3 Body weight exercises to help improve fitness and health
Exercise equipment is expensive, it can take up a lot of space and monthly gym memberships can get expensive. Body weight exercise can make health and fitness simple. I add in body weight exercises for almost all of my workouts. I add them in as a warm-up for harder more intense exercises and even used in high volume to challenge my muscular endurance. There are countless bodyweight exercises you can do to workout almost any body part on your body, plus there are usually progressions and regressions to make things easier or to challenge yourself more. Listed below are 3 simple but effective body weight exercises you can do at home to help improve your fitness and get you on track to reaching your fitness or health goals.
Push-ups
The most iconic exercise that almost everyone is familiar with, the push-up! This exercise is one of the most under appreciated exercises in almost all fitness gyms. This exercise is not only beneficial for upper body strength and muscular endurance but it also is effective for core and hip stability. When performing a push-up in the standard position of hands and toes on the floor, it causes everything from your head to your toes to contract and stabilize in order to keep you from falling on your face, but also to keep your spine in a neutral position. Before you even complete one repetition of a push-up, your neck extensors need to contract to keep your cervical spine in proper alignment, core muscles need to contract to resist the low back from sagging towards the floor, the glutes and hip flexors need to fire to keep the hips in a neutral position. Once the body can properly keep in proper spinal alignment then you can begin knocking out repetitions of push-ups. As you can see a push-up is a lot more beneficial for your whole body then people tend to think. Usually people think they have to use machines to get a proper workout when really simple exercises are 1000 times more effective than almost anything else you could be doing. Below are a list of a few regressions and progressions someone can do if a standard push-up is too hard or too easy.
-Regressions
Elevate your hands: Elevating your hands puts more weight onto your feet then into your arms. You can elevate your hands on a chair, on your bed, or even on a wall.
On your knees: You can make the lever of the push-up smaller by dropping from on your toes to your knees. The smaller the lever the easier it is.
-Progressions
Do more repetitions: May seem intuitive but a lot of people feel they need to stop when they complete a specific number of repetitions. Challenge yourself!
Elevate your feet: The higher you elevate your feet the more challenging the push-ups become. Elevate them on a foam roller, a chair, the couch, or even up the wall.
Narrow your grip: The closer together your hands are the harder the push-up becomes. You can even try doing a push-up with your hands on a basketball or a soccer ball.
Squats
One of the most simple yet most effective exercises for boosting strength, muscular endurance, and mobility, is the squat! The squat can be really difficult for lots of people possibly due to muscular imbalances, tight muscles from sedentary lifestyles or work environments, and how everyone is shaped differently from one another. How we are all structurally put together will affect how everyone will squat differently. Femur lengths and hip structure will greatly impact your ability to squat normally. People with longer femurs will need to bend forward more to keep their center of mass in the correct position. Hip sockets and the way they are positioned will impact someone's ability to squat with their legs possibly being abducted more than what is considered normal. The most important thing to consider when squatting is what is comfortable for you, keep your knees aligned with your feet (do not let your knees collapse towards each other), and improve your form first before adding external loads.
Proper squatting is one of the most important skills to maintain throughout life, if you squat well then more than likely you have decent mobility and are less likely to have joint issues later in life. If you currently are unable to squat and have pain or are really restricted, I recommend seeking out additional information from a professional such as a physical therapist or a movement specialist. Below are some progressions and regression someone can implement if a standard squat is too easy or too hard.
-Regressions
Focus on mobility: Like I stressed earlier if you cannot squat, you definitely need to learn how to be able to. Hip, ankle, and thoracic spine mobility are 3 things to focus on to get you squatting better. An exercise that is a good stepping stone to enhance your mobility for squatting, is squatting in front of a wall. The closer you are to the wall the more you have to have an upright posture. My most favorite mobility drill is squatting in front of a wall holding a wooden dowel overhead! You will feel the back muscles turn on like never before!
Hold onto a stable object: If squatting is too difficult or you lack the balance to perform a squat, you can hold onto something sturdy to make squatting easier. Furniture, a counter top or a door frame are all great options to make squatting easier.
-Progressions
Add external load: Adding external load can obviously make any exercise more difficult. Someone can wear or hold a backpack filled with books or heavy objects. You can literally use anything for external load.
Lunge with back leg elevated: If squatting becomes boring or you can do 50 plus reps, you can implement a lunge with the back leg elevated. This exercise challenges not only strength but stability as well and is much harder! Have fun!
Prone Angels
This exercise in my opinion is the best body weight exercise to enhance shoulder stability and mobility! To do a Prone Angel, get into a prone position (face down) on the floor or your bed, start with your arms at a 90 deg angle from your torso and lift off of the floor using your mid back muscles and begin to move your arms towards your head then down towards your legs, once you make it back to the starting position that is one rep, however, don’t rest yet keep going! Do this exercise for as many reps as you can, for a specific amount of time or even use it for a warm-up for other exercises. It is a great exercise to train your postural muscles and back muscles to be stronger and more efficient. I personally love this exercise and do it from time to time, especially if I find that my shoulders are getting stiff. It is an amazing exercise to implement in almost all workout programs and have amazing benefits that go well beyond enhancing exercise performance. Below is a list of Progressions and regressions to make this exercise harder and easier for you.
-Regression:
Static holds: If this exercise is extremely hard and you can barely do 1 rep then implement static holds. Instead of moving your arms towards your head or down towards your feet, just hold your arms off of the floor. I recommend holding for 6-10 second holds for 10 reps to get the best benefit of this exercise. If even that is too hard start with one sec holds and progress from there. Also you can do the static holds in any position, with your arm by your head or towards your legs, if you find a position that is harder than the rest then focus on that area of weakness.
-Progressions:
Add external load: Like with anything adding weight will make this harder. Hold a can of soup in your hands if you do not have light 1-5 lbs dumbbells.
Increase time: If you increase the time you are doing the exercise, it will obviously make it harder! Challenge yourself!
Sample No Equipment No Problem Workout
Set your timer for 20 min and perform as many supersets as you can of the 3 exercises
Superset
Prone Angles- 20 reps
Push-ups- 10 reps
Squats- 20 reps
This workout is a good one and will definitely challenge your muscular endurance and strength. You can play any variable in this workout, the workout time, rep scheme, exercise order, have time for, or set to your current fitness level with progressions and regressions. The most important thing you can get out of this article is, we do not need fancy gym equipment to be healthier, we can literally do a full body workout with nothing at all. The only thing you need is a positive attitude and a can do attitude! Have fun and feel free to shoot me any questions that you have!