Body Weight Equivalence

It's important to know that when you exercise and use weights as part of your program, that you know how strong you actually are when it comes to body weight equivalence in plates.

Usually if you can support your own body weight on a barbell up and above your head, you ought to be able to support your own body weight above your head, right?

   Well it depends on how that's meant to be taken.

Say you can bench press a barbell with two hundred pounds on it, and that's your body weight. It's your max press, and you're regularly benching 160 to 170. Now, go a bit into the future, you're doing a regular bench press with your body weight, you're a strong person, your max overhead press is now your body weight.

   You have the strength and balance to handle both kinds of weights, since they're not Smith machine workouts or universal machine workouts, your stabilizer muscles have been strengthened as much as your regular muscles. It's a good thing to have those muscles worked out, and you're a beast if you can do that.

   Now, your stabilizer muscles are strengthened to handle something like a barbell on your shoulders or up and above your head to balance it and press it without a problem. That is a valuable form of strength to have, and a very beneficial form of strength.

   But, that's a different kind of balance, when you move into something like advanced calisthenics, your stabilizer muscles are worked out almost the same way, but in a different way at the same time. It's very different from weights.

   With weights you have incredibly strong muscles that are far stronger than if you were to do body weight. But with body weight you work out muscle groups that would take three or four different exercise to target if you were to do those with weights.

   So both are very beneficial. I encourage you as someone who does both kinds of exercises to experience the benefits of both kinds of exercises. Pull ups, muscle ups, control of your body on a flat surface. If you can dead lift two and a half to three times your body weight but do a one handed handstand and clean front flip, you're a rare breed, but a defined and strong breed. Someone who knows just about every element of strength.

   If you know body movement and object movement, you can do just about anything.