When people decide they want to get in shape and build muscle or increase their strength their first instinct is always to sign up for a gym membership.
Your own body is the piece of fitness equipment you will ever own. With a bit of floor space, gravity and perhaps a pull-up bar or a sturdy piece of furniture you can create a highly effective resistance training program.
The secret to making bodyweight training work is not just doing jumping jacks in your living room. You need a plan centered around human movements and you need to know how to make those movements progressively harder over time. Let’s break down how to build a strength training routine without ever stepping foot inside a commercial gym.
The Foundation of Bodyweight Strength
To build a physique and functional strength you need to hit all the major movement patterns: pushing, pulling, squatting and hinging. In a gym you might use a bench press for pushing, a lat pulldown for pulling and a leg press for your body. At home we simply swap the machines for bodyweight exercises.
The Push: The standard push-up is arguably the upper body exercise ever invented. It not builds the chest, shoulders and triceps. It forces your core to stabilize your entire body in a moving plank position.
The Lunge: Your legs are muscles. Bodyweight squats and lunges take your joints through a range of motion building the quads, hamstrings and glutes while improving your balance and mobility.
The Pull: This is the one movement that stumps people working out at home. Pushing and squatting only require the floor. Pulling requires you to grab onto something. If you do not have a pull-up bar you can easily use the edge of a dining table or a heavy desk to perform rows pulling your chest up to the edge.
By focusing on these compound movements you can work every single muscle group in your body efficiently and safely.
The 3-Day Home Workout Split
One of the mistakes beginners make is trying to do a full-body workout every day. Your muscles do not grow while you are working out; they repair while you are resting. To give your body time to recover a three-day split focusing on movement patterns is highly effective.
Workout 1: The Push Day (Chest, Shoulders, Triceps and Core)
This day is about pressing your body weight away from gravity.
Standard Push-Ups: 3 sets to failure. Keep your elbows tucked in slightly and your core braced tight. If you cannot do a push-up yet perform them with your hands elevated on a couch or countertop than dropping to your knees as this builds better core strength.
Pike Push-Ups: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps. Walk your feet closer to your hands so your body forms a V” shape. When you lower your head to the floor you will shift the tension away from your chest and onto your shoulders mimicking a press.
Chair Dips: 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps. Place your hands on the edge of a chair. Bench walk your feet out and lower your hips toward the floor to isolate and burn out the triceps.
Workout 2: The Pull Day (Back, Biceps and Grip)
This day focuses on the muscles on the side of your body which’re crucial for good posture.
Table Rows (Inverted Rows): 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps. Slide under a table. Grab the edge with both hands keep your body in a line. Pull your chest up to the wood. This targets the lats and the mid-back.
Isometric Towel Pulls: 3 sets of 20-second holds. Take a towel wrap it around a pole or the handle of a closed locked door. Get into a stance. Pull on the towel as hard as humanly possible without moving. This isometric tension is incredible for building and bicep strength.
Inverted Holds: 3 sets of time. Using your table or a pull-up bar pull yourself to the position of the exercise. Simply hold it there squeezing your shoulder blades together until your muscles give out.
Workout 3: The Leg Day (Quads, Hamstrings, Glutes and Calves)
Do not skip leg day just because you do not have weights. High-tension bodyweight leg exercises are brutal and effective.
Deep Bodyweight Squats: 3 sets of 15 to 20 reps. Focus on depth and control. Keep your chest up push your knees out and drop your hips below your knee crease.
Alternating Reverse Lunges: 3 sets of 12 reps per leg. Stepping backward into a lunge of puts significantly less stress on the knee joint while heavily activating the glutes.
Glute Bridges: 3 sets of 15 reps. Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Drive through your heels. Squeeze your glutes to push your hips toward the ceiling. Pause for a second at the top of every rep.
Note: You can run this cycle as Workout 1 on Monday, Workout 2 on Wednesday and Workout 3 on Friday leaving the weekends for recovery like walking or stretching.
The Secret to Growth: Progressive Overload
Here is the critical concept to understand about bodyweight training. In a gym if you want to get stronger you simply slide another five-pound plate onto the barbell. This is called overload. At home your body weight remains relatively constant.
When a movement becomes easy the thing you can do is endlessly add more repetitions. If you can easily do 30 push-ups doing 40 push-ups tomorrow is not going to build strength or muscle size; it is only going to build endurance.
To continue building strength without adding weight you have to manipulate the difficulty of the exercise itself. Here are the three best ways to progressively overload your home workouts:
1. Manipulate Your Leverage
By changing the angle of your body you can force a percentage of your body weight onto the working muscles. If standard push-ups become too easy do not just do more of them. Instead elevate your feet onto a chair or the couch. This small angle change dramatically increases the amount of weight your chest and front deltoids have to push.
2. Slow Down the Tempo
Momentum is the enemy of muscle growth. If you are bouncing out of the bottom of a squat you are using momentum than muscle fiber to stand up. To make an exercise harder slow it down. Try doing a bodyweight squat where it takes you a five seconds to lower yourself down pause at the bottom for two seconds and take three seconds to stand back up. A set of ten squats using this tempo will make your legs burn than thirty fast sloppy squats. This technique increases “time under tension ” which’s a driver of muscle growth.
3. Move to Unilateral (One-Movements)
When two limbs are no longer challenged by your body weight it is time to force one limb to handle the load. This effectively doubles the weight on the working muscle.
Once standard squats are transition to split squats, where your rear foot is elevated on a couch and all the work is being done by your front leg. Eventually you can work your way up to the grail of bodyweight leg strength: the pistol squat (a deep squat performed entirely on one leg with the other leg extended straight out in front of you).
The same applies to the body. You can shift your weight to one side during a push-up (push-ups) to slowly build the strength required for an one-arm push-up.
Consistency Beats Equipment Every Time
The biggest advantage of a home bodyweight plan is that it removes all friction from the process. There is no waiting for a machine to open up no driving through rush hour traffic to get to the gym and no monthly membership fees draining your bank account. The floor is always open and the only barrier between you and a great workout is your willingness to start.
Even after you pass the beginner stage bodyweight training can continue to challenge you for years if you apply the principles of overload. Master the movements execute them with slow form and continually look for ways to put yourself at a mechanical disadvantage. You will be amazed, at the level of strength and muscle you can build using nothing. The body you were born with.