The Best Exercises Without Equipment You Can Do At Home

Believe it or not you do not need access to a gym to get a great workout nor do you need any fancy equipment. Forget about the gimmicky fitness equipment you see on the home shopping channel and try these great home workout exercises that use nothing but your own body as resistance.

There are literally hundreds of bodyweight exercises you can do and the classic ones that come to your head first would be the pull, press up and sit up. These a stable movements that should be included in any strength training routines wether you use weights or not.

Exercises Without Equipment For Upper Body

The best upper body exercise you can do without any form of gym equipment is the press up (push up).

There are so many different variations of the push up and by simply varying your hand position you will target different muscles and feel a different effect.

A standard push up with your hands a little wider then shoulder width apart will target the shoulders, triceps and chest muscles mainly. A wide grip which goes beyond shoulder width will start to target the outer chest muscles and a narrow grip with your hands almost touching will isolate the triceps and inner chest muscles.

You can add even more variation to the exercise by raising your arms slightly or having your legs raised off of the floor. There are so many different variations you can do with the push up which is why they are one of the best exercises without equipment you can do for the upper body.

My second favourite of the upper body exercises without equipment are the chair dips. Personally i do not count a chair as a piece of gym equipment and almost everyone has access to a chair or step or any raised surface.

1. Start by placing your hands on the bench and your feet are on the ground with your legs semi straight.

2. Proceed to bend your arms until they are bent to about 90 degrees.

3. Return to the starting position and repeat for the desired repetitions.

Dips are a fantastic exercise for hitting the triceps and shoulder muscles. Really go slow when performing this exercise and squeeze and contract the muscles as you go. Visualising the muscles getting bigger after each rep is a great way to add extra intensity to the exercise, and apparently this is what Arnold Schwarzengger used to do.

Top Tip

As will all exercises you perform make sure that you do not rush the movement. Its not a race and there is no rush. The negative (lowering) part of the movement should be slow and controlled. The postive part can be a little faster but still controlled. This way you will recruit more muscle fibres which will lead to more growth.

Exercises Without Equipment For Lower Body

For the lower body the best exercise you can do are bodyweight squats. Squats will help build muscle on your legs and buttocks. There are many different variations of this classic muscle builder you can do.

You can experiement with the width of the squat and hit the leg muscles at different angles. You could squat on one leg for an even greater effect.

What i like about body weight squats is that they can be done anywhere. They do not require any equipment and very little space. To add extra resistance you could tense your muscles and perform each movement as slowly as possible for a greater effect. My favourite way of increasing the intensity is to hold a heavy object while doing squats, lately i have been doing them with my 5 year old daughter sat on my shoulders. This adds extra weight for me and is fun for her to. (just make sure there is enough ceiling room and you have a plan to get them off safely when you have finished your set.)

The next of my best exercises without weights is the Bicycle Crunch. This is a great all round abdominal exercise that works all 3 main areas of your abs, upper, lower and sides.

This exercise can be a little tricky to perform when you first try it and you wont be able to do that many reps as the burning feeling will kick in fairly quickly with this exercise.

You can get far more benefit from your abdominal exercises by tensing your stomach muscles as you do them. This can be difficult to start with as you still need to breath whilst tensing your stomach, but its well worth trying as can speed up your results.

I mainly use weights in my workouts but do from time to time add body weight exercises to my workout. If you dont have access to any strength training equipment then dont worry you can still get good results from exercises without weights.

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