How I Avoided the Dad Bod after Doing a Year of Bodyweight Exercises

A guide for sleep-deprived fathers

A year ago, my family and I welcomed a new bundle of joy.

The joy didn’t last long. Sleep deprivation kicked in. My exercise got cut short and I could begin seeing signs of the dad bod arising.

I didn’t really want to develop a beer belly, so I researched “‘”how to exercise when you have no time.”

Nothing particularly helped.

Besides doing long cardio sessions, such as running, which I hate, another piece of advice was to do HIIT but I can’t really get into the mood to do something I know will be awfully taxing. The next best thing was to do an hour-long weights session once a week, which I found even then I couldn’t manage the time for. Furthermore, I couldn’t do a quick weights session at home in case I woke up the baby.

But, I did come across calisthenics — bodyweight exercises.

So, for the last year, I’ve been doing mostly calisthenics and I can proudly say that I haven’t gained that beer belly the last year. As a matter of fact, since doing calisthenics I’ve added 20kg to my bench press.

Here are some things I’ve learned about calisthenics that I’ll share with you.

1. Most calisthenic exercises are compound exercises

A compound exercise uses multiple muscles at once. For example, the humble push-ups work your chest, shoulders, and your triceps. Compare this to the biceps curl which only works on your biceps.

The mathematics is quite linear here. The more muscles you use the more energy you burn. Dr. Jim Stoppani surmises that multijoint exercises, or compound exercises, burn more calories than single joint or machine exercises because not only the target muscles are in action but also the stabilizer muscles. (Stoppani 2014)

I can tell you from first-hand experience that doing dips on parallel bars is a lot easier than on rings because on rings you also need to tense your whole body so that you don’t shake everywhere.

Ultimately, for us, this means that we can get a great workout using compound calisthenics exercises as we would with compound weighted exercises such as the barbell squat.

2. Progression is skilled-based

Unlike weighted exercises where progression can be measured by how much weight you can push, calisthenics measure progress by the sort of exercise you can do. It’s hard to convert calisthenics to weighted exercises but fortunately, Steven Low, in his book, Overcoming Gravity, has done the calculations for us.

For example, a 1.55x bodyweight dip is roughly equivalent to a tuck planche push-up. (Low 2016) In other words, let’s say I’m 70kg, and I am wearing a 38.5kg dip belt, that would be the same as my being parallel to the ground with my knees tucked doing essentially a parallel to the ground push-up. Honestly, I can pump out a few more tuck planche push-ups than I can with a 40kg dip belt on, but the feeling on the chest is similar.

Ultimately, what makes calisthenics exciting is that you get to attempt more exotic gymnastics moves as you get stronger and slimmer. This is unlike weight training where even though your muscles get more pronounced, at the end of the day you’re doing similar exercises with heavier weights. Some people like this but my personality likes novelty, so I prefer calisthenics.

3. Calisthenics can follow standard training protocols

When you think of calisthenics, you think of endless push-ups and pull-ups. If you have read deeply into muscle building, you will realize that different repetition ranges will elicit different responses.

For example, the 1 to 6 repetition range is known as strength, 8 to 12 is known as hypertrophy and 15 or more is known as endurance. Different repetition cycles will elicit the growth of different muscle fibers. (Stoppani 2014)

I hope the rate-limiting factor is clear here. If you can do 10 clean push-ups in a row, it will be muscle definition but once that becomes too easy and you begin attempting 20 push-ups in a row, your muscles will grow more towards endurance rather than for size.

However, as mentioned earlier, different calisthenics skills are somewhat equivalent to different weight ranges for equivalent barbell or dumbbell exercises. Simply, if you want to train for muscle mass, then aim to do calisthenic exercises where you can only accomplish a maximum of 12 repetitions.

Here’s to put it into perspective, have you ever noticed Why male gymnasts have such large biceps? It’s not necessarily they do many biceps curls, which they would need anyway for rehabilitation, but the time under tension to hold gymnastic rings for time increases the bicep muscle size.

Ultimately, I use various calisthenics in my exercise programming. For example, for a chest day, I will do ring dips, ring push-ups, Russian dips, and the standard push-ups. Furthermore, I also like to mix it up and also use bench presses and dumbbell presses when I feel like them.

4. Calisthenics works well with intermittent fasting

You’ve heard the mantra that abs are made in the kitchen. Even though calisthenics exercises themselves burn a lot of energy, excess consumption of calories will negate all of your hard work.

I’m short on time and willpower, so I’ve found that the 16/8 intermittent fasting protocol works best for me.

Personally, I’ve found intermittent fasting works while with calisthenics workouts because I’m focused on skills rather than pushing the heavier weight.

In weightlifting, your body requires a good glycogen store and glucose in your body prior to starting exercise. Having a good meal beforehand and after your work is essential.

Often than not, I don’t have time to have a pre or post-workout meal on a prescribed schedule. The baby’s demands come first. However, I’ve found that calisthenics can be easily scaled in a short amount of time. For example, if I’m attempting a straddle planche but I don’t feel like it then I’ll switch to planche leads instead. The latter exercise is less demanding on the body, so requiring less energy but doing a lower intensity for longer increases the training volume so still giving you progress towards your training goals.

Ultimately, this means I can still get away with doing a workout and perform well enough during a fasted state.

5. A haphazardous program

If you’ve read this far, you probably want a workout plan now.

Training is all about your workout goals. My goal is to stay fit enough and avoid getting the dad bod.

I take inspiration from CrossFit and use a scientific yet random-looking workout plan. Basically, I do an undulating, superset push/pull, and legs/arms/abs workouts on interchanging days.(Stoppani 2014)

Basically, in the first workout of the week, I do 15+ reps, the second workout is 8–12 reps, and the last workout is 1–5 reps. This is the undulating program. Then, I cycle through push/pull superset day on one day and then a legs/arms/abs workout on the other day. Cardio is mostly Tabata or cardio acceleration between supersets if I feel like I need to burn more energy.

This sounds like a completely random workout plan and it somewhat is. But, I’ve taken the philosophy of CrossFit that each workout of the day should be varied and uses Jim Stoppani training tactics to build this plan. Furthermore, this schedule is easy enough to remember and requires little planning.

This plan itself works well enough to keep the fat off and increase reps. But, if you want to know why I perform such a program, I do it like this because I can’t commit to 30-minute long workouts. My workouts need to be broken up into 10-minute sessions throughout the day and the variety in training volume reduces muscular fatigue so I can’t make excuses not to exercise. Finally, the variation in training volume also allows for progressive overload as the variation in weight lifted or neural complexity of each exercise avoids specific adaptation to an exercise, but this comes at the cost of slower progression. (Stoppani 2014)

Personally, I’m not too bothered by slower progression as I’m not training for any sort of competitive reason.

Conclusions

Perhaps, what I really need to point out in the last year of doing bodyweight exercises is that I’ve simply maintained my physique without necessarily adding on any more noticeable muscle. Yes, I did see results in doing large barbell exercises such as bench press and deadlifts, and more intermediate calisthenics exercises but this hasn’t necessarily translated into visible hypertrophy. Nevertheless, I’m still happy with my exercise regimen while taking care of a very active toddler whom I hope will take calisthenics like myself one day as well.

References

Stoppani, J. (2014) Jim Stoppani’s Encyclopedia of Muscle and Strength 2ed: 381 Exercises and 116 Programs for Strength Training Success (2nd Ed.) Human Kinetics, Inc.

Low, S. (2016) Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength (2nd Ed.) Battle Ground Creative.