Bodyweight workouts are a great way to increase your relative strength, meaning that you're
able to use your own bodyweight to push and pull and do the workout.
They're also great because you can do them essentially anywhere.
So today I'm going to show you a few of my very favorite bodyweight exercises that will
get you a full-body workout using your upper body, lower body, and those abs.
So we're going to start out with the basic bodyweight squat.
Your feet are going to be about shoulder width, to hip width, apart.
Toes are pointed slightly outward.
You're going to sink back into your hips.
You can bring your arms out in front of you to counterbalance that weight.
Make sure that your knees stay behind the toes and then push your heels through the
ground to stand back up.
One way to progress this is to bring your arms behind your head.
This way you're, you're not able to counterbalance that weight, making sure that you use those
legs a little big more.
Next one, we're going to upper body.
We're going to go to our push up.
So, down to the ground.
Hands are about shoulder width apart.
Nice strong core.
You're going to lower straight down to the ground.
Elbows are about forty five degrees from the chest, and then press away.
One way to make this a little easier, but still utilize the full motion of the push
up is to come all the way down to the ground and then push your way back up, and notice
my knees left the ground last.
That's because as you get stronger you'll be able to use less of those knees, but for
now, you can kind of roll your way back up into that push up.
Alright, so let's move on to our core exercise.
For this one we're going to be down on the ground.
And we're going to go into a V-up.
There are a couple ways to do this one.
The first one is bent knees, so your arms are going to be right at your sides.
Heels are on the ground, and you're going to come up into a V position, but your knees
are bent and then right back down.
Now a more advanced way to do this is to keep those legs straight when you come up into
your V. So here, to here.
Okay, so we're going to go back to lower body, so that way our upper body and our core is
able to rest as we're moving within our lower body workout.
So for step ups, you want to start about a foot away from your platform.
Place that foot firmly on the step, and then push up.
Tap your foot.
Now a couple tips when you do your step up.
You want to make sure that you're not really boosting off of that non-working leg.
Right?
So I'm not doing one of these.
Really slow and controlled, using that working leg to tap and then right back up.
You also want to make sure that this leg is fully straightened, before you tap that toe.
That way you can make sure that it's all that working muscle, all that working leg doing
the work.
Alright.
So on to our second upper body exercise.
This time our lower body gets to rest.
Have a seat on your bench or chair.
Push your hips off of it, as you prop yourself up with your arms and wrists.
Your legs are straight out in front of you.
You're going to lower down.
Elbows come to ninety degrees and then push straight back up.
This works those triceps.
Alright, now a couple tips here: Make sure that those hips don't, aren't way out here.
They're nice and close to the bench.
That will protect those shoulders.
And if you need to make this easier, all you have to do is walk those feet in here.
For our last core exercise, and this time our upper body and lower body gets to rest.
We're here on our sturdy bench or chair in a plank position.
Holding that plank position right here, while our abs are doing the work.
Now if you want to progress this movement we can go into a plank up.
Just put one hand on the bench and then the other push up to a high plank position and
then right back down.
Now to turn this into a full-body workout, I would go through all those exercises, doing
each one about 10 reps and you can do three to five rounds.
You don't need a gym full of equipment to get in a great workout.
You can do that just using your bodyweight and a small space.
So next time your traveling or don't have any equipment available try it out and let
me know what you think.