Everything You Need to Build Your Bodyweight Workout

An effective bodyweight training program can get you in shape and even build muscle, but “effective” is not the same for everyone. Some people can do 10 push-ups, others need 20, and some need more sets than others. Even how often you exercise is important. Let’s speed up and design the perfect workout for you.

In this case, efficiency does not mean simply squatting until the cows get home. On the contrary, your bodyweight program can be considered quite effective if it follows the following guidelines:

• This is what you enjoy doing. You may have the “best” program given to you by Thor himself, but if you hate it, you will never stick with it long enough to see any results, no matter what the “4 weeks to blow your ass” program. you believe?
• It is safe and appropriate for your skill level. If the training is outside your skill level, you may become injured or severely ill and lose your motivation to train . Simply put, if your body is unable to exercise and / or you are not yet fit enough to properly recover from repetitive hard workouts, more challenging programs may not even be better for you.

More importantly, you want to make sure the program works for you and your schedule because lasting results are achieved through consistent action, not from very randomly following an optimized protocol or drinking not-so-magical weight loss shakes .

Learn Your Basic Bodyweight Movement Patterns

Even among bodyweight exercises, you can perform complex movements and isolation exercises for both the upper and lower body. If that sounds Klingon to you, check out our fitness jargon tutorial , but in simpler terms, complex movements involve multiple muscle groups, while isolation exercises work on individual muscles or groups at a time.

Then things get a little more complicated: upper and lower body exercises are divided into vertical or horizontal push and pull exercises that move objects from or to your body. Meanwhile, vertical and horizontal directions refer to the anatomical planes of your body, but for our purposes, think of movements that make you move up and down or forward and backward, respectively. Putting these parts together, you get:

• Upper Body Press: Raise your arms in the air and push up. This is one of the ways to bench press, and it works your trapezius (trapezius muscles), shoulders, upper and mid-back. Some examples includehandstand push-ups (these are advanced, so barbellpush-ups will work as well) andchestpush-ups .
• Upper-Body Press: A classic example is a push-up (kneeling normally or placing your hands on a raised, stable surface such as a chair or bench). When you do this, you are working your chest, shoulders, upper and mid-back, and other muscles such as your triceps. You won’t get bored of push-ups anytime soon after you check out this article, The Art of Masculinity, where you will find an insane amount of push-up variations.
• Upper-Body Vertical Row: The Money Exercise is a pull-up that really loads your lats, shoulders, biceps, and other stabilizer muscles. If you can’t do a full pull-up, that’s okay! Try negative reps or try changing your grip . I also started that way and eventually came to a full pull-up (and even more!).
• Upper Body Lateral Row : This is usually a pull- type exercise where you hold onto something ( such as a doorway ) and reach for it. When you reach for an object, you actually sink into it with your back, using your upper back, arms, and even legs to maintain stability.
• Lower body push: Most leg exercises you know are push movements. Exercises such as lunges, squats,gluteal bridges ,lifts up andpushes the hips,working on your hips, buttocks, thighs, hamstrings and calves.
• Lower-Body Row: Basically, this is a deadlift “hip loop” pattern where you flex your hips and push your glutes back. You will work your entire rear end (collectively called your back chain ). Al Kawadloh , a strength trainer specializing in bodyweight training, wrote in his book thatback bridges anddeadlifts on one leg with body weight are great for this. Note that you’ll have to work on your flexibility to get to the full rear axle, so don’t worry if it’s hard.
• Core: While many of these exercises also engage your core , it is helpful to work on it specifically with exercises such as the bar (and any variations of it ), hanging leg raises, bike kicking, andbird dogs .

Together, these basic motion patterns target many of the 600+ muscles in your body . Consider balancing your workout with push and pull variations to strengthen your entire body more evenly.

How to adjust your body weight regimen

Before you start, access to a bar and some kind of bench, such as in a park or playground , is ideal . Bonus points if you have a suspension trainer ( TRX is a trademark ) and multiple resistance bands . While this equipment is definitely not necessary, some will expand your range of motion by isolating smaller muscles such as the biceps and shoulders.

We’re going to show you two ways to build a bodyweight program: a simpler circuit training style and a more complex weightlifting style split workout .

Circuit training scheme

In a circuit training style, you combine about 6-10 exercises, predetermine how many reps you do for each (or do a set time), and do them all for a set number of rounds (or again for a while) without stopping. This is one chain. Then repeat the whole scheme 3-6 times.

Adam Bornstein of Born Fitness offers this great, beginner-friendly template :

Alternate 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest for each exercise in the following pattern, using 8 bodyweight exercises that work your entire body from head to toe together:

Exercise 1: Varying the Hip Row

Exercise 2: push-up variations

Exercise 3: Variation of Deep Squats (see 35 Ways to Squat on 2 Legs here)

Exercise 4: row variations

Exercise 5: Hip Variation

Exercise 6: Handstand push-up options

Exercise 7: Single Legged Squat Variations (See 37 Best Single Legged Squat Variations )

Exercise 8: Variation of pull-ups

His example gives you one full body workout. If you want, you can stick to just this and do it three to five times a week. For more variety, do two or three more exercises in the same pattern, mixing some exercises, and alternating them, doing one every other day. This way, you will have a varied daily routine that you can follow for several weeks.

