No matter how strong you get, watching gymnasts do their crazy feats of athleticism is always impressive!
Bodyweight exercises build amazing relative strength – they’re all about getting stronger and fitter using your own bodyweight and without much equipment.
Today we’re going to take you through how you can use these for your own fitness goals, without any equipment, and to achieve your own feats of strength!
How Bodyweight Exercises Work
Unlike weight training, bodyweight exercises don’t have a specific number attached to them: you don’t know exactly how much weight you’re lifting at any time. Additionally, you’re probably not just going to add weight to your body to make the exercise harder (at least not to start with, anyway!).
Bodyweight exercises rely on leverage to make things more difficult: they place your body in harder and harder positions and force you to develop strength in the muscles and joints. They aren’t as specific in their loading, so bodyweight exercises focus more on adding repetitions and progressing from easy exercises to increasingly difficult ones.
Additionally, because the loading is much lighter, you can perform bodyweight exercise more often. At the start, you’re going to want to train every other day. But, as you get better, you can start training two days in a row and resting on the third. Eventually, you should be able to perform some type of bodyweight training every day!
They’re a great way to develop strength and flexibility, as well as stability and joint health, so you should include them in your training program – even if you’re more interested in weight training. This balance is a great way to protect against any weakness.
Of course, always do pre- and post-workout exercises ,as well as prehab, to maximize you workout and long-term well-being.
Benefits of Bodyweight Training
Not yet sold on bodyweight training?
We’re going to cover the most important benefits.
A Great Physique
If you’ve ever watched the Olympic gymnasts, you’ll see that their physiques are lean, proportional and muscular. They have great strength and size – particularly in the shoulders and core – which they built with gymnastic strength training.
Bodyweight training is a great way to work the muscles, improve your physique, and develop an athletic body.
Joint Conditioning
While you might not be worrying much about your joints now, you’ll have to someday! Bodyweight training provides a great way to condition the joints, keep them strong, and practice the unusual positions and movements that are most at-risk as you age.
Bodyweight training gives you a chance to strengthen these joints progressively without relying on external loading – it gives your joints time to adapt and become resilient in a way that weight training might not (especially if you already have strong muscles).
Improved Co-ordination
Bodyweight exercises rely on you knowing your body and working important positions. While other types of exercise do this, none develop coordination quite as well as bodyweight exercise and gymnastic strength training.
You’ll develop an improved awareness of your body and better control in your day-to-day life. Awareness and control are a huge part of preventing injury to joints, but they’ll also improve almost every other athletic pursuit!
Anyone who has coached an athlete with a gymnastic background or good bodyweight training strength knows that they’re just better at learning physical skills!
Best Bodyweight Exercises for the Upper Body
You can split bodyweight exercises for the upper body into two types: pushes and pulls. This is how we’re going to look at them today – taking you through the most important progressions for each.
Upper Body Push Exercises
These are the kind you probably know of – everyone from children to Rocky knows about push-ups (press-ups), and that’s where we’re going to start!
Push-Up Progressions for Chest and Shoulder Benefits
The push-up is an easy exercise, and if you can do one, then you’re on your way with this progression. However, it’s possible you can’t do any push-ups yet (especially if you’ve passed your 20s or you’re a woman). So, we’re starting at the very start – follow these simple progressions, and you’ll master the crazy-impressive push-ups in no time:
- Wall Push-Ups (Against a wall, standing up)
- Knees-Down Push-Up (On the ground. With the knees down, not raised)
- Incline Push-Up
- Push-Up
- Decline Push-Up
- Maltese Push-Up (see video below)
- Diamond Push-Up (instead of a normal push-up, move your hands together, forming a diamond with your fingers)
- Wall-Supported Maltese Push-Up (the Maltense but where you walk partially up a wall to distribute more weight to the arms)
These all focus on the chest, triceps, and shoulders. You’re going to need to work through them patiently – put movement quality first! Learning to move properly and patiently building strength is going to be essential to long-term progress and all the benefits we mentioned above.
Start with exercise #1 and keep going until you are either unable to complete the exercise for 5 repetitions or start to cheat the movement. Stick there and focus on more, better repetitions. When you can perform an exercise for 12 reps, you should move onto the next variation!
Handstand Progression for Strength and Size
Handstands are cool – there’s no way around it. They are a great way of building overhead strength, balancing your shoulders, and learning to control your upper back and shoulders all at once. Many people will find the handstand a tough exercise to learn, however, so the progression is critical: you have to be patient!
