So you want to start working out at home but you want to know, what are the best bodyweight workouts for beginners?
That’s a great question! Bodyweight workouts are an awesome place to start with strength training. And we’ll cover exactly how to do that in today’s Simple Guide To Bodyweight Workouts For Beginners.
Here’s what we’ll cover today:
- Why Bodyweight Workouts Are A Good Place To Start
- Can You Build Muscle With Bodyweight Workouts?
- Are Bodyweight Workouts Good For Losing Weight?
- Is It O.K. To Do Bodyweight Workouts Everyday?
- How Often Should A Beginner Workout?
- 7 Bodyweight Exercises You Need To Know
- 29 Bodyweight Exercises For Beginners
- Best Bodyweight Workouts For Beginners
- Ready To Get Started With Bodyweight Workouts? Here’s What To Do Next…
We help people get started with bodyweight workouts every day inside our coaching programs. And one of the best places for you to start is with our “MOMENTUM: At-Home Edition” 28-day home workout challenge.
This is the absolute best place for you to start your fitness journey because the entire workout program was designed specifically for beginners; people either just starting or restarting.
Click the button to check it out:
Why Bodyweight Workouts Are A Good Place To Start
When you’re just starting on your fitness journey you want to remove as many barriers as possible so that you have no excuses. And one of the biggest excuses people have is that they don’t have access to a gym.
To start building momentum we have to make fitness convenient for you. And the most convenient option is working out at home without any equipment.
This removes a handful of barriers all at once, including:
- I don’t have time to go to the gym
- I don’t have the right equipment
- I can’t afford a gym membership
- I don’t know what to do (we’ll cover this one in a minute)
Bodyweight exercises also tend to be a safer place to start for most people. It’s important to master the basic movement patterns before adding extra resistance with resistance bands or dumbbells. It doesn’t make much sense to add extra weight to a movement that you can’t perform properly yet.
So take time in the beginning to master these 7 movement patterns with just your bodyweight first (you’ll get exercise examples of these in just a minute):
- Squat
- Bend/Deadlift
- Lunge
- Push (horizontal/vertical)
- Pull (horizontal/vertical)
- Rotate
- Carry
The good news is that when you’re just starting, your bodyweight will be challenging enough to start to see some strength and muscle gains. It might even be too challenging in the beginning, and we’ll have to use exercise variations to actually reduce how much of your body you’re lifting.
For more on this topic, check out our Simple Guide To Strength Training For Beginners.
Can You Build Muscle With Bodyweight Workouts?
I’ll answer that with one word: gymnasts.
Take a look at Olympic-level gymnasts and then tell me if you think you can build muscle with bodyweight workouts.
Gymnasts are a great example because most of their training is done with bodyweight movements; very advanced bodyweight movements, but still.
Keep in mind, in order to build muscle we need to remember the principle of progressive overload. We need to consistently apply more demand on the muscles over time. When we do this the muscles grow and get stronger.
In the beginning, our body weight is more than enough demand on our muscles to make them grow.
But after the first few weeks or months of doing the same bodyweight exercises our body stops responding.
In order to keep applying more demand on the muscles to make them grow, we need to either start adding extra weight (i.e. dumbbells or resistance bands), or use more challenging bodyweight exercises.
If you want to continue to build muscle with bodyweight workouts past that initial period, you’ll need to get very confident in bodyweight exercise progressions.
An example simple progression for a push-up might look something like this:
- Wall push-ups
- Hands-elevated push-ups
- Push-ups
- Decline push-ups
And if you really get into bodyweight training, you could start experimenting with more advanced bodyweight movements like:
- Front levers
- Planche holds/push-ups
- Handstand push-ups
- Pistol squats
Keep in mind, it takes years and years of practice to get to the level of advanced bodyweight training. But if you enjoy it and you’re interested in it, keep practicing!
