Despite what the salesperson at your local health club will tell you, it is possible to get fit without ever setting foot in a gym.  You can build muscle, increase endurance, and develop cardiovascular health with at home workouts.

The two primary factors that will determine the success of any at home workout program, are commitment and exercise selection.  Establishing a regular workout routine means being disciplined enough to schedule time at least three times a week to devote to your fitness goals.  This can be challenging for many people as it is sometimes difficult to get away from household distractions.  The secret is to dedicate a time and a location that you can use and not be interrupted.

Exercise selection is also very important.  You must determine your goals.  Are you looking to build muscle?  Lose weight?  Increase endurance?  Focus on any of these will dictate the exercises and workout routines that are right for you.

There are hundreds of effective body weight exercises that you can incorporate into your workouts.  These exercises focus on building real world strength, muscular endurance, and cardio capacity.  The key to an effective body weight workout is to develop routines that hit all the major muscle groups of the body in a variety of resistance driven angles.

Some basic exercises to get you started include:

Leg Squats (legs)

From a standing position, with your legs shoulder width apart, squat down until your legs form a 90 degree angle.  Do not squat any deeper as this may put too much pressure on your knees.

As you lower yourself, keep your back slightly arched, your head up and facing forward, and your glutes (your rear end) sticking out as if you were lowering yourself into a chair.  Once you are lowered to a 90 degree angle, flex your quads (thighs), hamstrings, and glutes to raise yourself.  Repeat.

Push-ups (chest, shoulders, triceps)

The classic exercise from gym class.  The push-up is very effective at working the chest, shoulders, and triceps.  Place your hands on the floor at shoulder width.  Keep your toes on the floor and your feet together.  Slowly lower yourself to the ground until your nose touches the ground.  If dipping this low is too difficult, then stop at whatever point you can manage.  Repeat.

There are multiple variations of the push-up including the close grip push-up that focuses on the triceps.  In this exercise, you keep your hands 6-9 inches apart when doing the push-up.

Leg Raises (abdominals)

In addition to crunches, leg raises are very effective at working the core abdominal muscles.  Lying flat on your back and keeping your hands by your sides and your legs together, slowly raise your legs off the ground until they are at about a 45 degree angle.  You will feel your abs tightening throughout the motion.  Flex your abs as you slowly lower your legs to the floor.  Repeat.

You can get fit using at home workouts.  Do you want to build muscle? Do you want real world strength? Do you want an at home workout that travels with you wherever you go? Check out this highly recommended at home workout program.

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Gyms can be expensive.  And inconvenient.  How many times have you skipped a workout just because you couldn’t find the time to pull a bag together and drive to your local health club?  And if you travel?  If your workout routine depends on having access to a gym, then many times you find yourself in locations where you miss workouts due to not having access to a facility.  Gym workouts are great, but developing an at home workout will give you an alternative when your schedule or location doesn’t allow you to get into a health club facility.

An effective at home workout is portable.  You can do it in the comfort of your living room, on a beach, or even in the limited space of a hotel room.  The key is to develop a routine that utilizes body weight exercise to work the major muscles of the body.  Gym rats will tell you that it takes working with free weights and machines to develop muscles and endurance.  They will say that without a weight-based resistance training, that you really can’t exert enough force to encourage muscle growth.  This is not true.

Your body weight is actually the best form of resistance.  There are programs that focus on using your body to work the core muscles of the body.  Exercises such as hand stand pushups (standing on your hands with your feet against a wall),  simple pushups, and crunches all rely on body weight and work specific core muscle groups.  And unlike exercises utilizing weights or especially machines, these body weight exercises force you work multiple muscle groups together in a coordinated fashion.

This develops “real world” strength and endurance.  What is “real world” strength?  An effective at home workout develops strength using real world movements that require not only strength, but also balance, flexibility, and agility.  Doing sets of bicep curls at the gym may give you nice set of guns, but what real world movements do they help?  Having great biceps isn’t going to make it easier to lift a heavy box, move a sofa, or swing a golf club.

Gym exercises tend to focus on movements that isolate specific muscles.  This is great for body builders and athletes in particular sports.  But for the rest of us, a good at home work out can build overall core, practical strength, body coordination, and flexibility.  It’s this kind of fitness that will help your golf game, improve your endurance on the court, and make it easier to lift a couch up a flight of stairs.

An effective at home workout can be done anywhere.  An effective at home workout will not depend on machines, dumbells, or big exercise balls (although having these can certainly enhance a body weight workout).  An effective at home workout will work all the core muscles of the body and will help you develop real world strength, flexibility, and coordination.

Do you want to get fit?  Do you want real world strength?  Do you want a workout that travels with you wherever you go?  Check out this highly recommended at home workout program.

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In a previous life, I used to travel quite a bit.  Living out of hotels 3-4 days a week became the norm for me.  The first thing I typically did was scout out a gym or health club somewhere in the vicinity of where I was staying just so I could maintain my workout schedule.  Over time I got tired of paying exorbitant club guest fees for what was usually a facility full of inferior equipment.  That’s when I started looking into the benefits of body weight exercise, or for me, exercise-with-no-gym-required.   One of the best sources of information came from the RMAXInternational site where I learned about the Circular Strength Training (CST) approach.

There are tremendous advantages to adopting a workout that incorporates a body weight exercise regimen.  Gym exercises with weights and machines typically focus on working isolated muscles.  This is a cosmetic approach and doesn’t do much to increase “real world” strength or endurance.

What is “real world” strength?  It is simply the level of effort you can expend to perform real tasks such as throwing a ball, rowing a boat, or moving heavy furniture.  Notice the similarity of these activities?  They all involve movements that require the strength and coordination of multiple major muscle groups at once.  This is unlike, say, a bicep curl which, while building a nice little muscle, doesn’t really help develop real, practical strength.

I have been a proponent of utilizing body weight exercises for the last three years and it has made an amazing impact in my overall strength, agility, and endurance.  Now, Ryan Murdock of the RMAX International team, along with Adam Steer, has put together the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution program, a comprehensive fitness plan that focuses on all natural, no-gym-required workouts.

The program consists of a 182 page e-book along with just over an hour of video providing detailed technique tips and guidance.  The Bodyweight Exercise Revolution program focuses on the CST approach and utilizes a 4×7 plan (seven cycles of four days each) to provide a 28 day regimen that will maximize your workout goals.   There are multiple 4×7 regimens covered in the materials.  Many of these focus on specific goals such as fat loss, flexibility, agility, and strength.  And others that concentrate on general real world athleticism.

The variety in the regimens is pretty impressive.  But the real key to the program is in the catalog of exercises that are detailed in the material.  Clear cut instructions are provided and as you progress, more complex movements are introduced.  Strength, agility, and endurance are developed, not through performing monotonous sets and repetitions, but by tackling more sophisticated movements that really tax the core muscles of the body.

The structure of the regimens is also key.  Extensive work has gone into designing the regimens to maximize the benefits of high intensity intervals.  As you progress through the program, you can actually notice substantial gains over the 28 day cycle, with each cycle building on top of the previous one.

The science that forms the foundation of the program represents results from some of the more recent cutting edge developments in the fitness industry.  It is clear that Ryan and Adam are staying on top of the latest fitness findings both in physiology and nutrition.

And the best thing about the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution?  You only need your body, some space, and the motivation to reach a whole new level of core strength, agility, and endurance.  Become a part of the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution.

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Welcome to Body Weight Exercise

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