When it comes to toning your body, most people turn to heavy weight lifting, but in reality, you can get toned muscles through body weight exercises. Being fit and toned can easily be done through the help of actual body weight exercises, as lifting weights in general isn’t the only known way to gain muscle. There are many body exercises that involve lifting your own body weight.
Although carrying your physical weight may seem quite easy, you’ll be surprised how difficult the process is. In order to carry yourself, you will need a bunch of muscle and strength that can’t be earned overnight. One of the great things about body weight exercises is the fact that most of them can be done at home without the usage of any equipment whatsoever.
Have you ever seen any overweight out of shape professional gymnast? I haven’t in my days. This is because training with body weight as they do, gets you ripped, uniquely stronger than bodybuilders because the muscles are working in all different ways. Pulling, pushing, holding, balancing, and also mental focus is required to build up pure strength and an unforgiving shredded physique.
Body Weight Exercises – Build Real Strength and Discipline
Pull Ups
Pull ups are such an effective exercise that will definitely build the muscles in your arms and back. If you aren’t familiar with pull ups, the entire process is quite easy. All you need to do is get a firm grip on a horizontal bar and pull yourself up until your chin reaches the top of the bar.
There are many different grips you can do such as underhand, narrow grip, and wide grip to name a few. You can also grab on a towel that you loop over one side of the bar and use an overhand grip on the other side. You can also lift your legs straight in front of you while doing pull ups to work your core at the same time.
Pull ups are one of the most popular body weight exercises. You can start with supporting your feet on a chair to help pull yourself up until you are able to get up and down yourself with multiple reps.
Mountain Climbers
Mountain climbers are also such an effective body weight exercise that can be done simply anywhere. This exercise will tone your legs, core, and thighs, building up muscles in those needed areas. Basically to do mountain climbers, you will need to start on the push up position and simply bring your left knee forward to your chest while at the same time straightening your right leg.
Keep your hands on the floor at all times and be sure to tighten your core. This exercise basically just involves jumping and switching legs. This exercise can be very exhilarating when done correctly. This exercise will strengthen your core areas and build nice mechanics for running.
More Body Weight Exercises
Push Ups
Push ups are well known for being one of the most effective body weight exercises, as it consists of you pushing your body off from just above the ground. If you aren’t familiar with what push ups are, then basically all you need to do is put both you hands on the floor about shoulder length. Bring feet back to where your back and legs straighten out. Then, bend your elbows and bring your chest a couple inches from the floor and then push yourself back up to the starting position.
While performing the push ups, you must tighten your butt and make sure that your glutes are lifted just a bit to maintain those straight back and legs.
If you find this exercise to be too difficult, you can bend your knees to the floor while creating this motion. Push ups will strenghten your core and tighten your arms, chest , & shoulders allowing you to achieve toned arm and stomach muscles.
To make push ups more difficult, you can add medicine balls under your feet and hands. This should only be done when perfected the normal push up and your strength & balance is intact. Balance push ups are done in P90X2. The program is for p90x graduates that are ready to move on to strength, balance, and more discipline.
Burpees
Burpees are also a very popular workout that has proven to tighten and exercise simply all the muscles in the body. The entire process of doing burpees is quite simple but when done in reps, can really give you a great workout. Check out a great video I found by Linora Low on how to do a burpee below
This exercise can be very tiring, especially when you do this exercise quite quickly. Burpees will not only allow your muscles to tone, it will also burn the extra fats in your body. You can add a pushup at the bottom of the burpee. You can jump or jump into a pull up on the top half of the burpee to increase the intensity. Further, you can also add mountain climbers at the bottom of the burpee. Burpees are great body weight exercises that beginners to elite athletes incorporate into their routines today.
Planks
Aside from burpees, planks are also a very tiring and effective body weight exercise that has shown to grow muscle upon the arms and core area. Planks are a very simple exercise that involves you laying down on your stomach and lifting your body through placing your elbows or hands on the ground. If you prefer the hands, you will be in a push up starting position.
This exercise will tighten your stomach area tremendously as it focuses on the stomach. If you find planks to longer challenge your body, you can make the exercise harder by simply doing side planks.
Basically, the entire exercise is the same, but you are only placing your body weight on one side of your body and holding. Planks are very effective and will definitely help you to see significant results in your body much faster than more other exercises.
Body Weight Exercises Include a Variety of Squats
Sit Squat
The sit squat exercise isn’t like most other exhilarating cardio body weight exercises, as you will find this workout to be very quiet, but very tiring. All you need to do is bend your knees to go into a squat position and simply stay in that position for as long as you can.
This exercise will really burn your stomach, legs, and back muscles, as it exercises the entire body. The sit squat can be done anywhere because it doesn’t involve any type of weights or other gym equipment. If you no longer find the sit squat to be challenging to your body, you can simply do the jump squat where you jump as high as you can when going up from a squat.
Make sure that when performing this workout, your knees stay behind your toes. To make this possible, put your butt down and sit upright with proper posture until your knees are in proper position.
Pistol Squat
The pistol squat is a very popular exercise that is well known for burning the fats in the body and building up muscle in the legs and core area. All you need to do is go in the regular squat position and lift your right leg straight forward in front of you. To show you a visual of this squat, I found a great website at BodyWod.
After that, simply just switch the leg you place in front of you by lifting your left leg. This exercise will really allow you to feel the burn in our calves and thighs, as it involves a lot of muscle to stay in the specific position for a long time. If you can’t stay in this position for a long time, you could consider to just beat your time the next time you do this exercise.
All of the body weight exercises above have shown to be very effective, and the best part about doing them is that they can be done in the comfort of your own home.
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