This Bodyweight Exercise Routine Will Leave You Breathless!
I’ve recently been playing around with a bodyweight exercise routine that I’m starting to really love (in an evil way). As you know I’m a huge fan of bodyweight training, and highly recommend it for anybody and everybody looking to get in awesome shape and work muscles they’ve never worked before.
This girl's doing the bodyweight training routine, so should you!
For me this routine is something I put at the end of my workout, but for a lot of people you can simply do this bodyweight exercise routine I put together and have it be your entire workout. Or you might think of doing this one in place of jogging if jogging is boring to you like it is to me.
Here’s why I love it so much…
- It works literally every single muscle in your body
- It improves your “work capacity” (e.g. being able to keep your strength while you’re already exhausted)
- It improves explosiveness
- For some people might improve your strength
- It helps burn fat like crazy
- You can do it in probably a 10×10 area space, maybe even smaller.
- It’s ridiculously easy and be done with VERY cheap equipment or even no equipment as I’ll explain
It only takes about 10 minutes or so – so you have NO excuses not to do it!
Ok so here’s the bodyweight exercise routine I’m talking about…
What you’re going to do is very similar to Tabata Intervals, but instead of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off you’ll do the following:
Jumprope 100 skips as fast as humanely possible (I do this in roughly 30-40 seconds, never timed myself though so don’t quote me on that).
30 seconds rest.
Burpees for 30 seconds straight.
30 seconds rest.
That’s it!
Just do that for 5 sets each (e.g. 5 “circuits”) and you’ll be wiped. Like I said I add this to the end of your workout if you’re already in great shape, and if not just try it on it’s own either on your non-strength training day or for your high rep day.
And if you don’t have a jumprope or don’t have room to jump rope…simply hold something about 1/2 pound and PRETEND you’re skipping rope. It might not help with coordination but you’ll sure feel it in your forearms and shoulders!
Try this bodyweight exercise routine out and let me know how it works for you. I’d love to know!
What Happens When You Stop Being “Healthy”
It’s one of my philosophies in fitness that every once in awhile, your body simply needs a break.
This is especially important if you’re doing workouts that are very intense and demanding on your body, such as High Intensity Interval Training or things like Tabata Intervals.
You might be getting enough recovery after exercising, but is that really enough?
My answer is – no!
Every 3 months, I take a full week off of exercising.
Now you may have heard that only a week from exercising can reduce your strength levels by 30%. Well in my experience, that’s a giant crock of bull. I’ve NEVER experienced any strength loss whatsoever in a week’s time, and many times I actually will see a nice boost in strength after good recovery week.
(Just take make an excuse that you need a recovery week off if you’re simply being lazy. Trust me, you can tell when you need a week off, so don’t overdo it!)
So Let Me Explain My Own Recovery Week
I like to take a week off from exercising once every 3 months. At the end of 3 months I can literally feel my mind starting to become less motivated to workout, but once that recovery week is up – I’m roaring and ready to go.
I take the full week off from exercising AND from fasting because as you know, fasting while not doing resistance training is a great setup for muscle loss and I’d rather not lose all my hard-earned muscle 
I still try to stay active and not sit on my butt all day, plus stretch more than usual…so don’t let this be an excuse to simply be lazy everyday for a week!
But I think the biggest thing I noticed and what is actually one of the biggest benefits you get to see is that you get to remember what it’s like when you’re not exercising and fasting…
Without Exercising And Fasting, I Feel Gross!
Between exercising and fasting, I’m doing my body a lot of good. I’m 100% full of energy all day long and very, very rarely ever need to take naps – even if I get just a few hours of sleep.
But what happens when you take a week off?
It sucks!
This is what I feel like when I'm not exercising and fasting!
I’m on Day 5 of my week off, and I have to admit, I feel like crap. I would safely say that my energy levels are EASILY 30-50% lower than usual. I have my afternoon crashes again where I need to take a nap around 3-4, and I seem to need more sleep than usual.
And even though it’s kind of uncomfortable feeling like this for 3-4 days (it takes a few days before your body starts to feel “energy-less” again) it’s great for self-monitoring because I get to see what it would feel like if I wasn’t healthy.
