Top 10 Body Weight Exercises
Top 10: Body Weight Exercises
1. Pushups – These
are a given I know, but there’s tremendous variety that you can use too!
Try using a staggered hand position, feet elevated or on one foot,
alternate pulling one knee forward or performing a twist during reps,
heck, if you can manage it, try clapping or full body ‘jump’ pushups.
Depending on your hand position you can target your chest, shoulders or
triceps. They may be an old exercise, but they’ll kick your butt if you
take the difficulty level up a notch! By the way here’s how you perform a Pushup properly…
2. One Legged Deadlifts –
This is a favorite exercise of mine. Simply stand on one foot, with the
other right beside and just hovering off the ground and perform a
deadlift – lean over and try to touch the floor. On the way up squeeze
the glutes and pull your shoulders back. This is great for the glutes,
hamstrings, lower back and when done right can help with posture too!
3. Pull-ups – No-one
really likes Pull Ups – they’re ridiculously hard! But like pushups
there are many variations. You can use a Smith Bar set at a low height
or use a suspension system to perform modified versions, or even go full
out and try jumping pull-ups! That’s where you jump squat off the
ground to the pull-up bar and pull yourself up. And don’t forget that
using different grips has different benefits, so switch it up! Talk
about a workout…
4. T – Plank – This is
another favorite exercise of mine because it just feels great and get’s a
lot done. And you can combine it with pushups to jack up the intensity.
T–Planks work your core, abs, shoulders, arms, glutes and just about
your entire body. It’s a must have for any serious body weight trainee.
Here’s a T-Plank demo!
5. Squats – I don’t
need to tell you how hard squats are, and that there are a zillion
varieties. You can perform fast or slow reps, ¼ reps, ½ reps, jump
squats, one legged squats and more. All versions work the entire leg
plus the glutes and in the higher rep range you’ll be breathing quite
heavy and getting a great cardiovascular benefit too.
6. Lunges – Yes, squats
are great but lunges provide their own unique benefits. Since you’re
essentially training one leg at a time, you can achieve different and
great ranges of motion with them. You can lunge forward, backward,
laterally, diagonally and like squats you can also perform the jumping
variety. Lunges are awesome for inner thighs, the glutes, quads and help
increase knee stability. Make sure you follow my tips though – a lot of people perform squats with bad form.
7. Dips – Again this is
a must have for any serious trainee. Dips are a great exercise for the
chest, shoulders and triceps and even involve some ab work. If you can’t
do the standard version, try bench dips or even using two chairs in
your house. Alternatively you could go the traditional route with a step
beneath to ‘self spot’ and bang out as many as you can.
8. Sit-ups – For some
reason this exercise has gotten a bad rap in recent years. But I say you
must do it. You NEED to be able to sit up from lying on your back when
necessary. So what if your hip flexors get used a bit or if it doesn’t
directly target the abs – sit-ups are functional and a natural human
movement! Be sure to include them too!
9. Burpee – What do you
get when you cross squat thrusts with pushups and a jump squat? A
burpee and my singular most favorite exercise! Man these things are
TOUGH. Truthfully if I had just one exercise I could perform it would be
these. They literally work your entire body, build endurance, stamina
and cardiovascular fitness and will test even the toughest athletes.
There are two kinds of people – those who do burpees and those who
don’t. Join the club people! Here’s how you perform Burpees…
10. Bird Dogs – This is
an awesome corrective and postural movement. And funnily enough it
looks so easy when you see a trainee performing it. But there’s so much
going on – bird dogs work the glutes, abs, upper and middle back, rear
shoulders and traps and strengthen your back and assist in spinal
stability. It’s a strange name for an exercise but the results are
awesome. Check out my video demo as part of my Ass Kicker workout…
If you were to work through this list as
I’ve written it, you’d get a terrific full body workout. In fact I
think this may well become an Angry Trainer workout video in the near
future…
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