Bodyweight exercises at home | For beginners and experts

By healthiergang writer , student in Medicine and Surgery.

Bodyweight Exercises At Home

Work, children, university, school ... Life is becoming increasingly hectic and with all the time lost in the car, traffic or public transport, the day should be at least 26 hours.

Many no longer find the time to go to the gym or do not have a sports center near their home and therefore abandon themselves to a sedentary lifestyle. But it takes very little, both in terms of equipment and in terms of time, to shake up our daily routine and tone the muscles.

Home gyms are becoming more and more popular and purchasing equipment becomes more affordable as the months go by. Surely a no-cost equipment that we can exploit is the body weight or rather the force of gravity.

Starting from scratch, the exercises that can help in physical conditioning are the anti-gravity ones (in the absence of any type of equipment): just think of performing a push-up on the ground or a sit-up and a squat, all exercises where there is not necessarily a need for an external load.

Done at an adequate intensity, they are exercises that engage us both muscularly and at the level of the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems. All to do at home without having to go out to the gym.

The next step to this is the purchase of at least a pair of dumbbells or a kettlebell, a weighted vest, in order to increase the overall weight moved during the exercises and make training more difficult.

In cities, wellness paths or "life paths" within parks are becoming very common, where there are parallels, traction bars and small obstacles that allow us to test our skills, again at no cost and with a considerable time saving.

For those who want to completely replace the gym and still have a muscular physique, the following become essential: a good weight-barbell set with at least 100 kg of dear old cast iron, a bench with support for the squat, a pull-up bar and at least one machine. for cardio activity or a skipping rope.

Having said that, below we will see some circuits to be carried out based on the type of athlete (beginner, medium or expert), the objective that is proposed and the availability of the materials. In all three cases, however, the workouts will be in interval training or HIIT style.

1. Heating

For the warm-up phase, 10 minutes of stretching are enough to prepare the joints and tendons and about ten minutes of running at an average pace, without getting tired, in order to raise the body temperature and pre-condition the muscles for the upcoming effort. .

2. Exercises for beginners

After this heating we carry out:

• 15 reps of push-ups on the ground
• 20 lunges in place (or walking)
• 10 per leg
• 15 crunch a terra
• 50 jumping jacks (or 50 rope jumps)

all repeated 5 times.

You can alternate bodyweight exercises at home, during the days of a week or cycle them every 7 days with others very similar:

• 15 reps di Indu push-up (oppure diamonds push-up, clap push-up)
• 20 squats (instead of lunges)
• 12-15 reverse crunch on the ground or one minute of plank
• a 100-meter sprint (or 30 mountain climbers, 15 steps per side).

3. Exercises for experts

For those who have a better physical condition, the type of exercises can be changed, thus increasing their intensity; these are always free body exercises that are also used in the world of functional training such as burpees and the bear crawl (the walk of the bear):

• 10 Burpees
• 15 Crunch a terra
• 100 rope jumps (or 100 double unders)
• 20 lunges on the go
• 50 meters of bear crawl.

As some may notice, there is a complete lack of traction exercises, where you need at least something to grip; for example, in the absence of materials we can use any heavy object we have at home and perform a rowing, bringing it towards the chest, remaining with the torso flexed (for example, you can use a chair, a pack of water) or perform a reverse rowing to the body free by positioning ourselves under the table and clinging to the top of the latter: from here we bring the chest to the table and then slowly return to the starting position.

As your physical condition improves, you can progress in training in three ways:

1. Perform the previous bodyweight exercises at home, using some kind of weight, always heavy material that we find around the house and therefore increase the difficulty;
2. Try to lower the running time of the circuit and then carry out the same number of series in the shortest possible time;
3. Increase the number of series to be carried out while keeping the execution time constant; if in 20 minutes we do 5 series, we try the following week to do 6, and maybe the week after 7 more (even 6 and a half are fine).