is tougher because unlike chairs, rings sway back and forth and side to side, so your arms will be straining like mad to stabilize the rings and keep them from swinging or swaying, plus your core is taxed a lot for stability. Then you're doing full-range handstand pushups on the rings, too.
Parallel bars are another gymnastics staple. There is a whole family of dips and handstand presses on the parallel bars (I am guessing they could be done on the rings too, I don't know). These parallel-bar dips are very taxing.
A very basic, but taxing move is the straddle-press to handstand movement, too.
There are also jumping pistols, something for hardcore folk (gymnasts do these I have read). Gymnasts do not neglect leg training, they want small, slim legs that are light, but very, very strong. They do not train their legs for muscle size, they train them for strength. Same with the upper-body too, but their upper-bodies usually get huge regardless.
Gymnastics actually was utilized as a strength-training artform by knights in the very old days. Knights used to practice javelin throwing, sprinting, vaulting onto the wooden horse to simulate vaulting onto a warhorse, etc...the rings and parallel bars were used for strength training. If you look at pictures of many gyms of the early 20th century, they have weights and lots of rings. It is also said that knights did things like somersaults and so forth, not for fighting movements, but just for training, for agility (and probably for fun, too).
Later on, gymnastics was formed into a sport. The wooden horse became the pommel horse exercise and it had a horse head on it which they later removed. The vaulting movement evolved into its own little artform. The rings remained the rings, with the competition being who could pull off the most physically-demanding strength moves. The acrobatics were incorporated and formed their own little artform. The parallel bars were mixed with acrobatics and strength moves, etc....track & field remained part of gymnastics up until about the 50s, when it broke off into its own sport, so sprinting, javelin throwing, discus throwing, etc....all became a separate sport.
Women's gymnastics was formed, which focused more on flexibility and ballet-type movements mixed with acrobatics, and so forth.
In this sense, to me, track & field and gymnastics are much more true MARTIAL (military) artforms then "martial arts" like Capoeira, tae kwon do, etc....no soldier ever marched into battle throwing high kicks or anything. They grappled, but otherwise they boxed, kneed, sword-fought, or in modern times, shot their enemy. Modern infantry troops carry around 150 pounds of gear on patrols, which is why they only concentrate on boxing and grappling techniques. You really can't do any kicks except knees if you must fight hand-to-hand. And even then, the rifle serves as a weapon. So does the helmet (get headbutted with that thing!).
Football too I think is more of a true martial art than half the so-called "martial arts" out there. Football combines lots of martial skills: strength training, sprinting with a lot of equipment on, THROWING (football throwing can help with throwing grenades or a javelin I am sure), plus they utilize certain martial techniques in football to get around opposing football players.
In the early days of working out and strength training, most of the men called themselves "physical culturists," and they did a combo of gymnastics training (acrobatics, rings, parallel bars, flexibility training), as well as strongman training, and bodybuilding. Guys like John Grimek and so forth could turn back walkovers and do full splits, and do lots of rings movements and so forth. There are many others too, including the famous Sandow.
Only in our modern times did physical culture get separated into power lifting, bodybuilding, gymnastics training, etc...it used to all be the same thing, just different types.
BTW (rant-alert!), that is why I hate it when people say the traditional Western image of strength is some steroid-bloated freak of 300+ pounds who is like 7 feet tall, whereas Bruce Lee represented a "true overall package" that up to that point was never done. There were plenty of guys that had muscular strength, symmetry, flexibility, and acrobatics capability all in one package long before Bruce, and they're weren't giants or anything.
And I've gone way off topic here, but oh well, call it an informative rant
Maybe someone could also do a one-arm, one-legged, one-finger-thumb Dive-Bomber pushup, too??? Probably possible, I am sure.
As for bodyweight exercises, you can work virtually every muscle in the body with bodyweight exercises and gain tremendous strength, except for the lower back, the hamstrings, and the calves. These require weights or a machine of some sort. Now if you do a lot of power tumbling (back handsprings and backflips), a lot, you do not need weights for the lower back because these movements put such stress on the lower back that it will build up a lot of strength.
For example, many gymnasts who have been doing full planche pushups for a long time can benchpress twice their weight or more upon first trying, as well as do loads of pushups. But guys who can bench twice their weight cannot just do planche pushups on the first try.
You can literally very severely work all of the upper-body muscles and abdominals with rings and calisthenics. For the lower back and legs, you can work those too, but you're more limited (most people don't do power tumbling for their lower back).
Pistols (single-leg squats) are very good for the quadriceps and glutes, and to work the adductor muscles of the quads (the inner thigh muscles), you work at doing the Chinese split.
Development of the split with your legs out 180 degrees means you have very strong, yet loose, hips. If you cannot do a 180 degree split, your legs are too weak or you just haven't trained for the flexibility. You cannot do the 180 degree Chinese split with weak legs; if you can, you have no stretch reflex and that is dangerous.
That is how they do Chinese splits with each foot on a chair and nothing under their groin; their adductor muscles are strong enough to support their bodyweight.
If you follow a regimen of muscle ups (these require the ability to do 15 full pullups and 15 full dips to start), which is a combination pullup-dip exercise, along with static holds like the iron cross, inverted iron cross, planche, maltese if you can get it (that is like superhuman there, the maltese is hard for short guys with short legs!), handstand pushups on the rings, planche pushups, abdominal exercises like the L-sit and the hanging leg raise, lever pullups, etc... you will develop upper-body strength and core abdominal strength that far exceeds that which weight training will give you.
