Bodyweight Exercises For Workout At Home

Working out at home with your own body weight is a great way to train for many reasons. For starters, it, of course, means that you don’t need to fork out any cash for expensive equipment, and by the same token, you’ll also be able to work out anywhere in the world even if you don’t have much space or any dumbbells.

Then there’s the fact that working out with your own body weight is very good for you – your body weight increases as does your strength naturally so you’ll always find the difficulty to be at the right level for you, and at the same time you’ll be improving your ‘dynamic strength’ which means that you’ll have better command over your own body weight and will be fit and good at long term exertion as well as heavy lifting.

But then of course some body parts will lend themselves more to bodyweight training than others and some body parts aren’t at all easy to work out without picking up some weights. The biceps for instance is much more difficult to work out unless you have a pull-up bar somewhere.

Another of the more difficult to train areas meanwhile is the shoulders or the deltoids to be more technically accurate. But that doesn’t mean you can’t train them at all. Here we will look at how to go about training your should with just your body weight.

Incline Press Ups

Doing press-ups already trains your shoulders to an extent and will build them somewhat. However, if you can increase the angle so that you are pointing downwards toward the floor then you will essentially be aiming the weight more directly onto your shoulders. This is a great way to train the shoulders and as long as you have a couch to put your feet up on it’s pretty easy.

Bodyweight Shoulder Press

Increase the angle even more though and what you essentially have is a shoulder press. To train this you will want to simply use your feet to steady yourself on a couch or something, but now you are going to make yourself almost completely vertical with your legs bent and then use the same movement as the incline press up but directly up and down.

Handstand Press Ups

For anyone who wants more of a challenge, then doing handstand press-ups certainly delivers on that front. Here you will simply balance your weight vertically on your hands with no help and then you will press up and down. This is something that can be quite difficult in order to balance (it’s a great party trick though) so you may want to get help from a friend holding your feet, or alternatively try leaning your legs against a wall (though they tend to drag).

Muscle Ups

Muscle-ups are when you do a pull-up, go over the top of it, and then press yourself upwards. This is something that gymnasts do a lot as well as climbers and which trains the whole upper body in a very dynamic and explosive manner. You can train using just the top ‘pressing’ aspect of the movement by positioning yourself on the top of a wall (as though you’re about to climb over it) or lifting your chest up to prop it against a pull-up bar and then doing miniature presses to lift yourself up just slightly from there.

Also Read: Mobility Exercises for the Obese