With bodyweight training, you now don’t need any equipment. Ideally you’ll get yourself a pull up bar which you can add into your doorframe for $5-$10 (you don’t even have to drill any holes).
You might also want to get yourself some gymnastic rings for performing dips and other similar exercises.
But essentially, bodyweight training means training with only your own body. That means that:
You don’t need any equipment
You can train anywhere
You don’t have to travel
You can quickly adapt the training to match your own fitness level/time
In a moment, we’re going to look at a very simple training program called ‘SSE’. That’s ‘Super Simple and Easy’ and you’ll see that you can actually get a great workout in just ten minutes.
This makes all the difference in your training. Now, you only have to motivate yourself to do the press-ups. There’s no going out in the cold, no lifting heavy, painful iron into position. No spending money on equipment or fees. No being gawked at by other people working out.
Now you train when you like, where you like, how you like. It’s fun, it’s quick and it’s really easy. And there are more reasons to love working out with only your bodyweight too.
For example:
Low Injury Rate: When you’re training with weights in the gym, you’ll regularly be throwing around huge dumbbells and barbells and performing scary compound movements like squats.
This makes it highly likely that you might put out a knee, strain your back or pull a muscle. There’seven just the simple risk that you might drop a weight on yourself!
For these reasons, bodyweight training is much safer. Now, the only weight is yourself. There’s nothing to drop and pulling a muscle is much less likely.
Weight/Strength Ratio: Bodyweight training is something that will always adapt to meet you at your current level of performance. The stronger you get, the heavier you get. That means that the weight you’ll be pushing against will increase too and you’ll never have to buy anything new. What it also means though, is that you’ll feel light and powerful. You’ll be able to jump, run and climb with more speed and power than you’ve ever felt.
No need to jump, run and climb? Sure, it’s not really something most of us need to be able to do these days! But being able to do those things is really what’s exciting and interesting. This makes you feel powerful like a coiled spring to the point where you’ll outperform everyone in sports even and just generally be much more formidable.
Let’s face it, most people – even guys – don’t want to look like a bodybuilder. If your aim is to be huge, to lose mobility and to run out of breath climbing the stairs then great! But if you want to be lean, ripped, fast and powerful then bodyweight can get you there.
Flexibility and Proprioception:
It goes further than that too. Working out with your bodyweight can essentially give you ninja-like reflexes and skills. That’s because you’ll be using your whole body in conjunction all the time. You’ll be forced to balance, to generate explosive power and more and all those things help to make you more aware of your own body and your own shape. You’ll also improve your flexibility which is great for your overall health. Even your brain power can benefit from bodyweight exercise.
All this can eventually lead to you being able to do some incredible bodyweight moves. Once you’re further into your training, you’ll be pulling off feats like one armed pull ups, planche, handstand push ups and more. These are great party tricks and a great way to demonstrate total mastery over your own body.
Oh and because bodyweight training uses so much of your body, you’ll make yourself tireder and you’ll burn more calories too and improve your aerobic fitness. Bodyweight training is perfect for all around health.
Adaptable:
Finally, bodyweight training is great for people who are just starting out and it’s great for people who want to get into incredible shape. If you really want to build big muscles, you might be worried that bodyweight training is not for you. Read the Total Bodyweight Transformation ebook though and you’ll find that you learn this just isn’t true. You can build massive muscle if you want to, you just need to know how to push yourself with your own body alone.
At the same time though, bodyweight training can also be used to burn lots of fat fast. We learn in the book how you can use bodyweight in conjunction with tabata and HIIT in order to melt off fat and increase VO2 max.
But if you’re just a beginner and you want something mild, easy and gently – then you’re once again in the right place! Bodyweight training can mean using easy and simple moves like wall press ups, sit ups and press ups with your knees on the floor. This doesn’t have to be hard at all and it really is something that anyone can do!
Most effective workout for rapid transformations
We’ve raved about bodyweight training enough now though. Now it’s time that we actually get on with demonstrating the power of this type of exercise and helping you to start seeing results.
In this part of the report, we’re going to look at the easiest and most effective way to burn fat and build muscle – and we’re giving it to you completely for free!
The workout is called ‘SSE’. That stands for ‘Super Simple & Effective’. This is how it’s going to go:
30 seconds push ups to failure
30 seconds pull ups
30 seconds jack in the box
30 seconds rest
You then repeat that five times for a total of 10 minutes training.
See? I told you it was super simple!
But it also works. Really well.
I’ll get to that in a minute. Firstly, let’s take a look at some ways you can make it easier/harder to match your level of experience and fitness.
For starters, those who can’t do push ups can replace those with either push ups with your hands against the wall (standing up) or push ups with your knees on the floor.
