Best Bodyweight Exercises You Can Do At Home

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Needless to say, it’s best to hit the gym every day to have a healthy body. You can lift weights or do cardio with tons of machines and gym equipment, right? However, not every has that luxury because I believe that almost all of us have office jobs and we’re all busy with our own life. So what should we do now when we still want to work out? Well, don’t worry as there are a lot of different exercises you can do and you can do them anytime you want. Of course, working out at home is never equal to working out at the gym but sometimes you have to make the most of a difficult situation.

Let’s get this straight, when it comes to home workouts, there are so many different exercises you can do. However, I prefer basic exercises and trust me, if you do general fitness, you may not want to do advanced exercises like clap push-ups or muscle-ups as most of you are a calisthenic practitioner, right?

Here are the 5 best bodyweight exercises:

1. Push-ups

Equipment required:

• Exercise matt (optional)

Muscles involved:

• Chest (main muscle)
• Triceps
• Abs (please check also 30 Best Ab Workouts according to a Two-Time Olympian)

I’m pretty sure that almost every knows this exercises but not everyone knows how to do it properly. There are a lot of push-up variations, however, in my opinion, the basic push-up is the best if you’re looking for something effective but simple.

How to do it

Step 1: Lie on the exercise matt and place your hands just outside shoulder width apart.

Step 2: Use the balls of your feet to touch the floor while making a straight line from your head to your toes.

Step 3: Keep your shoulder blades retracted and the core tight, use your chest muscles and triceps to raise your body until your elbows are almost locked lockout.

Step 4: Slowly lower your body to return to the starting position.

If you want something more difficult and challenging, just switch to the feet-elevated push-ups or diamond push-ups.

2. Pull-ups

If the push-up is to target your chest, then the pull-up is to concentrate on your back and lats. So if you don’t have enough time to go to the gym and do some rows, this is the best exercise you can do at home.

Equipment required:

• Pull-up bar

Muscles involved:

• Back (main muscle)
• Biceps
• Forearms

How to do it:

Step 1: Grab the bar with your hands just outside shoulder width apart using a thumbless grip

Step 2: Keep your chest up and your neck in a neutral position

Step 3: Use your back and lats to pull up until your chin gently touches the bar

Step 4: Slowly lower your body until your arms almost fully extended

Even though this is a basic exercise but if you are a beginner or you’re overweight, it may be very difficult for you to perform more than 3 reps for this one. So before you do this exercise, make sure you are not overweight and your hand grip is strong enough so that you can hold your body hang on the bar long enough.

3. Jump squat

While the conventional squat is perfect with a barbell, the jump squat is one of the best squat variations with bodyweight. It doesn’t require as much strength as the conventional squat but you need good flexibility and mobility to perform this one. And to be honest, this is a very helpful exercise for your lower body and it’s also suitable for people of all fitness levels, especially women.

Muscle involved:

• Quads
• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Core

How to do it:

Step 1: Cross your arms over your chest just like you’re doing a front squat and stand up tall with your feet shoulder-width apart

Step 2: Slowly lower your body by bending your knees while keeping your back straight or naturally arched.

Step 3: When your upper thighs are parallel or even lower to the ground, jump up in the air as high as you can.

Tip: Imagine your thighs like springs

Step 4: Once your feet touch the floor, immediately returning to the squatting position before you jump.

You can do this movement while holding a kettlebell in front of your chest and you can also do a box jump if you have a bench or box.

4. Plank

I don’t know about you know but for me, this “dumb” exercise is so much more difficult than it looks. Besides, this exercise is not only good for your abs but also good all of your core muscles. So tell me, how long can you hold a plank? 3 minutes? 5 minutes? Or 10? If you don’t know, let’s figure it out yourself.

Equipment required:

• Exercise matt (optional)

Muscle involved:

• Abs (Main muscle group)
• Back

How to do it:

Step 1: Get into a prone position on the exercise matt, position your elbows just below your shoulder blades

Step 2: Keep your body in a straight line the entire time

Step 3: Contract your abs to hold your body in that position as long as possible.

For something more challenging, you can raise a leg or arm but honestly, the basic plank is already hard enough for me and I can only hold a plank for 5 minutes.

Author Bio

I’m Marshall and I’m a founder of AestheticGuys.com. I love fitness so I spend years searching for training and nutrition tips to get in shape. I really want to share my experiences and all my tips for anyone who cares about this area, that’s why I started Aestheticguys.com in 2017. Through the blog, I will have a chance to write about everything I want to share with you guys to make you love fitness more and help you get an aesthetic body.