Building a Bodyweight Workout Plan? Start Here

When considering a workout plan, many people stop before they ever begin—because they don’t have any equipment, and assume that it’s a necessity. Whether because of worry that there’s no way to be successful at reaching exercise oriented goals without weights, or because they don’t know enough different activities to do, there is a common misconception that getting fit requires equipment—a misconception that unnecessarily prevents people from getting started on a fitness path.

In reality, there are many activities you can do with only the weight of your own body, and they can be highly effective at getting you in better shape. To help us best understand how to begin building a bodyweight workout plan, we consulted with WeStrive App trainers Torra Wolf and Tommy Hockenjos. They shared their favorite workouts that are based only on bodyweight, with assorted fitness goals in mind. 

What Goals Can Be Achieved With a Bodyweight Plan? 

You can accomplish an array of fitness goals without having to use workout equipment. Let’s look at how a bodyweight plan can help you reach your fitness goals, and where it may fall short. 

• Strength Building: A bodyweight workout plan can help lead to increased strength, though you may need to get there through progressively higher reps. Let’s take push-ups as an example, a common bodyweight exercise that can have profound effects by working multiple parts of your body. The act of doing push-ups will increase the strength of your pecs (chest), deltoids (shoulders), triceps (back of your arms), and abs (stomach). You might begin by working up to doing a single properly formed push-up, then after time gradually doing many more. You can also do variations that are more complex: “If you have mastered 30 push-ups in a straight set, now challenge yourself to decline push-ups,” says Wolf. By increasing repetitions and making individual exercises more difficult, you can gain strength through simple bodyweight movements. There is only so far you can go with bodyweight workouts when it comes to building muscle mass, though. Hockenjos cautions that for those whose goals is a more extreme version of strength gaining, like for powerlifters, a bodyweight plan alone won’t be sufficient. "Our bodyweight, for most, is not enough of a stimulus to generate the massive strength adaptations that are possible from using external weight,” he says.
• Weight Loss: A bodyweight plan can be effective for weight loss for two reasons. First, cardio activity may help you lose weight through burning calories. “If you are looking to lose weight, add some extra movements to your workout plan that will make you break a sweat," says Wolf. For example: “Instead of an ordinary lunge, do a lunge jump with a front kick in between each rep,” she says. "The more you increase your heart rate, the more calories you will burn.” The second reason that a bodyweight plan can work for weight loss is because as you increase your muscle mass, your body will burn more calories on its own, because muscle increases your metabolism. Hockenjos recommends that if your goal is weight loss, you should “choose an easier variation of an exercise (push-ups with hands on a bench vs. regular push-ups, for example) where you are able to burn more calories and increase the number of reps you are able to perform.” 
• Muscle Toning: Knowing that you can build strength with bodyweight only, it shouldn’t be surprising that you can also enhance your muscle tone. “Although lifting heavier weights does help to increase muscle faster, toning muscles can be done through your own body weight,” too, says Wolf. And because having more muscle increases your metabolism, you’ll burn more calories, helping you to shed the fat that may be hiding your musculature underneath. 
• Endurance: Bodyweight workout plans can increase your endurance for a straightforward reason: The more you practice a specific exercise, the more endurance you’ll have for that exercise. Because there is such a wide variety of bodyweight workout options, you can increase your endurance in a large array of ways.  

Who Should Begin a Bodyweight Workout Plan, and Who Shouldn’t? 

Wolf says that anyone can benefit from a bodyweight plan because, even though injuries are the top reason to avoid certain exercises, there are plenty of others meant to help you recover from them. “Most bodyweight exercises are dynamic and multi-joint," says Hockenjos. "When recovering from an injury we need the ability to isolate certain muscles and movement, which is sometimes difficult to do properly with bodyweight exercises.” This means that until you’re fully healed, you may be a little limited in the scope of exercises you can safely perform. If you have an injury, you should discuss it with your doctor before beginning any regime. 

Bodyweight Workouts to Try

There is no limit to what types of activities can be done with bodyweight only. From cardio exercises to strength building that improves your balance and posture, there are as many movements using just your body as there are body parts—if not more.

Below are some of the trainers's favorite bodyweight workouts. Wolf’s choices for bodyweight workouts all engage multiple muscles, and Hockenjos’s choices are focused on increasing endurance and strength.