Comment by belmarca | Hacker News Reader

Comment by belmarca | Hacker News Reader

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For the _vast_ majority of people, the benefits are not necessarily in "building muscle" but just getting _some_ exercise.

I would say that push-ups and crunches beat any other exercise combination in terms of unit benefit per unit effort. Distractions and shyness can be practically eliminated as you can work-out from home, you can work-out while travelling as you don't need any equipment, risk of injury is relatively much much lower, warm-up is quick, rapid (sometimes _very_ rapid) progress is almost guaranteed, etc. Combined, this allows almost anyone to get the physiological and psychological benefits of working-out cheaply, safely and rapidly. There is just no substitute for the confidence boost that you can now easily do X amount of push-ups after just a few weeks of training. Best bang for your buck for most people IMO.

Of course, long-term it's probably a good idea to have a more diverse set of exercises =)

> terms of unit benefit per unit effort

I strongly disagree with this. You need progressive overload of muscles to continue growing, meaning you should be in state of doing 12 reps max of given exercises per set and not more (6-10 reps range is better).

Once you start being able to do 12 push ups, muscles growth stimulus becomes low, and it becomes more about suffering than benefits.

But the vast, vast majority of people are _never_ going to develop "real" muscle mass in the meaning of the word used by weight lifters. It is much easier to get someone to do a few push-ups/crunches every other day than it is to get them to go to the gym consistently.

The benefits of simple calisthenics for muscle building aren't necessarily that great, but just doing them in the first place is already a big win. You will definitely get "fitter", but maybe not _that_ much stronger/bigger.

I would argue that having relatively heavy pair of dumbbells at home and doing some program like: deadlift, squat, rows, floor press and shoulder press will make bigger impact on overall shape.

Indeed, that's probably the best next step.

To a degree yes, but endurance and power are important for functional strength and for endurance this means doing lots of reps at low intensity or doing easy exercises explosively for power

Push ups and crunches are not efficient for endurance too, they involve very few muscles to overload your cardio-energy systems. Something like squats and burpies will make you breath heavy much faster, or medium distance sprint running is even better.

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