It also makes me feel a little more sympathetic to those people who aren’t actively trying to stay healthy – even though it’s their fault anyway. I can understand why they’re tired and lazy all the time, because I know I want to be!
Overall, It’s All Good
In the end, taking an exercising recovery week is a great thing for your body. Even though you might feel a little down, your body gets to recoup and when you start back up again, you’ll be ready to take on the world. I gotta say, I can’t wait to work out again. I’m incredibly excited for it and I can pretty much guarantee you now that I’ll break my previous lifts.
This month I’ll be training like a bodybuilder and splitting my workouts up. I hate working out like that (I like to old-school kind of stuff with sandbags, tire flipping and stuff like that), but it’s time for a change for me.
Just remember, don’t overdo it. If you’re training like a madman like I do – I suggest taking a week off every 3 months or so to let your mind and muscles calm down a bit. If you’re just putzing along on a treadmill and doing easy workouts, you probably don’t even need a break.
Just make sure that after the week is over you get RIGHT BACK into working out because for the person who doesn’t geniunely enjoy working out – sometimes it’s hard to get back into it.
So what are you experiences with this? Do you feel the same as I do, or don’t you agree at all?
Let me know!
UPDATE: I just got done working out for the first time in a week about 10 minutes ago. I just want to prove my point of this post.
During this week off, I stopped fasting, exercising AND taking creatine. So according to what most people say, I pretty much should have lost a bunch of strength.
But today I just beat every single one of my records, plus I ended up working out for an extra 15 minutes without even realizing it (I was trying out a new circuit that would whoop pretty much anybody’s butt – and added it to the end of my workout).
So what does that show?
It shows that my body NEEDED that week of rest! I came back roaring and ready to go, and felt stronger and had more endurance than ever. I’m interested to see what would have happened if I had creatine in my system. I’ll try that next time.
Are You Training For Purpose?
When it comes to exercising, most people are doing it completely @$$ backwards.
They don’t know what they’re training for, they pick exercises that have absolutely no meaning to them in regards to what they want, and they do them carelessly without any thought as to why they’re actually doing them.
Don’t let this happen to you!
I want you to do something the second you’re done reading this post. Actually you know what, just do it right now after I tell you what it is – it’s THAT important.
Here’s what I want you to do.
Get out a piece of paper, a few notecards or something like that…and I want you to write down your top 3 reasons why you’re training.
Then, narrow that down to your absolute top reason you’re trying to lose weight, gain more muscle, get stronger, or whatever other reason you’re getting in better shape for.
For example, here are mine.
1) Be “semi-ripped” so I can look good for myself and feel muscular, but not be too muscular because I don’t like how it looks when you can see every single muscle in my body. I don’t care about looking perfect, I just want to look “great”. I’m not the kind of person who will purposely not drink water before going to the beach because it would supposedly make them look more ripped (I actually heard of a few people doing that in a bodybuilding forum – and started questioning my own sanity just for being involved with that forum – obviously I’m not anymore).
A little sub-category of this would be to look great for my fiancée, because, well, it’s hard to keep up to how gorgeous she is
2) Be able to keep a high level of strength even if my body is telling me no. Although this wouldn’t be a goal for the majority of people, I love the feeling of pushing myself to my limits and watching myself conquer barriers I didn’t think I could conquer.
3) Increase my strength in basic movements – Right now I’m also into doing some basic power lifting movements. I’m naturally a very weak person who puts on fat relatively easily, so this is a challenge for me. I wish I had better genes, but I got dealt a pretty lousy hand with genes in life so instead of complaining about it and giving up like most people, I simply push myself a little harder to get what I want. It’s the same for increasing my strength. And it seems to be working pretty nicely – the last time I deadlifted I deadlifted 310 pounds at 155 pounds, so that’s not too bad for a person who doesn’t deadlift very often.
Ok so there are my top 3 goals that I’m working on right now, so the next step is to look at my current workout program and figure out whether or not that program is going to help me increase all 3 of these goals.
So what I’m doing right now is doing high intensity interval training with some powerlifting movements such as a squat and press, shrugs, hang and cleans, and a few others. I’m doing all of these very intensely and not allowing myself to rest as much as I should between sets.
