How to gain muscle without weights?

>how to get smarter without reading
Watch lectures and informative videos on YouTube
>how to swim without getting wet
Swim in quicksand. Best damn resistance training there is.
Get on my level.

youtube.com/watch?v=mEcubbF3kI8

Find a park, and learn to lift like inner city blacks and slavs.

>Watch lectures and informative videos on YouTube

...

Watching lectures and youtube videos will never help you become a better writer or able to understand more complex verbiage.
You need to read on top of it.

If you really want to maximize hypertrophy in a muscle group, you need to isolated that muscle group and hit it for long enough to trigger growth, which is usually something in the 45 - 60 seconds window. (provided there's enough tension, you can't just lift light weights for 50 seconds and expect growth)

The problem with bodyweight shit is that it's not only harder to properly isolate the muscle (you'll probably need many synergist muscles to accomplish most decent exercises, and there's a good chance that they will give way before the muscle you want to grow is properly worked on) but it's also hard to get enough tension within a specific range like that. And although some research has cast doubt on the hypertrophy range thing and shown that high reps can still create muscle at a similar rate, most of them have also shown that 1. the strength gain is not the same 2. because you'll spend so much time on each set and exercise, your body will grow tired quick.

So TL;DR you will probably need weights in the long run. You can keep doing variations of push ups and dips and whatever and succeed at first, but progressive overload will be difficult, and you'll not get good results in the end. So at the very least get a bag and fill it with sand if you have to, rest it on your body as you push-up, dip, pull-up, increase weight with time, etc, and get a few resistance bands.

This video about using isometrics during bodyweight exercises is also interesting, but I can't promise anything because I haven't tried it myself: youtube.com/watch?v=8nEmsR68FhA

Blast the shit out of your chest and arms with pushups and pullups once a week.
Eat a lot.
Your body can't tell the difference between exercises, only work done and mechanical loading(going to failure even on very high reps recruits and loads maximally all muscle fibers)

journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstract/2018/03000/Effect_of_Progressive_Calisthenic_Push_up_Training.9.aspx

You're kinda cucked for the lower body though.

If you're new to bodyweight exercises I highly recommend you follow StarBodyweightStrength or BodyweightWarrior beginner's routine.

With regular bars / floor you can do chinups, bicep curls, tricep extensions, archer pushups (pecs), diamond push ups (you can make them inclined to target the upper pecs more). A pair of wooden chairs will allow you to do dips as well (tris and pecs).

After you get used to it I highly recommend buying gymnastic rings. You'll be able to do pec flys with them as well as bulgarian push ups an dips, which are freaking great for the pecs. Pelican curls (to destroy your biceps), face pulls and reverse flys. All your push movements will become hard as fuck.

You can definitely improve yourself mentally without reading, just like you can get muscular without lifting weights. But reading/ lifting weights isn’t the preferred method. My point is, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Does this actually help strength gain or is it just good for maintaining?

Forgot the image. I highly recommend following FitnessFAQ and Tom Merrick's youtube channel.

It helps with strength gain, but usually they don't lead to growth because without contraction and damage there's no hypertrophy.

Start training with harder body weight exercise variations. There are times of channels on YouTube with a. Good amount of info. I recommend Connor Sloan, FitnessFAQ and Austin Dunham.

this op. you can do dips by using two chairs

Well there is a prison exercise book so...