At Home Exercises
The Top Ten Weightless Workout Exercises At Home
- Exercise At Home
Maybe you HATE the gym. Or maybe your boss has equipped your car with a phone, fax, and voice mail, and expects you to spend more time on the road – and you CAN’T get to the gym. Or maybe you live in the boonies and the nearest health club is a 45-minute pain-in-the-butt drive away – one way.
For whatever reason, you have a new problem: how to keep your pump without weights. Your solution is right here. Bodyweight training CAN be effective. It CAN be a substitute for weights, if necessary. And bodyweight training can give you the burn without the iron.
Here are the ten best bodyweight training exercises that give you great workouts and great results – without the gym.
1. Supine Pull-Ups (works major muscles in back, shoulders, and biceps)
Use two chairs and a pole – a heavy broom handle works well. WARNING: make sure the chairs are stable and that the broom handle is strong enough to take your weight. You could be SEVERELY injured if the pole were to break or the chairs to slip.
Lie on your back underneath a low bar. Grab the bar with a wide overhand grip. Pull up. Lower and repeat for 6-8 reps.
2. Supine Biceps Pull-Ups (biceps, some back)
Use the same chairs-and-pole arrangement from #1. Sit underneath a low bar. Grab the bar with a reverse grip (palms facing you), hands about shoulder-width apart. Keeping your body upright, pull up until your chin just clears the bar. Focus on the tension in your biceps, trying to relax the rest of your body. 6-8 reps.
3. Push-Ups (chest, triceps, shoulders)
The key when targeting the chest with Push-Ups is the direction in which your elbows travel. As with bench presses, the elbows must move AWAY FROM THE BODY to target your chest, and be kept CLOSE TO THE BODY to target the triceps. Place each hand just outside your shoulders, slightly behind the line of your shoulders. Hands pointing straight ahead, upper body rigid as a board. 6-15 reps.
4. Tent Push-Ups (primarily upper chest)
Assume the position in #3, but walk your feet forward so your body is bent at the waist, and your hips are up high in the air. Bending at the elbows, lower yourself until your nose touches the floor. Push up. Repeat. 6-8 reps.
5. Push-Ups, Triceps Position (you guessed it – triceps, and some chest)
Begin with fingers facing forward in position from #3, hands slightly LESS than shoulder width apart. Lower your body to the floor keeping arms in against your body. Push up. 6-8 reps.
6. Triceps Dips With Chairs
With your hands behind your back, support yourself on your palms at the edge of a chair. Your hands should be touching; your elbows should angle outward. Dipping in this position relieves a lot of stress on the elbow and shoulder joints. Lower yourself, keeping your back close to the chair. Bend your elbows back and slightly to the sides. Keep your body angled slightly forward throughout the motion. Press yourself up until your arms are straight. 6-15 reps.
7. One-Legged Squats (front thighs, glutes, hamstrings)
Stand perpendicular to a wall, about arm’s length away from it. Extend your arm out to the side and place your palm against the wall at just under shoulder-height.
Angle the foot farthest from the wall at 45 degrees. Bend the other leg back.
Keeping your body upright, lower yourself until the non-weight-bearing knee is close to (but not touching) the ground. Support yourself by leaning against the wall. Press yourself back up to starting position. Repeat 6-8 reps.
8. One-Legged Hamstring Bridges
Lie on your back with one leg extended, heel on the ground. Hold the other leg up off the floor. Pushing through your heel, flex your hamstrings to lift your body. Lower and repeat for 8-10 reps. Repeat with other leg.
You can control the resistance and the degree to which the glutes contribute by changing the distance you place your heel relative to your butt.
9. Lunges
Begin the lunge by taking a large step forward, keeping your head up and torso erect. Lower your hips and allow your trailing knee to drop to a point just before it touches the floor – never let the knee touch the floor. To return to the start, push off with your forward leg and then step back when the knee is completely straight. Repeat with other leg, 10-15 reps each leg. Read more
Exercise Routines
How to Structure An Effective Fat Burning Routine
Exercises Routine
So much focus and attention is placed on the idea of “weight loss” and “losing weight” that most typical beginners seem to lose sight of the actual concrete goal of achieving a lean, defined and healthy body…
Here’s a hint…
It’s NOT a simple matter of “losing weight.”
In fact, let’s go ahead and remove the term “weight loss” from our fitness vocabulary altogether.
Why?
It’s because “losing weight” is NOT what you should be concerned with!
If you’re reading this article right now, then chances are that you’re looking to achieve at least one of the following goals…
1) Improve your appearance to feel more confident, attractive and sexy.
2) Enhance your overall health to increase longevity and quality of living.
3) Boost your energy levels and mood to feel better about yourself on a daily basis.
Surely there are other reasons as well… but for the majority of you out there, these are probably your primary concerns.
Am I right?
If so, it is absolutely critical that you understand the following…
Losing body weight on its own will NOT allow you to achieve these goals. Instead, all of your focus must be placed on changing your body composition with an effective fat burning routine.
The reason for this is simple…
Your body is made up of various different “types” of weight, all of which contribute differently to your overall appearance and health.
There are very “heavy” individuals who are in excellent health with lean and impressive bodies… and there are very “light” individuals who are in poor health with soft, flabby and out-of-shape bodies.
Your overall body weight is made up of various different components, such as body fat, muscle tissue, water and glycogen. The haphazard approach of simply aiming to “lose weight” is incredibly misguided as it does not take these specific types of body weight into account.
In order to achieve your goal of a lean, energetic and healthy body, your goal is to get rid of the excessive amounts of “bad” body weight while maintaining as much “good” body weight as you can, which is done with an effective fat burning routine.
To put it simply, the underlying goal of your entire program is as follows…
Burn off body fat while maintaining lean muscle mass.
This is truly the only way to get into the shape you desire and to set yourself up for permanent, positive long-term results.
Stop obsessing about the number on the scale!
Instead, start worrying about gradually dropping your body fat percentage while holding on to your lean muscle mass, with an effective fat burning routine.
There are three primary reasons why you should focus on this…
First of all… one very important factor that determines your body’s basal metabolic rate (the number of calories you burn at rest) is the amount of lean muscle tissue you have on your body. The more muscle you have, the faster your fat burning metabolism operates.
Secondly… maintaining a reasonable level of muscular development will allow you to achieve the shapely and athletic appearance that the majority of you are probably striving for.
A low body fat percentage may be the ultimate goal, but without a decent amount of muscle mass your body will simply take on a small and smooth form without those “cuts” and “lines” that are considered so desirable.
Finally… those who simply place themselves on “crash diets” and attempt to drop large amounts of body weight over short periods of time are inevitably doomed to fail. Such an approach places the body into a starved state and actually programs you to store more fat over the long run.
The body will react to severe calorie deficits by slowing down the metabolism in an attempt to conserve energy, wasting away lean muscle mass, and increasing the production of hormones that inhibit fat loss.
The end result is an unhealthy, out of shape body that, while being temporarily “lighter” than it was before, has now been programmed to store fat and will inevitably end up returning back to its original weight and more.
The way to avoid all of the negative effects listed above is simple…
Structure your “weight loss” approach in such a way that you aim to gradually reduce your body fat levels while keeping your lean muscle tissue levels in tact. This is done with an effective fat burning routine.
An effective fat burning routine is the ONLY realistic way to burn fat, keep it off over the long run, and achieve the kind of lean and athletic appearance that you strive for. Read more