Otherwise, once you master the basic bodyweight exercises you can start adding resistance with tools like resistance bands and dumbbells.
Are Bodyweight Workouts Good For Losing Weight?
Yes! Bodyweight workouts – and strength training in general – can be a great tool for losing weight.
Weight loss comes down to controlling energy balance:
Energy Intake (i.e. food) < Energy Expenditure = Weight Loss
So basically we need to find a way to burn more calories for energy than we’re consuming through food.
Strength training can help us achieve this in a few ways:
- We’re burning calories for energy during our workout
- Then we continue burning calories as our body repairs and recovers
- Building muscle slightly raises our metabolism so we’re burning more calories all day
- Strength training has been shown to affect N.E.A.T.
So by combining strength training, like bodyweight workouts, with a healthy nutrition plan we can lose weight.
And this is exactly what you can expect during the “MOMENTUM: At Home Edition” 28-day home workout challenge. Click the button to get started today:
Is It OK To Do Bodyweight Workouts Everyday?
It’s absolutely possible to design a bodyweight training plan that you could do every day.
But the most important thing is making sure you’re not overdoing it, especially in the beginning.
To build muscle we need to let our body recover from our workouts. Recovery time is just as important as workout time. That’s when muscle repair happens and the muscles get stronger.
So as long as you’re giving yourself enough time to recover, then doing bodyweight workouts every day is fine.
However, I would recommend a more balanced training schedule. This is an example of what I might recommend to a BluePhoenix Fitness Coaching member to start with:
Monday – Bodyweight Workout A
Tuesday – Walking 20 minutes
Wednesday – Bodyweight Workout B
Thursday – Walking 20 minutes
Friday – Bodyweight Workout C
Saturday – Walking 20 minutes
Sunday – Fun activity, yoga, swimming, bike ride, etc.
With this schedule you’re staying active every day, but you’re also giving your body enough time in between strength workouts to recover and repair.
How Often Should A Beginner Workout
There’s no easy answer to this because as with more questions, the answer is “it depends”.
We can set up an effective bodyweight workout program for beginners with workouts every day. Or we can set up an effective bodyweight training program with 3-5 workouts per week. It really depends on your schedule, lifestyle, and enjoyment of the workouts.
There are some benefits to daily workouts. Daily workouts can help with consistency because it eliminates the decision of whether you’re working out today or not. You can block off the same time every day as your “workout time” and plan around it.
However, if done improperly daily workouts can quickly lead to burn out, overtraining, and potentially injury.
Beginners need to be very cautious with how much training volume they’re putting on their body. As mentioned earlier, all of our strength and muscle gains come while our body recovers from our workouts. So we need to give our body time to work it’s muscle-building magic.
Think of it like digging a hole that refills itself with more and more dirt. If we keep digging without letting that hole refill, we’re just going to get a bigger hole.
Also, not allowing our muscles to repair can lead to increased soreness, tight muscles, and potentially injury.
With that said, I really like the recommended schedule in the previous section. That schedule gives you daily workouts. But you only have 3 bodyweight workouts per week, combined with walking and other activities.
Start there and if you really enjoy it once your body gets used to exercising, we can look at designing an effective bodyweight training program with more than 3 workouts per week.
7 Bodyweight Exercises You Need To Know
When you’re just starting with bodyweight workouts the best approach is to keep things as simple as possible.
And at the simplest level you really only need to know (and master) 7 bodyweight exercises, or “movement patterns”. Almost every exercise stems from these 7 movement patterns:
- Squat
- Bend/Hinge
- Push (horizontal and vertical)
- Pull (horizontal and vertical)
- Lunge
- Rotate
- Carry
Now that you know the 7 ways your body moves, let’s look at the actual exercises that will make up your bodyweight workouts.
29 Bodyweight Exercises For Beginners
One of the most important aspects of program design is exercise selection – choosing the appropriate exercise for your fitness level, body, and goals.
