Body weight workouts can be quite challenging, if you want them to be!

There are so many different exercises, combo’s and moves you can do to work all of your major muscles groups so you can tone your entire body. If you increase the speed and add some higher impact exercises you will get a decent cardio workout as well, increasing your overall fitness.

One of the main benefits of bodyweight exercises is that you can do them anywhere, at anytime, so its easy to fit into your daily schedule.

For people that are just starting out with strength training, using your body weight is the perfect way to start – as you start building up strength then you can start to up the reps or even add some weights.

For the more experienced, you can go for a higher impact option, a more challenging option or you can add things like hand weights or kettle bells.

The more toned you get (the more muscle you have), the more energy you will burn when you aren’t exercising.

So as long as you are eating well, watching your portion sizes and pumping out some great body weight workouts each week, you will notice you will change body shape and in turn lose weight.

Some examples of Body weight exercises

You can get a great workout with doing 5-10 body weight exercise in a row. Always start with a warm up, then you can do the exercises for anything from 30 seconds to 2 minutes sets, have minimal rest between each exercise. Once you don’t feel as challenged, you can go for 2-3 rounds!

Some Exercises could include:

• Squats
• Push ups
• Planks
• Tricep dips
• Lunges
• Mountain Climbers
• Squat jumps
• Bicycles
• Tricep push ups

How to get the best results

Exercising all parts of your body is best, as you can’t spot reduce those ‘problem areas’. Working your bigger muscles groups, like legs and butt is a great idea too! You want to tone your whole body, not just certain parts.

If you want to make it more challenging, make sure you add some cardio exercises – things like skipping, star jumps, high knees, burpees (my favourite!). As you get stronger and feel you aren’t being as challenged, then its a great idea to add some hand weights or fit balls, resistance bands, park equipment etc.

The main thing to think about is to give it 100% every time you workout, push yourself out of your comfort zone.