What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
We're going to continue our series today of our 8 Best Exercises.
This time covering the 8 Best Bodyweight Exercises you can do.
And we're going to mix it up guys, it's not just strength training exercises but conditioning
as well.
If you want to be an Athlete, you've got to train like an Athlete.
We're going to combine both strength and conditioning to cover each of these 8 exercises.
And guess what?
We're going to cover your whole body too and the only piece of equipment that you'll need
to manipulate your own bodyweight for a few of the exercises is a single Pullup Bar.
Guys if you don't have one already, invest in one.
10 to 15 bucks is well worth your development here.
So let's get it started.
The 8 Best Bodyweight Exercises you can do.
Alright let's kick this list off the right way, with the old classic Pull Up.
There's no way that we can get through an 8 Best Exercises list without including this
one
because it simply is one of the best things you can do for your upper body and it is a
great Bodyweight option.
Now let's say you are not getting enough out of a Pull Up.
Or you're looking for something more advanced or more difficult,
we can involve more muscles in the exercise by simply switching our grip.
And the thing here guys you will see, the common theme with all these exercises is there
are certainly ways to modify
to make these exercises more of a regression to make them easier or make them a progression
to make them harder.
And being able to master that is the key.
Because you never want to get stagnant with any of your upper body exercises or any of
your Bodyweight exercises period.
So here if I switch my grip up to what we call the Commando Pull Up.
Now I've got a Core involvement because my body wants to twist in one side as soon as
you take this over under grip.
You can't let that happen.
We're going to let our Core kick in and actually help us to stay stable while we Pull Up to
each side of the bar.
Of course a little bit extra Forearm involvement here, a little bit of Biceps, never a bad
thing here when we're trying to Amp Up the intensity of the exercise.
Let's stick with that theme though, as we move to number 2.
Let's get those Biceps a little bit more involved.
And of course let's get that Core a little bit more involved too just by flipping the
grip all the way over to what we call a Chin Up Knee Up.
And you can see as I do this exercise, it's two parts.
The first part is getting my head up over that bar through a natural Chin Up.
Which we know that positioning will work our Biceps a lot more than it would in a normal
Pull Up positioning.
And of course, let's involve those Abs as well by finishing with the Knee Up.
Guys a great way to get more out of your Bodyweight Exercises and Training is to put more in them.
And you can see this exercise gives us that opportunity.
Add a few more muscle groups, make the movement a little bit more complex but you're going
to get the rewards that you're looking for, much quicker.
Ok, let's throw the equipment away altogether and shift to the other half of our body, our
Legs.
And by far one of the most difficult lower body exercises you can do is a Bodyweight
exercise and it's a the Slick Floor Bridge Curl.
And you can see, all you need to do is put on a pair of socks, find some kind of a slick
floor.
Which here I'm using tile, you can use a wood floor.
Anything that you can actually just slide your socks on and you've got one of the best
Glute Hamstring developers in your arsenal.
The great thing about the Slick Floor Bridge Curl is you're actually training your muscles
to work the way they're supposed to work.
You don't ever want to have your Hamstrings trying to work without the help of the Glutes.
You see far too often, when the Hamstrings have to do all the work, that's when you get
a Hamstring injury.
Let the bigger stronger Glutes kick in and this exercise forces you to do that by holding
your Bridge up high and then initiating the Hamstring Curl.
Of course we can't neglect the front side of our legs and this exercise gives us an
opportunity to make sure we don't.
This is our Levitation Squat.
The Levitation Squat is actually a really good exercise for those particularly those
that have a hard time maybe even attempting a Pistol Squat.
The Pistol Squat puts our leg out in front of us which makes it a lot harder for us to
even balance.
It's not necessarily that you don't have the single leg strength to execute it, but you
might not have the single leg strength combined with the balance to execute it.
Now, can you progress yourself to a Pistol Squat?
By all means, Yes.
And you can actually self spot yourself by hanging on to a bar when you perform it, until
you build the adequate strength and balance to do it.
But I'm going to tell you, I still love the Levitation Squat.
It makes my knees feel a little bit better
and I'm able to actually push and get a little bit more out of every single rep and therefore
for me, I put it right at the top of my list.
Ok, you knew that no Bodyweight list would ever be complete without some variation of
a Pushup.
Right, we know that we're going to have to target our Chest with some type of Pushup
because that really is the best option outside of Dips.
But we're trying to limit the equipment here, right, I always said only a Pull Up Bar.
