Free Daily Fitness Tips – Fitness Training Tips
Daily Workouts to Lose Tummy Fat and Show Six Pack Abs

Body Weight Workouts Help You get in Shape Fast – Free, Fast, Any Time, Anywhere.

Body weight workouts are simply exercises that utilize the weight of your body for resistance training.  The benefits are that you don’t need any exercise equipment or a gym to do this type of fitness training.  You can literally workout any time or any place you want.  Busy travelling for business or in a hotel with no gym, no worries, you can work out in your room.   Is it raining, snowing, super cold or hot outside?  Again, no worries – these can be done in your living room, bedroom … you get the idea.

Here’s a list of body weight exercises and descriptions of how to do them:

1)       Wall Sit – Great quadriceps exercise (thighs) - place your feet shoulder length apart and far enough from the wall so that your knees are bent at a 90 degree angle.  Your back and butt will be up against the wall – hold for 30 seconds and work your way up to 2 minutes

2)      Chair Dips – Good for triceps (back of upper arm) and front of your shoulders - place your hands on the front of a chair, shoulder length apart.  Your legs are out in front of you slightly bent.   You can put your legs up on another chair if you want a harder exercise.  Slowly lower your body in front of the chair until your elbows are at a 90 degree angle and then straighten your arms and lift your body back up.  Repeat 10 – 20 repetitions.

3)      Pushups– builds chest, front of  shoulders and triceps – start by laying on the ground facing the floor.  Place your hands slightly wider than shoulder length apart and push your body off the floor while straightening your arms.  Lower your body until your chest gently touches the floor and repeat 10-20 reps.

4)      The Plank – strengthens your core, abs – place your elbows on the floor shoulder length apart and straighten your body with your toes on the floor.  Hold this pose for 30 seconds and build up to two minutes.  Don’t let your body sag towards the floor or lift your butt in the air – keep your body like a “plank”  - awesome for losing tummy fat!

5)      Toe Raises – for gorgeous calves – simply stand up feet shoulder length apart and lift up until you are on the tips of your toes.  You can vary this exercise by alternating straight feet, toes pointed inwards, and toes out.  15-30 reps.

6)      Side Plank – strengthens obliques, sides – again, place your elbow and forearm on the ground, perpendicular to your body.  Lift your body up with your upward foot on the ground.  Keep your body straight.  Hold for 30 minutes and build up to 2 minutes.  If you want to make this exercise harder, you can move your lower leg towards your chest and back in a running motion – awesome!

7)      Arm Circles – for powerful shoulders – straighten your arms out to your sides and make circles with your fists – you can alternate small circles, big circles, clockwise, counter clockwise, hands facing down, hands facing up.  Do a total of 25 – 100 reps.

8)      Side Tri Rise – triceps, obliques, sides – lay on  your side, place the hand of the arm towards the floor on the shoulder of the upward arm.  Then place the upward arm hand on the floor below the lower arm shoulder (you may have to read that sentence twice).  Lift your upper body off the floor and then lower again.  10-20 reps each side.

Body Weight Workouts are convenient, free, and get you in shape fast.  I like to call them the “no excuses workout”.  Since you need no equipment, they’re free, fast and you can do them anywhere … uh, what’s your excuse?  Did you say you don’t have time?  You can do a couple of these at a time – only takes a minute or two.  Drink some water, take a work break every hour or two, and you’ve done all these workouts by the time you head for home.  That's why I include them regularly in your Free Daily Fitness Tips and Fitness Training Tips.   Look for more body weight workouts coming soon – I’ll be writing an article on cardio body weight workouts and extreme body weight workouts soon.  Enjoy – To Your Health!

Isometrics for Body Weight Workouts:

Isometric exercises help create more strength and muscle tone.  In these exercises, we engage our muscles while keeping still.  Sometimes you can exercise two different muscle groups at once by opposing two parts of your body.

For example, if you lay on your back and push down on your knees, you are not moving, but you are working your triceps and adductor or lifter muscles.  You could also exercise your biceps and glutes by grabbing under your thigh and pushing down with your leg while lifting with your arm.  Be creative and you can come up with all kinds of isometric exercises that you can do any time, anywere.

I can't believe I almost forgot about Isometrics.  My mom gets credit for this tip being here.  She recently commented that she does isometrics regularly and it's helping her a lot with her muscle tone.  She's busy like the rest of us - taking care of the grandkids, full time job, etc... so no excuses!

What's so great about isometrics?  Once again, you can exercise almost all your muscle groups in a short period of  time - hold 10-30 seconds.  And no excuses ... busy, travelling, no equipment, tired?  Sorry, none of these work.  Give it a try!

Again, please feel free to send in your favorite isometric exercises by commenting below ... happy isometrics!

Advanced Body Weight Workouts:

1)  One Legged Wall Sits - quadriceps, butt -  just like the wall sits above, but you lift one leg off the ground.  Your back is against the wall, knees bent at a 90 degree angle (be sure your knees don't stick out over your toes) ... then lift one leg off the ground - do your best to point that leg straight out.  Hold the leg out for 5 to 10 seconds, then switch.  Build up the time until you can do this exercise for a minute.

2)  Advanced Toe Raises - calves - do 10 toe raises, holding at the top for two seconds, then do 10 more immediately with fast repetitions - lift your body as HIGH as you can.  Do three sets - one with your toes pointed in, one with your feet straight and parallel and one with your toes pointed out.

3)  Table - this body weight workout is great for your butt, your hamstrings and lower back.  It also helps stretch out your shoulders.  Easy version - lie on your back with your knees bent, lift up your behind and strive to get your back completely straight - hold at the top for  2-5 seconds - squeeze your buns - do 10 to 15 reps.  Advanced - same exercise but have your hands on the floor with your arms straight.

4)  One legged squats - just like it sounds - be sure to have your leg that is off the floor pointing foreward, along with your hands - this will keep your knee from bending over your toes.  For your knee health and safety, please don't bend more than 90 degrees (your thigh parallel with the floor).  If this is too tough with your other foot off the ground, use your heel to help balance and support you or a chair to help lift yourself up.  Of course, two legged squats are always a great body weight workout 🙂

5)  Lunges - This is like a "funny walk" on Monty Python.  Simply do an exaggerated walk - stretch your forward leg out, touch the rearward knee gently to the ground and lift your body up and take the next giant step.  If you are in your living room or inside without a lot of  "leg room", you can turn around every two steps.

6)  Clapping Pushups - chest -  here you do regular pushups with a plyometric twist - push your body up off the floor enough to clap between pushups.  For extra credit, do narrow hands, wide hands, and elbows in pushups (focuses on triceps as well).  You can also have your feet wide, narrow, on one side with one leg crossed over the other and switch ...

7)  Wall Handstands - do a handstand against a wall - a hallway is nice for this.  Hold for a minute.  For extra shoulder strength and mobility, walk your hands sideways along the wall and back!

PS - I'm looking for a body weight workout that exercises your lats without any equipment - pullups, chinups, lat pulldowns in the gym, etc... are great, but do you know anything that doesn't require a pull up bar?  Please comment below if you can help, all suggestions welcome - thanks in advance 🙂