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Ultimate Bodyweight Workout Guide

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Ultimate Bodyweight Workout Guide

Tired of going to the gym? Not enough time for a traditional workout? Lose weight, build muscle and improve your cardio and mood with quick bodyweight workouts you can do anywhere, anytime. This guide covers the best bodyweight exercises and highlights how you can build your own ultimate bodyweight workout customized to your fitness level. We’ve organized exercises by major muscle groups and presented them in ascending levels of difficulty. We also identify variations for each exercise where possible, progressing from most easy, to most difficult. No matter your ability, this guide can help you construct the ultimate bodyweight workout. Remember, if you’re not sure how to do any of these exercises a little research will go a long way towards injury prevention. Let’s get started!

Exercises By Muscle Group

The bodyweight exercises have been broken down by major muscle groups. First we’ll focus on exercises that target the lower body, then move on to the upper body, both push and pull movements. From there we’ll look at exercises target the core, and finally, exercises that target the whole body. 

Lower Body

The following exercises target the lower body. The main muscle groups comprising the lower body include the quadriceps, glutes, calves, and hamstrings. Legs are an important part of a strong body and must be worked out regularly.

  • Bridge *30 seconds
  • Back Extensions *30 seconds
  • Bird Dog
  • Single Leg Deadlift
  • Lifts (hip bridges, calf raises)
  • Squats (assisted, bodyweight)
  • Lunges (supported, static, forward, lateral, step-back, walking, jumping)
  • Step Ups/Jump Up Exercises (standard, lateral, and jumping step ups, and box jump variants)
  • Pistols (assisted, bodyweight)

Upper Body: Push Muscles

The following exercises target the upper body, primarily the pushing muscles, chest, shoulder and triceps.

  • Shoulder Taps
  • Push Ups (wall assisted, knee, elevated, standard, declined, hand release, handstand)
  • Dips (band assisted, bodyweight)
  • Handstands (wall walk, wall walk shoulder taps, walking handstands)

Upper Body: Pull Muscles

The following exercises target the upper body, primarily the pulling muscles, i.e. the lats, rhomboids and traps.

  • Band Pull Aparts (variable resistance bands can be used)
  • Rows (inverted high, inverted low)
  • Bar Hangs *30 seconds
  • Pull-Ups (band assisted, box assisted, negative chin ups, regular chin ups, chest to bars). Palms facing away from you.
  • Chin-Ups (band assisted, box assisted, negative chin ups, regular chin ups, paused chin ups, wide grip chin-ups). Palms facing toward you.

Core

These exercises target the major muscles of your core, including the transverse abdominis, multifidus, obliques, erector spinae, diaphragm, pelvic floor muscles, and abs. These muscles are crucial to your overall strength, balance, and stability.

  • Scissors
  • Superman
  • Hollow Body (hold, rocking) *30 seconds
  • Mountain Climbers (slow, cross body, fast)
  • Crunches (standard, twisting, reverse)
  • Planks (knee plank, plank, side plank)
  • Knee Tucks (seated, hanging, jumping)
  • Knees to Elbows, Toes to Bar

Full Body

These exercises work your whole body. Their goal is to improve your overall fitness and cardio. These exercises are meant to get your heart pumping and get you sweating.

  • High Knees
  • Jacks (walking, jumping)
  • Burpees (no jump, jumping, jumping with pull-ups, burpee box jump)

*If you are unsure about any of these movements there are numerous online resources that can help you make sure you’re doing them correctly, and avoid injury.

Building Your Bodyweight Workout

Now we’re going to walk through how to put together your own ultimate bodyweight workout, catered to your individual level of fitness.

Build To Your Fitness Level

We all have different levels of fitness; no workout works for all of us. To build the bodyweight workout best for you, listen to your body. Know your limitations, but push yourself, and most importantly experiment and have fun. These workouts are circuit-based, meaning you perform each exercise in succession until you have completed them all, making your first ‘circuit’. If you’re able to keep going, you do a second, then a third, until you’ve either hit your time goal, or you’ve had enough. The whole workout, including warm up and cool down, should take you around 30 minutes.