The bodyweight Pushup that I like here is the Divebomber Pushup because if you perform
this exercise correctly you're not just targeting your Chest,
but you're actually heavily targeting your Shoulders, your Chest and your Triceps at
different ranges in the motion.
See when you first start your descent, you're actually working a lot on your Shoulders and
when you get down to the bottom of the rep
you're really maximizing your Chest and as you come back up and out, you're really contracting
the Triceps as you get a little bit of extension back behind your body.
You can make this even more difficult and more rewarding and even target, either the
Triceps or the Shoulders a little bit more,
by simply performing as I'm showing you here, a one and a half rep style of the exercise.
So come down into the front, if you want to work your Triceps and instead of coming all
the way back up, head back up for one more half a rep and then come back up.
Or if you want to work your Shoulders a little bit more, just simply stay at the top range
of the motion for just that extra half rep
and you'll be able to give your Shoulders just that little extra that they might need
to start making them pop even more.
Speaking of Shoulders, there's actually a way that we can work them and still get in
those conditioning benefits that I talked about earlier in the video.
And the perfect example here is a Mule Kick.
This exercise is incredibly demanding, trust me, if you haven't tried one, try it.
What happens is you've got to support your entire body weight, whatever that might be
and push your legs up towards the ceiling.
Every rep is basically a version of a dynamic or explosive Shoulder Press with your Shoulders
still in contact with the ground.
So instead of trying to push the Dumbbells up and away from you, you're trying to push
your body up and away from the ground.
And definitely a challenging exercise and one you should try and talk about the conditioning
benefits?
Do this for a minute straight and I'll tell you, your Heart will be pumping and you'll
likely be breaking a serious sweat.
Of course one of the most classic conditioning exercises you can do when you're talking Bodyweight,
is a Burpee.
But a Burpee alone is boring.
We can do a lot more guys, if you want to train Athletic, again challenge yourself to
do more things.
Challenge yourself to do things in not just the sagittal plane, up and down but make yourself
more athletic by involving some rotation.
And the version I'm showing you here of the Burpee is certainly a way we can do that.
This is the Side Kickthrough Burpee or just a plain old Kickthrough Burpee.
This is a bitch but I love it, because it will get those lungs burning in no time, I
promise you.
And again, it's combining a great amount of athleticism to do it.
Yeah, there's some coordination involved here too but I promise if you just practice it
a couple times,
you're going to master this exercise and in doing so, get control of one of the best conditioning
bodyweight exercises that you can ever do.
Ok, last but certainly not least, let's break out the Pull Up Bar one last time and ratchet
up the difficulty level just a little bit more
for one of the most rewarding upper body Bodyweight exercises that you can do and that is the
Front Lever.
The Front Lever is going to demand two muscle groups work together that don't normally prefer
to work together and that is the upper back and the Core.
See you can do this because we know that the Core is going to have to provide the stability
to fight that force of gravity that's trying to bend you in half every single time you
lift yourself up.
And oh by the way, the only way you're going to be able to lift yourself up is by having
the adequate strength in your upper back to perform what is essentially
a Straight Arm Pushdown without weights to get your body up and against that force of
gravity.
This is absolutely one of the best exercises that you can do and it's one that commands
respect because everybody knows, it's pretty damn hard to do.
Don't be discouraged if you can't do it.
You can always break out an assisted band to try to anchor your feet in until you've
built up the strength to be able to do the exercise fully.
But still, whatever way you wind up doing it, it's still a great exercise and one of
the best to add to your bodyweight exercise routines.
Alright guys, so there you have it, 8 exercises to prove once again, that Bodyweight training
does not have to be inferior training.
As a matter of fact, our ATHLEAN XERO Program, we're going to throw away the Pull Up Bar,
give you all new ways to work your back and your Biceps without it
and not to mention, combine strength and conditioning always and give you progressive ways to help
you to build muscle.
That is available guys, at ATHLEAN XERO @ ATHLEANX.COM.
In the meantime, if you found this video helpful, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs
up below.
And remember, Bodyweight training, you can change the way you do exercises just like
we did with the Divebomber Pushup to elicit all new responses from those movements.
You can change the way you group exercises together.
You can change the progresses and you can regress if you have to.
It's all about how you put the exercise together that determines what you get out of them.
Alright guys, I'll see you back here again soon.
Let me know whatever else it is that you want to see and I'll do my best to bring it to
you here three times a week.