- Hollow Hold (legs only) – see the video below
- Hollow Hold – see the video below
- Hollow Plank – see the video below
- L-Stand Hold (& Tuck Planche)– see video below – for the L-Stand Hold – basically you create an ‘L’ shape with your body, while pushing your legs off the ground with your hands.
- Wall Walk-Up
- Long Hollow on the Wall
- L-Stand Press
- Handstand Holds – More ideas
- Long Hollow Press
- Handstand Press– 3 Tips
This is a super-tough exercise progression, but it is also a great way to balance your shoulders, control your scapula and develop massive strength in the arms.
Upper Body Pull Exercises
Pull exercises are all about strengthening the upper back muscles – the ones that balance out your shoulders and ensure that your posture is tight and healthy. These muscles are under-used in most training programs.
This is sad because upper back muscles are amazing to look at and benefit your long-term health and wellbeing. These bodyweight training exercises are key to get yourself stronger, fitter, better-looking and bulletproof your upper back against the common postural problems associated with weakness and aging.
These 2 simple exercises/progressions will be enough to massively improve your upper back health and keep you stronger for longer!
Pull-Ups
You can’t talk about pull movements without discussing the importance of the pull-up – especially when discussing bodyweight exercises! They’re often considered the deadlift of the upper body due to their effect on almost every muscle in the upper body.
Pull-ups work everything from the biceps and shoulders to the scapula and core! Learning to perform this exercise is tough but getting your first pull-up is a big deal, and the progression from there builds serious strength and back muscle!
Pull-ups aren’t easy – your bodyweight is a relatively heavy weight to use, so there are many steps on the progression before the pull-up.
- Inverted Row
- Ring Rows
- Decline Ring Row – same as ring rows, but where your feet are higher than your shoulders.
- Jumping Pull-Up Lower – Jump up to the top of a pull-up, then slowly lower.
- Chin-Up Hold + Lower – Similar to a Jumping Pull-Up, but with a chin-up
- Chin-Up – See videos below.
- Narrow Grip Pull-Up
- Wide Grip Pull-Up Hold + Lower
- Pull-Up – See videos below.
- Wide Grip Pull-Up
These are amazing exercises and getting to repetitions on wide-grip pull-ups is a huge accomplishment. During this progression you’ll find that your lats, biceps, and core make huge leaps forward – it’s a difficult progression, but it provides amazing rewards.
Swimmer’s Holds
These aren’t a progression, but an exercise that provides some of the most amazing benefits to your upper body – especially while you’re strengthening the muscles of the shoulders and chest!
Swimmer holds are a series of slow, controlled movements that stretch the chest and strengthen the rear delts and upper back muscles. They’re key to combating the tightening of muscles, teaching better posture and putting together a well-rounded physique.
This exercise is even more important if you’re an office worker or spend a lot of time slumping. They combat the rounded back posture and teach you to control the muscles that keep you upright and protect your shoulders/rotator cuff from injury.
You can find a great demonstration of swimmer holds here and here. They’re awesome, and you should be doing them – whether you’re an Olympic-level athlete or just looking to get fitter and healthier!
Core Gains with Bodyweight Exercise
If you’ve ever done any core training, you’ve definitely worked with bodyweight exercises before. They’re the key to building basic core strength and stability. We’re going to take you through some of our favourites – the most effective exercises to treat your core weakness and dysfunction.
We’ve already covered core in detail before, but these exercises are worth paying attention to for their own benefits as bodyweight exercises. You can even rotate between them to ensure that you’re training your core across a variety of different exercises and movement patterns.
Deadbug
Deadbugs are a great way of adding stability and rotational exercise to your training. This is a great way of building in core stability and control – something that many people lack and one of the most fundamental benefits of exercise.
The deadbug should be one of the first and most important core exercises you perform. It has benefits across the board, but it should be used to focus on moving the legs and arms independently of the core: keep the core totally immobile and the distance between the hips and ribcage constant.
Bird-Dog
This is the opposite of the deadbug – it aims at similar effects with a slightly different method. You can practice these two exercises as part of a paired superset – as long as your core stability is the same in both.
The bird-dog is slightly harder because of the leverage, but this means that you’re going to make serious gains by putting the two together. This exercise is also about rotation and stability, so use the same cues as in the deadbug: keep the hips/ribcage in the same relation and keep your core as stable and immovable as possible!
Hollow holds
A favourite among Olympic gymnasts, the hollow hold is all about holding your core tight and making it really difficult for yourself! This is a much better way to train core stability than a sit-up as it focuses on staying in position rather than simply moving through position.
You don’t use your core for sit-ups in real life or weight training – you use it to stabilise your spine. This exercise teaches exactly that – you can make it easier or harder by changing the position of your limbs (more extended means more difficult, and the opposite!).
