BODYWEIGHT EXERCISES
Build functional strength and conditioning any time, anywhere, with the best no-equipment bodyweight exercises
No kit? No problem. As Olympic gymnasts, your local park’s calisthenics crew and huge numbers of prisoners have known for years, you can train any muscle with just your own body, a towel-sized space on the floor and some ingenuity. In fact, it’s a good idea to build a base of strength using bodyweight moves before you pick up a set of weights. As well as helping to prevent injury, it’ll improve coordination and proprioception (your sense of where your body parts are in relation to each other), increasing your control over your own movements.
Here, you’ll learn enough essential bodyweight moves to be able to put together a workout anywhere, whether your goal is fat loss, muscle gain or performance. Aim to hit a respectable amount of reps in the key moves – press-ups, squats and lunges – and you’ll do better at almost anything.
BODYWEIGHT BENEFITS
Think functional, full-body strength. Take the press-up: if you do it correctly, you’ll engage everything from your chest and triceps to your core and glutes, teaching the body to work as a unit. Bodyweight moves also lend themselves to circuit-style workouts: because they take minimal setting up, you can shift from one movement to another with zero fuss, making them ideal for high-intensity fat-loss efforts. Finally, high-volume sessions can and will build muscle – especially if you use a combination of slow and fast reps to hit all your muscle fibres.
PRESS-UP
Primary muscles: Chest, triceps
Why: The classic go-anywhere chest builder will also work your core, as well as teaching you to hold full-body tension… if you do it right. Quality is more important than quantity, so focus on keeping good form each rep and staying straight as a board.
• Get into a press-up position with your hands just outside shoulder-width apart.
• Keeping your abs braced, lower your body until your chest touches the floor – keeping your thighs off it – then press up.
INCLINE PRESS-UP
Primary muscles: Chest, triceps
Why: This variation is easier than the flat press-up, but still teaches you to keep a strong core, so it’s a much better way to progress to the full move than doing press-ups on your knees. Start by doing them with your hands against a wall, then – once you can do 10 clean reps – move down to a table or chair, then the floor.
• Get into a press-up p