Warm Up and Cool Down

Before starting your routine, it’s important to stretch to warm up your muscles. We are going to be working out the whole body, so take adequate time to stretch out your arms, legs, and core. Finish by doing some light cardio to get your heart pumping. You should spend at least 5 minutes warming up. Likewise, once your workout is finished, spend a few minutes stretching to relax your muscles, and help reduce the lactic acid that makes them sore and achy.

Building Your Routine

It’s time to build our bodyweight workout. Start by selecting one exercise in each of the above sections (Lower Body, Push, Pull, Core, Full Body). Remember, the exercises are generally organized from easiest to hardest. Then select the variation of each exercise you will be doing. Again, remember the variants are listed in increasing levels of difficulty. Do a few reps of your chosen exercises as part of your warmup to familiarize yourself with the movements if they’re new, and to make sure you made good choices. Remember, the goal is to push yourself, not hurt yourself.

Now that you have chosen your exercises, your goal is to cycle through the circuit (each exercise performed once), as many times as you can within your targeted time. Aim for approximately 10 reps per exercise, scaling as needed. The goal is to cycle through the exercises without spending too much time on one. Let’s look at a sample workout built for someone with a good fitness base.

Example Bodyweight Workout

Total Routine: 30 mins

Warm up (~5 mins)

Circuit (~20 mins) – repeat as many circuits as possible

  • Bodyweight Squats: 10 reps
  • Hand Release Push-ups: 10 reps
  • Chin-ups: 5 reps
  • Knees Raise: 5 reps
  • Burpees: 5 reps

Cool down (~5 mins)

How To Scale Your Routine

The above was built for someone with a good base fitness level. Build your routine around what feels right for you. If you’re new to bodyweight routines or need to build your cardio, try reducing your workout time or the number of reps. You could also choose easier exercises or variations. If you’re looking for more of a challenge, increase the time or reps, choose more difficult exercises or variations, or speed up. Remember, this is a short routine, so don’t be afraid to push yourself to build endurance and grow stronger. If your workout period is over 30 minutes, try more challenging movements. Check out the links below to bodyweight workouts for all levels:

How Often Should I Do Bodyweight Workouts?

This is ultimately decided by you, so listen to your body. If you’re sore from yesterday’s workout, take the day off, you’ve earned it. Start with once or twice a week. If that feels good, then start increasing your workload. Remember your body needs rest to recover and build muscle. So, taking a day off isn’t such a bad idea.

Recap

As we’ve seen, bodyweight workouts are a quick and efficient way to build muscle, get stronger and lose weight that costs nothing, and can be done anywhere, anytime. They can also be done by anyone, at any fitness level, and are fun and free. Get started today and build your own ultimate bodyweight workout.

Benefits of Bodyweight Workouts

  • Quick and Effective. Get fit quicker.
  • Build lean muscle and get stronger.
  • Improve your cardiovascular endurance.
  • Burn fat and lose weight.
  • Anywhere, Anytime. Bodyweight routines can easily fit into a busy schedule and can be done anywhere, anytime, even at home or the office.
  • No gym, weights, or cardio machines required.
  • Customizable to any fitness level. Whether you’re just getting started or embody fitness, bodyweight workouts are adaptable to everyone at all ages.
  • Fun. Bodyweight training is not only fun and enjoyable but can improve your mood and fight depression.
  • Free.
SOURCES
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Daniel

Daniel is an extremely curious person, a wealth of random knowledge and facts. Extremely passionate about a vast array of interests ranging from health to history, science to athletics, everything culinary and the list goes on. Trust us, you would want to be on his team for Trivial Pursuit. Daniel is also years into his battle with brain cancer. He experienced a seizure while on a Zoom call at work in late 2020 and quite literally, his life changed within minutes. After his operation he started to talk about his story but had always known it was more than just him. From then, More Than Our Story became a PROJECT that has evolved into the starting point it is today.

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