Resistance is resistance training, there is nothing magically different with such bodyweight movements then with weights, it's just that bodyweight movements on the rings put so little leverage on the muscles in such odd positions, that you work muscles to gain strength in a way that you simply cannot do with weights.
For example, to gain strength for an iron cross with weights, you could hang upside-down from a pullup bar and hold some dumbells and, with arms straight, lift those dumbells up and hold them out 180 degrees. But each of those dumbells would have to weigh about half your bodyweight overall, so if you weigh 170 pounds, you'd need the strength to hold an 85 pound dumbell in each arm with your arms locked straight out.
For an inverted iron cross strength workout, you'd invert the dumbell movement, but you'd still be cheating a bit as an inverted iron cross will be taxing the abdominals a lot to stabilize the legs and so forth, something doing it with weights on the ground won't do. To simulate this fully, put a dumbell in each arm that weighs half your bodyweight, then lift each arm out with the arms locked straight and hold them out at 180 degrees for about 5 seconds.
For something like a full planche, there really is no weight-training alternative. You can't really simulate the movement. Planche pushups are a great exercise, so are tucked planche pushups.
Now for legs, yeah pistols are great, weighted pistols are great, flexibility (like Chinese splits) really shows you have strong and flexible legs (muscles that are strong in a stretched position), but your hamstring and calves are still limited. You need external weights for that. And as always, the barbell squat is a KING exercise!
And if you don't do lots of tumbling, you need deadlifts for the lower back.
There are other exercise too, like one-arm Dive-Bomber pushups anyone, or better yet, one-arm Dive-Bombers on the fingertips! There's one-arm pullups, there's a one-arm lever hold for the really crazy insane, there's probably a one-arm lever pullup for the super-insane (never seen that one). Handstand pushups on the ground are good, but you want full-range handstand pushups, so doing them on chairs or something is much better, plus, unlike a military press with a barbell that weighs as much as you do, your abs and lower back have to work harder to balance and stabilize your body through your handstand pushups on something like chairs.
If you do them on rings, it is tougher because unlike chairs, rings sway back and forth and side to side, so your arms will be straining like mad to stabilize the rings and keep them from swinging or swaying, plus your core is taxed a lot for stability. Then you're doing full-range handstand pushups on the rings, too.
Parallel bars are another gymnastics staple. There is a whole family of dips and handstand presses on the parallel bars (I am guessing they could be done on the rings too, I don't know). These parallel-bar dips are very taxing.
A very basic, but taxing move is the straddle-press to handstand movement, too.
There are also jumping pistols, something for hardcore folk (gymnasts do these I have read). Gymnasts do not neglect leg training, they want small, slim legs that are light, but very, very strong. They do not train their legs for muscle size, they train them for strength. Same with the upper-body too, but their upper-bodies usually get huge regardless.
Gymnastics actually was utilized as a strength-training artform by knights in the very old days. Knights used to practice javelin throwing, sprinting, vaulting onto the wooden horse to simulate vaulting onto a warhorse, etc...the rings and parallel bars were used for strength training. If you look at pictures of many gyms of the early 20th century, they have weights and lots of rings. It is also said that knights did things like somersaults and so forth, not for fighting movements, but just for training, for agility (and probably for fun, too).
Later on, gymnastics was formed into a sport. The wooden horse became the pommel horse exercise and it had a horse head on it which they later removed. The vaulting movement evolved into its own little artform. The rings remained the rings, with the competition being who could pull off the most physically-demanding strength moves. The acrobatics were incorporated and formed their own little artform. The parallel bars were mixed with acrobatics and strength moves, etc....track & field remained part of gymnastics up until about the 50s, when it broke off into its own sport, so sprinting, javelin throwing, discus throwing, etc....all became a separate sport.
Women's gymnastics was formed, which focused more on flexibility and ballet-type movements mixed with acrobatics, and so forth.
In this sense, to me, track & field and gymnastics are much more true MARTIAL (military) artforms then "martial arts" like Capoeira, tae kwon do, etc....no soldier ever marched into battle throwing high kicks or anything. They grappled, but otherwise they boxed, kneed, sword-fought, or in modern times, shot their enemy. Modern infantry troops carry around 150 pounds of gear on patrols, which is why they only concentrate on boxing and grappling techniques. You really can't do any kicks except knees if you must fight hand-to-hand. And even then, the rifle serves as a weapon. So does the helmet (get headbutted with that thing!).
Football too I think is more of a true martial art than half the so-called "martial arts" out there. Football combines lots of martial skills: strength training, sprinting with a lot of equipment on, THROWING (football throwing can help with throwing grenades or a javelin I am sure), plus they utilize certain martial techniques in football to get around opposing football players.
In the early days of working out and strength training, most of the men called themselves "physical culturists," and they did a combo of gymnastics training (acrobatics, rings, parallel bars, flexibility training), as well as strongman training, and bodybuilding. Guys like John Grimek and so forth could turn back walkovers and do full splits, and do lots of rings movements and so forth. There are many others too, including the famous Sandow.
Only in our modern times did physical culture get separated into power lifting, bodybuilding, gymnastics training, etc...it used to all be the same thing, just different types.
BTW (rant-alert!), that is why I hate it when people say the traditional Western image of strength is some steroid-bloated freak of 300+ pounds who is like 7 feet tall, whereas Bruce Lee represented a "true overall package" that up to that point was never done. There were plenty of guys that had muscular strength, symmetry, flexibility, and acrobatics capability all in one package long before Bruce, and they're weren't giants or anything.
And I've gone way off topic here, but oh well, call it an informative rant
Maybe someone could also do a one-arm, one-legged, one-finger-thumb Dive-Bomber pushup, too??? Probably possible, I am sure.
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