Are you trying to find the bodyweight workout that best suits your needs? There are literally thousands of bodyweight exercise choices available. In fact, if you went on YouTube you could find video after video with bodyweight exercises and different variations of each exercise.
This article is not about which exercise is the best, because each has its own pros and cons. This article is about doing the exercises that you personally need to do. No two bodies have the same needs, and your strengths and weaknesses will be different from other people. So, knowing how to reduce your weaknesses and increase your strengths is extremely important.
Specific training
Pushups are a fantastic bodyweight exercise and you may be able to do a hundred without breaking a sweat. Yet, doing tons of these will not necessarily translate to being able to do more pull-ups. You may even find that you struggle to do more than 5 pull-ups. That’s the catch.
To get better at a specific bodyweight exercise, you should do more of that exercise. Want to do more pull-ups? Then you’ll need to do more pull-ups as part of your training. You may use ankle weights or a weight belt to create more resistance during the movement. This will allow you to do more pull-ups when you don’t have any weights on you.
Build up your weak areas
When it comes to fitness, there’s an unfortunate truth. You lose what you don’t use. One movement that many people find difficult to do when they’re in their late thirties and forties is the box jump. Their knees could feel weak or the act of jumping may seem unnatural. It may seem odd because they could do it so much more easily when they were younger.
A common mistake they make is believing that they’re not as agile now because age has caught up with them.
In reality, it’s a sedentary lifestyle that has limited their range of motion and explosive strength. With a few weeks of plyometric training, they’ll discover that they’re more than capable of jumping and they’ve regained their ability despite aging. You can’t do a high box jump by practicing squats. You have to keep practicing the jump. The squats may strengthen your quads to get you some extra lift, but the only way to jump higher is by jumping more during training. This ties in with the previous point on specific training.
The main thing here is that you must know which areas you’re weak in and pay special attention to your weaknesses. This will help you to improve.
Core training
Core training should be done daily for about 6 minutes a day. You don’t need to dedicate an entire workout for your core. A short session daily is more beneficial. Your core is crucial for keeping your body upright, stable, and healthy. A strong core will improve your physical performance in any type of training. Do planks, mountain climbers, hanging knee raises, butterfly sit-ups, etc. to strengthen your core muscles.
In conclusion, the best bodyweight exercises you should be doing are the ones that help you to improve, get stronger and fitter. Ignore the flashy YouTube and Instagram videos where you see guys doing muscle-ups and front levers.
Those look great and are wonderful exercises, but they’re advanced movements and may not be right for you yet.
Focus on the fundamentals and getting as strong as you can with the basic bodyweight exercises before you progress to the advanced ones. You prepare for tomorrow’s workout by improving today’s strength.