Effective Moves You Might Have Forgotten
Imagine you’re new to the gym. You’re motivated and often encouraged to go straight to the squat rack and get under the bar. But what happens if you haven’t squatted before and are just copying the person next to you. You might have watched a few YouTube tutorials and think you’ve got it covered. The same goes for the bench or deadlift. Enter bodyweight exercises.
These aren’t solely for beginners. Intermediate or advanced lifters can use their body weight as part of their programs to achieve their goals.
The most well known of these include pushups, pullups, squats, lunges and situps. They provide a basic fundamental of the movement allowing you to fully develop the technique and form prior to any progressive overloading (adding weight). Being able to do 15–20 solid pushups puts you in good stead for being able to move on to the bench press.
In the case of the squat, learning and practising before you even touch the bar is going to help build your quads in a safer manner. You’ll learn where to position your body and have various cues. Getting to grips with the form before adding weight will benefit you massively in the long run and prevent any injuries from occurring.
If you don’t plan on going to a gym and instead wish to train with just your bodyweight that’s okay too! There are plenty of variations of most bodyweight exercises you can do to help improve strength and build muscle.
Even as an experienced lifter, I still include bodyweight exercises in my program. The majority are simple to do and require little space to do. The exception being pullups, chin-ups and hanging abdominal exercises. I appreciate not everyone has access to a home pullup bar.
So what bodyweight moves do I believe to best the most effective and include in my workouts?
1. Pullups
Probably the best overall back movement, in my opinion. The pullup targets your lats, rhomboid and teres major muscles — the ones needed to get the width in your back. This video from Jeff Nippard explains the best way to utilise the pullup. Compared to the typical lat pulldown, pullups target more muscles. The chin-up is a nice variation that targets the biceps more, however, has less emphasis on the traps.
If you are able to add extra weight to these, using a dip/chin-up belt, then you can effectively overload these.
2. Pushup
I did a lot of these while doing taekwondo. Oh boy, it was worth it. It develops your chest, triceps and front delts in your shoulder. This is a common poorly-performed exercise in the gym so make sure you master the form. This video from Jeff Cavaliere from Athlean X covers EVERYTHING about the positioning and technique of the pushup.
Variations of these include hand or feet elevated, pike pushups for more shoulder activation and plyometric versions, such as the clapping pushup.
3. Squat
A great move for using in bodyweight-only programs or CrossFit style METCONs. Or any program for that matter. You don’t need to worry about space for these either. There are so many variations to this move as well. Prisoner squats and jumping squats to name a few.
Here’s a link to perfecting the form.
4. Lunges/Bulgarian Split Squat
I’m going to combine these into one because of how similar I find them. Both are unilateral movements and mainly target the quads.
The (Bulgarian) split squat is performed like so by Scott Herman. It also targets the glutes and inner thighs. The hamstrings and calves are also worked but are used as stabilisers. This is a tough exercise. Beginners might find this one hard at first due to the balance and strength required compared to the lunge.
Lunges target the same muscle groups and can also be used when space is limited. There’s also core activation for stabilising you throughout the movement.
I recently trained with a guy in my gym and we were super setting bodyweight lunges with heavy leg presses. It was very, very tough. We focused on controlling the tempo of the move to increase the time under tension. Don’t underestimate them.
5. Hanging Leg Raises
A movement I’ve recently incorporated into my program. This abs exercise targets your full core and obliques. If you struggle with this, the captains’ chair is a great option for getting you familiar with the movement.
Again, here’s Jeff Cavaliere explaining how to do them. One of the points Jeff makes is these can also be used to strengthen the hip flexors and help with quad strains.
Over the lockdown period in 2020, I relied heavily on exercises such as pushups, pullups, squats and lunges. I performed variations of each such as feet-elevated pushups, chin-ups and jumping squats and lunges. They allowed me to maintain my fitness and strength in a period where there was no access to the gym.
How Can These Exercises Be Used?
My goal when the gyms re-opened in September 2020 was to build bigger shoulders, get strong and, most importantly, feel good. I bought a program from PropaneFitness focusing on developing a V-taper appearance. This is when the shoulders and lats create a V-shape and appear to make your hips look narrower.
The program was both physically and mentally hard. Each weekday morning included 3 sets of pushups to failure. In the evenings, there were pull-ups and variations with other exercises for the full body. My rest days were well earned.
Going into this 8-week program, I could only manage 4 pullups. By the end, I could do 15. The number of pushups I could do to failure also increased from 30 to 70. Furthermore, I also saw big improvements in my bench press and deadlift when I focused on training them after completing the program.
The essence here is that you are still progressively overloading the movement. More pull-ups over a period of time are the same as more weight on the lat pulldown machine. The same goes for push-ups and pressing movements.
So Do They Help You?
In my opinion, yes. My first-hand experience of involving them in my workouts and seeing the progression in the gym and on my body means I will continue to utilise them moving forward.
Another interesting use of bodyweight moves is for active recovery. If you have really bad DOMS, after leg day, for example, you can include some partial bodyweight squat reps to increase the blood flow to the quads and help you recover quicker.
Super setting heavy sets with bodyweight moves is a good way to develop hypertrophy and increase the time under tension of the muscle.
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Josh