Kegels, bodybuilding & muscle growth

louielouie, I THINK you MAY be on the wrong track.

hey upto, I tend to disagree regarding your last sentence…I’ve seen it lots of times, you can increase size with only push ups,provided you’re in a anabolic(caloric surplus) phase. Exercise is just the stimulus and push ups are a good stimulus even for intermediate levels(depending also on how you do them).

Push ups are not great enough stimulus. Chest and triceps can grow from push ups only if you’re skinny and don’t have much muscle mass to begin with, but once you reach certain level (which happens relatively fast), no way you can go beyond that without added load. It’s simply the way it works, muscle adapts to certain load and won’t grow if you don’t increase it. Will your chest grow from benching 100 lbs for 2 years? I don’t think so. Will your quads grow from squatting 150 lbs for 2 years? Hell no. Same thing with push ups, not enough load to cause significant growth.

Yes, but you can increase intensity to push-ups by increasing time under tension, shorters sets ,greater range of motion and other things like those. So you can use push ups as a good stimulus and still grow, provided as said earlier you’re in a caloric surplus(raw materials for muscle).

Yes, but it’s still very limited and not even close to what you can achieve with some weights, let alone a lot of weights.

All you need to develop a strong, muscular body is a pull up bar, a dip bar, your BW and some imagination.No weights :) There are many ways to accomplish a muscular body(we’re not talking here about pro bodybuilding or such) , by using external weights, by using your BW,etc . I think we need to think outside of the box :)

I think you can’t obtain proper muscular build without weights. You can be skinny muscular, i.e. be good at BW exercises and have lean, muscular body, but far from massive (and I’m not talking about professional bodybuilders, but something along the lines of 5’10” and 190 lbs compared to 5’10” and 145 lbs).

But I guess that’s just bodybuilder side of me talking. :) I’m 5’8” and 168 lbs right now. When I do pull ups, chin ups and dips I always add external load (e.g. I can do dips with 130-135 lbs added to my own BW).

I understand where you’re coming from . I was there too :) . The things I said about push ups regarding intensity applies to pull ups chin ups , etc and this intesity could bring you to 180-200 lbs with a 4 pack(maybe a 6 pack if you have some luck and discipline). I understand that even now you’ll still believe what you know now but trust me , this applied to me also. I can now mantain a good build by doing only what mentioned above. Maybe I will post a pic someday, but not in this context.

Sorry, I meant shorter rest between sets.

Got ya man of ten- keep my eyes and ears open and my mouth closed, until I have been here longer.

No, by all means post away. All genuine contributions are welcome here!

I’ve started wondering if weighted kegels might be a good way to increase the resistance during a squeeze in a linear way, similar to adding more weight to the bar each week. Any thoughts of other options?

If you do erect kegels while placing the palm of your hand down on the dorsal side, you are effectively doing maximum effort isometric kegel contractions. When I was doing those, my CC’s got so hard it hurt (I kid you not).

Haha, I’ll give that a shot. I tried those after seeing them mentioned here. Thanks.

It`s strange but I think hanging probably helps with kegel strength but I don`t know how that happens. Just wanted to add.