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Planning your bodyweight workout routines is essential to getting the best out of your workouts. There are a few factors that go into planning a good workout… and there are 2 ways you could do it.
You could go online and Google bodyweight training workouts, and you’ll find many sample workouts that you can follow. It’s easy. All the work has been done for you, and as long as you do the reps fast and with good form and minimal rest, you’ll be fine.
You could also look on YouTube for videos of bodyweight workouts that you can follow along to. There is no right or wrong here. What’s most important is that you get your butt out of the couch and get moving.
The second way of doing it is to plan one for yourself. After all, you know yourself best and will be able to create a workout that best suits you.The duration of a workout will depend on your level of fitness.
Ideally, no workout should be shorter than 10-minutes unless you’re following a Tabata protocol . The fitter you get, the longer you may wish to workout. 20 minutes is good enough for even the advanced athletes.
If you’re doing it right, even these short workouts can wipe you out and put you in fat burning mode for hours. They’re enough to make you look lean and sinewy after a couple of months.
Now let’s see how you can create a 10-minute workout that’s good for you.
1. The exercises should not target the same muscles
If your workout only has exercises such as squats, lunges, box jumps, pistol squats, Bulgarian split squats… all you’ll be targeting are your leg muscles. What about your arms, chest, etc.
You want to structure a workout that targets the whole body. You want to be doing full-body workouts.
Here is a good list of exercises to choose from.
* Mountain climbers
* Jumping lunges
* Diamond push-ups
* Pull-ups
* Burpees
* Frozen V-sit
* Hanging leg raises
* Aztec push-ups
* Dragon walks
* Muscle ups
There are many more bodyweight exercises and with some research online, you can easily find what they are and incorporate them into your workouts. What’s most important is that you have a mix of exercises in your workout.
2. Have short rest periods
The key to losing fat with bodyweight training is to make sure the intensity is high and the rest periods are short. The rest intervals are just for you to catch your breath and about 15 seconds should be good enough.
If you need more, then you should go up to about 30 seconds. Don’t take a rest break that’s long enough for you to have coffee and watch a movie.
You always want to be panting and struggling a little. Don’t overdo it… but also don’t be lax to the point where the workouts seem easy. Only when you train at your VO2 max , do you put your body in a state where it will burn fat rapidly.
3. Different exercises vs. repeating a cycle
There are 2 ways to add exercises to a workout. If it’s a 10-minute workout, you will be training for 45 seconds per exercise… followed by 15 seconds of rest. So, you may wish to use 10 different exercises.
However, you could just use 5 exercises and from the 6th to 10th minute, you just repeat the cycle that you did in the first 5. This is usually easier. You can save the other 5 exercises for a different workout that you’ll do on another day.
4. Have a few explosive exercises in the routine
Certain exercises just can’t be done explosively if you want to maintain good form and not injure yourself. For example, pistol squats and Bulgarian split squats.
That’s why it’s good to have one or two bodyweight cardio exercises that allow you to go as fast as you can. Mountain climbers, burpees, high knees, plank jacks, jumping jacks, skaters, invisible jump rope are examples of exercises that can be done rapidly to accelerate your heart rate.
Add a couple of these into the mix and they’ll make the entire workout more challenging and make your body melt its fat stores like butter on a hot stove.
Now that you know how to structure your own workouts, there is nothing stopping you from starting on bodyweight training to reach your weight loss goals. Start today and a couple of months from now; you’ll thank yourself that you started today.