This is where understanding progressions and regressions comes in. For one person, a simple bodyweight squat might be too easy. But for another person that might be the most challenging exercise they can handle right now.
To get you started, here’s a sample of exercise progressions for each of the 7 movement patterns from above. In the next section we’ll choose some of these exercises to build an actual workout.
SQUAT
Level 1: Bodyweight Box Squat
Level 2: Bodyweight Assisted Squat
Level 3: Bodyweight Squat
Level 4: Bodyweight 1.5 Squat
BEND/HINGE
Level 1: Lying Hip Bridge
Level 2: Hip Bridge w/ Marching
Level 3: Deadlift w/ broomstick
PUSH
Level 1: Wall Push Up
Level 2: Counter-top Push Up
Level 3: Couch Push Up
Level 4: Push Up
PULL
Level 1: Lying “YTW”
Level 2: Bent Over Reverse Fly
Level 3: Bent Over Row w/ grocery bags
LUNGE
Level 1: Assisted Split Squat
Level 2: Split Squat
Level 3: Assisted Reverse Lunge
Level 4: Reverse Lunge
ROTATE
Level 1: Standing Rotation (arms straight out from chest)
Level 2: Bodyweight Woodchopper
CARRY
Level 1: Grocery Bag Farmer Walk
Now that you have some exercise progressions, let’s put them together into an actual bodyweight workout!
Best Bodyweight Workouts For Beginners
As mentioned earlier, the most important part of program design is choosing the appropriate exercise. And a big part of exercise selection is choosing the exercise that fits your current fitness level.
You don’t want to choose an exercise that’s too easy, but you also don’t want one that’s too challenging either. Basically you want an exercise that is challenging within the prescribed rep range.
So if I tell you to do 10-15 reps, you want to have an exercise that you can do at least 10 reps of, but no more than 15. If you can do more than 15 reps that means the exercise is too easy and you should move up to the next level.
Check out this episode of Rebuild Your Body. I walk you through exactly how to know when you should increase the weight you’re using, or move into a more challenging exercise variation.
To make this easy I’ll give you 3 different workouts – Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. You can choose the workout most appropriate for your current fitness level.
*NOTE: You’re not going to do all 3 of these workouts. These are all the exact same workout, but for different fitness levels. Choose the workout that fits your current fitness level, and then as you become stronger you can move up to the next level.
Level 1 Bodyweight Workout
1a. Standing Rotation – 2 sets x 8-10 reps each side
2a. Bodyweight Box Squat – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
2b. Lying “YTW” – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
3a. Lying Hip Bridge – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
3b. Wall Push Up – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
4. Grocery Bag Farmer Walk – 4 sets x 30 second walk x 60 seconds rest
Level 2 Bodyweight Workout
1a. Standing Rotation – 2 sets x 8-10 reps each side
2a. Assisted Bodyweight Squat – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
2b. Standing Reverse Fly – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
3a. Hip Bridge w/ Marching – 3 sets x 8-12 reps each side x 60 seconds rest
3b. Countertop Push Up – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
4. Grocery Bag Farmer Walk – 4 sets x 30 second walk x 60 seconds rest
Level 3 Bodyweight Workout
1a. Bodyweight Woodchopper – 2 sets x 8-10 reps each side
2a. Bodyweight Squat – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
2b. Bent Over Row w/ grocery bags – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
3a. Deadlift w/ broomstick – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
3b. Push Up – 3 sets x 8-12 reps x 60 seconds rest
4. Grocery Bag Farmer Walk – 4 sets x 30 second walk x 60 seconds rest
Ready To Get Started With Bodyweight Workouts? Here’s What To Do Next…
This Simple Guide has no doubt given you a lot of great places to get started with bodyweight workouts.
But if you’d like to really take your bodyweight workouts to the next level, it’s time to jump on board the “MOMENTUM: At-Home Edition” 28-day home workout challenge:
See you on the inside,
-Cam