Hollow Presses (slow)
These are similar to the way that you perform a hollow hold, but they involve slowly pressing and then tucking your legs. It’s like a tuck but lying down, and performed as slowly and controlled as possible.
In many ways this has the same challenges as a deadbug: it forces you to keep your core tight and stable while extending through the limbs. Keep the feet together and toes pointed, making yourself as long as possible. This means maximum challenge to the core and, thus, maximum results.
Plank variations
Planks are great, but you might want some variation. We’ve put together our 3 fav types of plank for your core:
The 8-point plank: a much better variation of the plank that we’ve discussed before – this is the place to start for developing real core strength and stability. Especially useful for athletes and sport enthusiasts! Learn more here.
The Long Hollow Plank: A super-tricky and challenging gymnastics exercise that helps with everything from handstands to sick abs! This exercise forces your core to work, and you’re going to feel it! Here’s a video that includes the inchworm.
The side plank: how often do you train your core? How about the sides of your core? Side planks make this happen – try adding a dip to them if you’re not feeling enough challenge. Check out this video to learn some of the technical details and variations.
Legs
You don’t hear about bodyweight training for legs very often – it might not be as effective as barbell work for huge thighs, but bodyweight exercise can develop power and strength in the lower body. We’re concerned with exercises that develop characteristics like power, speed, balance, and coordination – that’s the best use for bodyweight training for the lower body!
Deck Squats
These are a great exercise for developing strength in the ankles – something that’s often overlooked. They build mobility, strength, and conditioning in the lower body that is often skipped in many workout programs.
They’re also a great start to developing the necessary flexibility and balance for single-legged or pistol squats. A big part of bodyweight training!
Bulgarian Split Squat
I’ll always rave about Bulgarian split squats! They’re the best form of knee-bending movement for the average person: they strengthen, build balance, improve hip control, help protect your knee against injury and contribute to a well-rounded athletic physique.
Start with the regular split squat and add a deficit to the front foot as you get stronger and more controlled. This allows you to make the exercise more difficult without weight, forces you to develop better mobility and builds amazing balance and knee/hip control!
Single-leg/Pistol Squats
The pistol squat is the main strength-builder in single leg exercise. It’s about moving your whole bodyweight with a single leg – making it at least twice as difficult and building strength in that leg. They’re tough, but if you’re strong on the deck squat and Bulgarian split squat you’ll get good at pistols fast.
If you can get to 8 repetitions each leg on the pistol squat, you’re going to have strong legs, hips, and balance. They’re a huge boon to your overall training, and an athlete that is good at pistol squats is probably good at everything.
Jumps
Power is about producing force rapidly, and jumping is the best way of training power with bodyweight exercise. It’s about moving your bodyweight as fast as possible.
Box Jumps are the place to start: simply jump onto an elevated surface focusing on explosive extension. This is going to train power output in the hips and knees – key for everything from sports to squatting to the Olympic lifts!
Broad jumps are about jumping further rather than higher. They’re more hip-dominant, and they are key for things like long jump and sprinting. If you’re looking to build power for sports or run faster, these are key, and they will provide you with a good balance of hip and leg development – especially combined with the leg exercises above.
Bunny hops are probably the most versatile, well-balanced way to approach jumps. If you are only doing jumps for well-rounded development, a triple bunny hop might be your best choice. It’s about chaining shorter broad jumps together, and focusing about power through the floor. This forces you to produce force rapidly and carries over to sports performance amazingly!
Making the Most of Bodyweight Training
Bodyweight training has its own difficulties, and you have to take the right approach to make the most of it. Making the most of bodyweight exercise is about practicing humility: putting movement quality before the reps or weight.
Progressing will be relatively slow and requires you to be self-aware and develop a long-term consistent progression.
This is essential because movement quality sits at the heart of how bodyweight exercises work your muscles and develop strength. Put your ego aside, and you’ll find that you get stronger faster – and without the injuries or wasted time!
Closing Remarks
You might be a world champion athlete or absolute beginner – there’s still a lot that you can do with bodyweight in your own training. It’s a versatile and primal tool for building strength and getting better.
You’re going to learn a lot by incorporating bodyweight exercise into your training – whether it’s your main form of keeping fit or secondary to weights, cardio or anything else. Putting together a strong, healthy, flexible body is as simple as taking the time to learn and implement these processes.
Put progression first, play it smart and you’ll unveil a range of amazing new athletic results that you may have been overlooking!
Credits
Balancing at the Beach by Chevanon
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