So is that helping all 3 of my goals?
#1 – It’s helping me keep the body I want because of it’s high intensity, along with my nutrition program I’m following (which is relatively the same all the time).
#2 – It’s helping me utilize a high level of strength even if I’m tired because the way I’m exercising now allows me to “train” my muscles to exert huge amounts of force even if I don’t have much wind left in me. In other words, I’m training my anaerobic capacity.
#3 – I’m also increasing my strength because each time I workout I aim to either increase an extra rep, do the workout in less time, and/or add more pounds to my lifts.
Ok so I’m easily hitting all 3 of my goals right now, but what if you’re hitting only 1 or 2 out of your 3 main goals, what do you do?
Well, you can either change your workout program so that it allows you to hit all 3 goals, or you figure out what your #1 goal is and work towards that. I recommend going for your #1 goal because it’s easier to focus on 1 goal at a time instead of 3.
Ok so if you’re still reading and haven’t written out your top 3 goals that you want to achieve with your exercise/nutrition plan…I want you to do that RIGHT NOW. Seriously, I don’t care if you’re at work on your lunch break, or even if you’re at work and should be doing work (although don’t get in trouble!).
Write them out right now and if necessary, change your workout program to fit your top goal – or all 3 if possible.
Then come back here and let me know how it works for you!
Double Tabata Intervals Are Killer!
In a recent post about Tabata Intervals, I told you how you could get an absolutely killer workout in as little as 4 minutes.
In fact, I had so much energy that I did a DOUBLE session!
Well, almost.
Let me explain.
Instead of doing 20 seconds of 100% intensity exercising followed by 10 seconds of rest for a total of 8 rounds, I decided to do 15 seconds of 100% intensity exercising followed by 10 seconds of rest.
So I won’t brag, really what I did was add about an extra 66% to a traditional tabata interval workout.
(A traditional one consists of a total of 4 minutes, mine was a total of 6 minutes).
But still, when you’re pushing yourself as hard as you possibly can, that 6 minutes feels like an eternity!
So what I did was I mixed up burpees (real burpees, not hip thrusters), pullups, and mountain climbers.
And it was an AWESOME workout!
Now I realize this was an advanced workout and that the majority of people can’t do it, but i do recommend doing Tabata Intervals. They’re a GREAT way to get an incredibly awesome workout in – and just spending a few minutes doing them.
Even if you just do them on days where you really don’t want to workout – which hopefully is only once in awhile – then do that! Just drop down and get them done.
Because come on, I mean if you can’t spend 4 minutes per day just a few times per week to workout, I think you have to get your priorities straight.
Maybe sometimes you just can’t get yourself to workout and every once in awhile that’s fine, just don’t make excuses. Admit to yourself that it’s your bad and that you’ll make up for it tomorrow if needed.
Either way, if you’re advanced I dare you to try out this double-tabata workout. If not, just try a regular 8 round session and I guarantee you’ll be wishing it was over after the 2nd or 3rd round!
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Recent Comments:
- Johnine Bailey: You could mix it with water to make it less caloric. Or possibly substitute a cherry powder or herbal instead. There’s a Cherry Blossom herbal that is available, I’m not sure it would do the same, but maybe it would help.
- Darlene Siddons: great post and great 10 ways to attack those last few pounds….loosing weight is about attitude and feelings, when they are aligned right it is really easy…i use Vision Map Videos to keep my goal of correct body weight in a positive realm… darlene http://visionmapvideo.blogspot .com/
- Megan: great story, and so true! And i laughed a few times during this. keep up the good work!
- What Happens When You Stop Being “Healthy”: important if you’re doing workouts that are very intense and demanding on your body, such as High Intensity Interval Training or things like Tabata
- Weight Loss Excercise: You can also check out his post on weight loss goals here – http://hasslefreefatloss.com/b log/weight-loss-goals-getting- crazy/
- Johnine Bailey: You could mix it with water to make it less caloric. Or possibly substitute a cherry powder or herbal instead. There’s a Cherry Blossom herbal that is available, I’m not sure it would do the same, but maybe it would help.
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