For more ideas for bodyweight circuit training, check out this from Nerd Fitness andJohn Romaniello’s 1% Body Weight Workout .

Three-day split mode

This second option is based on the idea of ​​a split bodybuilding-style program, where each workout allows you to focus on specific body parts or movements rather than working on your entire body. In this case, we’ll focus on the bottom of the push, the bottom of the pull, and the bottom of the legs.

I turned to Alexander Ferentinos , a nutrition and training teacher from the UK, for help. He offers this workout template four days a week. Here you create three workouts (abs, deadlifts, and legs) of 3-5 exercises each and do them throughout the week in the following order:

Day 1: Press + Core * (chest focus): Push-ups, handstand push-ups, peak push-ups, chest push-ups, triceps push-ups.

Day 2: Legs: Walking lunges, lunges, reverse lunges, side lunges, squats, glute bridges, lifts, Bulgarian split squats, pistol squats, back bridges, deadlifts on one leg.

Day 3: Deadlift + Core (back): Pull-ups (or negations), Deadlifts **, Deadhang.

Day 4. Legs: You can use the same leg workout or choose a few new exercises.

When you apply this to your current week, your daily routine might look like this:

• Monday: Abs workout
• Tuesday: leg workout
• Wednesday: day off
• Thursday: Pull Workout
• Friday: leg workout
• Saturday and Sunday: fun days

Or mix it up by switching your workouts to deadlifts and abs. You can even do abs day, deadlift day, leg day, repeat for six days, and rest for one day; or exercise for four days in a row and rest for three days.

In fact, you can do whatever you want here as long as you stick to the sequence. In addition to consistency, you want to allow time for rest. For simplicity, do not put leg days in a row or consecutive days. Other limiting factors are your own schedule and fitness level.

On your off days, do what you love, or just watch Netflix and chill out (seriously). Remember, you will not get stronger and better if you work on the ground.

Frequency, rest time, and other important things to remember

Ferentinos notes that in bodyweight programs, frequency is important, or how often you exercise:

Do enough to tire your body, but not so much that you cannot move or come back and do it again after a few days. It’s about learning to move, improving that quality of movement, and then getting stronger in those movements and / or learning to handle more volume, which is the term in fancy pants for total sets and total weight transferred. workout.

Since you are not dealing with heavy loads, you can make up for the lack of weight by doing more: more days, more sets, and / or more reps. In addition, there are the following really important points to keep in mind:

• Shape still matters: even if you’re not lifting heavy weights, doing exercises incorrectly – even as simple as push-ups – can be dangerous. Learn the correct form and technique and focus on the quality of the movement. Plus, as Ferentinos mentions, improved bodyweight movement and a sense of “brain-to-muscle connection” go a long way in helping you build more muscle and strength .
• Big Movements First: Do the big, hard exercises first in your workout, and then do your “assist” movements. Pulls , push-ups, squats, upside-down rows , push-ups, and so on are all more effortful and burn more calories. For example, squats burn a lot more calories than the bar. Remember, do big movements at the start of your workout when you feel most refreshed.
• Workout intensity is important: each workout is likely to take 20 to 30 minutes, so keep it up with intensity , cutting your rest time as much as you can. As you get better, you can shorten your rest time even further. If you are doing a circle style, try resting no more than 20 seconds between each set and 90 seconds between each full circle. If you can’t do it yet, you can work on it!
• Determine your sets and reps: This tip has more to do with your split program than your circuit style. Apart from warm-ups, try to do 3-4 sets of each exercise. The principles for setting the number of repetitions are similar to weightlifting . For difficult movements such as pull-ups, push-ups, push-ups, and pistol squats, try to do 6-8 reps. For exercises that target smaller muscles, such as triceps push-ups, you can increase to 15-20 reps. Ferentinos advises you to occasionally do up to 25 reps for a burnout set.

In theory, a beginner could take any of these bodyweight programs and do it over and over again for several months . If you get bored, you can always supplement it with interval training , plyometrics, yoga , swimming, or even athletics.

Once you feel like you’ve outgrown your program, you can read our article on how to overcome a plateau in fitness, or read about my experiment in transitioning to a bodyweight program for tips on how to increase your difficulty level. Sometimes you don’t need anything drastic : Small changes in grip, body angle (such as in a row or push-up), or using one leg instead of two can keep you interested.

Regardless of whether you want to become a sexy monster, lose weight, gain muscle mass or be able to pull up , you can get great results from a bodyweight program , especially if you have never done it before or exercised regularly. Put real, honest effort into your bodyweight program and measure your progress by seeing if you can do more reps and sets than last time; or see if you can go from knee push-ups to full push-ups.

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