5 Strength-Building Bodyweight Exercises You Can Do at Home

Bodyweight exercises are the most convenient workout hack in fitness. If you’re anything like us, there’s always an excuse for dodging the gym. You woke up late, work’s getting busy, you deserve a little rest over the weekend. UWe’re here to tell you that there’s one way to make all these excuses moot: bodyweight exercises.

But they’re not just a way to trap ourselves into doing a little exercise. Bodyweight exercises are the bread and butter of any healthy fitness regime.

“Bodyweight training provides a foundation which the rest of your training will be built upon,” says strength and conditioning coach Arby Keheli. “Many athletes who don’t prioritize bodyweight work will find that their progress will stagnate and they will often have to revert to this base point in order to progress forwards.”

It’s not just athletes who need to get back to basics once in a while. Bodyweight training helps improve your general strength, power, balance and endurance: All vital elements if you’re looking to eventually hit the big weights, or just improve your fitness a little.

The best thing about bodyweight exercises is that they can be done pretty much anywhere. We wouldn’t recommend jumping into the aisle of a plane or starting a squat session in the middle of your morning meeting, but the flexibility of the below workout by Keheli means squeezing in some movement here and there can be easy and effective.

Bodyweight exercises workout overview

Try three sets of ten reps of the following, being mindful of form and adapting where necessary:

1. Press-up
2. Pull-up
3. Inverted row
4. Single-leg squat (pistol squat)
5. Nordic curl

Bodyweight exercises workout

Exercise 1: Press-up

The press-up is an essential movement when done correctly.

• Start in a high plank with the hands shoulder-width apart. We want the core as braced as possible throughout the movement—to do this, turn the hips under, squeezing the glutes, which will flatten the lower back.
• Push the chest away from the floor, separating the shoulder blades, creating a curve through the upper back.
• Focus on maintaining trunk positioning throughout; keep the elbows pinned into the body at a 45-degree angle as you slowly descend.
• Hover the chest over the floor, maintaining tension by pausing instead of bouncing out of the bottom position.
• Press the palms into the floor and ascend upwards, extending through the elbow.

Exercise 2: Pull-up

The pull-up is one of the most under-utilized strength movements. Pull-ups are very hard to perform but they can be scaled very easily.For example by using a band to assist you, only performing the downwards phase of the movement and so on. Don’t let this movement intimidate you, as people struggle with it at all levels.