Likewise, if you fail after doing 10 push ups but there are still 15 seconds on the clock, move immediately onto one of these easier variations and carry on. This is called a ‘mechanical dropset’.
Likewise, if you can’t do pull ups then you can lower the bar close to the ground and rest your feet on the floor. This way, you’ll only be lifting the upper portion of your body and this will make the movement significantly easier.
Alternatively, if you can’t lower the bar, then you can pull up a chair and use that instead by resting your feet on it. You can even put the bar entirely underneath you and use your feet and legs to help yourself through the movement somewhat. Don’t entirely take your weight on your legs but just use them to help yourself get up slightly. This is called an ‘assisted pull up’.
Finally, make sure when you’re doing your jack-in-the-boxes that you are squatting all the way down and touching the floor with legs together, before bursting up and splaying your arms and legs in a starfish shape. This is an explosive way to train your legs and is similar to a squat in that regard (but more explosive and full-body). If you find this too hard, just do tuck jumps or jumping squats.
On the other hand, if you want to make the exercise that bit harder, then you can do a whole range of things. For instance, you might opt to do one armed press ups/pull ups or you may do clapping press ups. You can also vary the exercises by doing things like dips, like one legged squats
etc.
Essentially, you can do whatever you like, as long as you are performing one compound ‘pull’ exercise, one compound ‘push’ exercise and one compound move for your legs. This way, you will be utilizing nearly the entire body and the result will be that you build a lot more strength and burn a lot more calories (it also means no part of body will be ‘left out’).
How to Use it and Why it Works
So what’s so great about this type of training? Why should everyone do it? And how do you get the most out of it?
Let’s answer that last question first. To get the most out of bodyweight training of this kind, you’re going to do it first thing in the morning before you’ve showered or eaten. However, you must give yourself ten minutes before you star as you are slightly more prone to injury when you first wake up.
By doing this ten minute workout first thing in the morning though, you’ll notice a few benefits.
For starters, training first thing in the morning means that you’ll be able to train when you have plenty of energy before you start getting brow beaten by the day. This is the point in the day when we actually have the highest motivation and will power, so if you stick on some good music you should find that you can talk yourself into doing just ten minutes.
And that’s the other thing: this is just ten minutes and it won’t leave you exhausted or in lots of pain the next day. At the same time though, it’s ten minutes of intensive training and actually this exercise is more than enough to burn a significant number of calories and to add some muscle over time.
Specifically, this will burn between 100 and 200 calories, which is enough for you to eat an extra chocolate bar and get away with it! It should also help improve your general health and fitness in all of the different ways that we saw earlier!
There’s more too! By doing this training first thing in the morning, which means it will count as ‘fasted cardio’. Fasted cardio is cardio that you perform when you haven’t eaten anything – such as when you first wake up after a night’s sleep.
At this point, your body can’t burn sugar for energy and so it’s forced to burn fat instead. Thus, training at this time in the morning is more likely to lead to enhanced fat burn and this is a technique used by many people trying to lose weight.
Additionally, training before you go in the shower means that you aren’t adding ‘shower’ onto the long list of additional things you have to do. Train at any other time of day and you can often end up showering more than once. This then means that you’ll end up spending an extra 10-20 minutes showering on top of training which is tough when we’re all so perpetually busy.
Finally, because you’re training in the morning and in your own home, that means that you can train in your boxers that you were wearing yesterday. This way, you are creating zero extra washing so that isn’t an issue either.
All this adds up to mean that with this particular workout, ten minutes really does mean ten minutes. And this is ten minutes at the time of day when you’re most likely to train. It’s quick, it’s easy and it has great benefits.
Of course this isn’t going to be enough training if you’re looking to get a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or if you’re intending on competing in the Olympics. In those cases, you might be tempted to hit the gym properly or to use one of the more intensive types of training that we discuss in the full book.
In that case, you can use the SSE workout on top of your other training. This is perfect because it now means that you’re able to train twice in a day a lot of the time and add an extra 200 calories on top of those 500 you would be burning anyway.
It also means that you’ll be increasing your anabolic response and you’ll be staying more active.
The human body wasn’t designed to spend all day sitting around and then to exert itself intensively for 1 hour. This way, you come a little closer to using your body as it was designed to be used – continuously and throughout the day. In the full book, we learn more about how you can train ‘incidentally’ throughout the day to gain more strength and more muscle.
The SSE workout in particular is light enough that it won’t lead to overtraining when combined with your regular routine.
Finally, this is the perfect antidote to the busy life that keeps getting in the way. If you find that you often have to skip gym sessions because you’re just too busy, then having done this quick routine first thing in the morning means that you’ll always have done something and that makes a huge difference.
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