The Only 4 Bodyweight Exercises You Ever Need To Build The Body You Always Wanted

No more excuses. You are all you need.

I signed up for my first-ever gym membership about 6 months ago.

Initially, I was motivated to hit the gym often and to dream about the aesthetic and strong body I could have if I just hit the gym consistently. I did just that but I seem to only increase strength till a certain point where I started to hit a plateau.

I knew what was wrong.

I wasn’t eating in a caloric surplus and therefore it was much harder for me to get stronger. The weight I was lifting was relatively the same as before and I just couldn’t progress that much any further. My motivation died down and I fell back to the thing I was always interested in.

They are bodyweight exercises.

Many people think that bodyweight exercises are basic and ineffective. However, when we look at gymnasts, military personnel, some CrossFit athletes, calisthenic athletes, and prisoners, they all rely on bodyweight exercises to build their incredible physiques.

Not only are they strong, but sometimes they could even be stronger than bodybuilders in the gym. The thing with bodyweight exercises is that they are foundational building blocks of exercising as opposed to simply basic exercises. It pretty much echoes the same principle as Bruce Lee’s famous quote:

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times

Incorporating bodyweight exercises into your fitness routine is important but not many people rely on them these days. But I believe bodyweight exercises are the key to helping us build incredible physiques just like how fitness Youtubers like Chris Heria and CalisthenicMovement or gymnasts and military soldiers have made good use of them.

So I decided to simplify my workout program and rely on these 4 foundational exercises to build muscle, burn fat, and build the body that I body that I always wanted.

Pull up

Everyone’s Pull day starts with the pull-up.

It’s an exercise that everyone has tried before in their life but most people can hardly get passed 5 pull-ups in a row. But it’s a compound exercise that works for multiple big muscle groups in your upper body.

It sounds easy to pull your bodyweight up to the bar but if you’ve never tried doing a pull-up before, you probably will have trouble doing them since there are certain muscle groups that you probably have not touched before.

The great thing about the pull-ups is a progressive form of exercise where you can always rely on incremental progressions to work your way up to a full bodyweight pull-up in a few weeks. The principle of progression is the same as the term “progressive overload” that you always hear in the gym.

But when you’re doing bodyweight exercises, the idea of progressive overload is slightly different.

Since you don’t have incremental weights to rely on to slowly inch your way upwards each time, you’ll need to make adjustments to your body to ensure that you continue to progress towards a full bodyweight pull-up.

Confused? Here’s an example.

You might start off with:

Dead hang for 10 sec. But once your hands get comfortable with the grip, you can move on to the next progression.
Doing negative pull-ups. You’ll slowly realize that you can handle part of your body weight at certain parts of the motion. The key idea here is to be in control of your body weight as it descends. Once you’re able to do around 8–12 banded pull-ups, it’s best to move on to the next progression.
Banded pull-ups. Using bands to do your pull-ups involves a similar principle compared to when you’re in the gym. Since there are different types of bands with different loads it reduces, starting off with the heaviest band and progressing towards a lighter band. If you don’t have bands, it’d be good to continue doing negative pull-ups.
Normal pull-ups. The bridge from banded pull-ups to normal pull-ups would be the most difficult. But once you’re able to do around 8–12 banded pull-ups, I’m confident you can do at least 1 normal pull-up. But if you want to progress further, the key idea of controlling your body weight up and back down remains the same, that’s something that most people disregard at that stage.
Weighted pull-ups. After being able to do 8–12 pull-ups, it’s time to put on some weights to do your pull-ups. And the progression continues.

Pull-ups are foundational exercises for future more advanced movements such as muscle ups and front levers. If you can do them well, you’ll be able to better ease into those movements as well.

The Most Underrated Exercise

Push-ups are one of the most underrated exercises.

It’s something that most people think they are doing well but they actually aren’t. The idea of a push-up sounds simple, it’s just lowering yourself to the ground and back up. But it’s this very idea that many people fail to make use of the right muscles to bring them from point A to B and back to point A.

The problem is most people rush their reps rather than focus on getting a quality push-up that builds their chest and their triceps.

To avoid this rush, approaching the push-ups with the thought have having a mind-muscle connection with your chest is important. It’s definitely difficult to experience that feeling at the start, but the more you continue to do it, the easier that feeling comes to you. You should be able to feel your whole chest contracting as you lower your body and loosen as you push your body back up.

So just like the pull-ups, the idea of progressive overloading can also be applied to the push-ups. But the push-ups can be done literally anywhere, you don’t need any form of equipment, all you need is a flat ground to them.

To start with the push up:

Horizontal pushing to vertical pushing. The most basic form of a push-up is to push horizontally. Since the push-up is essentially a pushing motion, you should be able to push yourself off the wall, then progress towards the bench, and lastly the ground with your knees on the floor.
Negative knee push-ups. Just like the pull-ups, relying on the negative eccentric portion of the exercise is a great way to build foundational strength for your exercise. Once you’re able to do around 8–12 of these will good form and strong mind-muscle connection, you should be able to progress on to the next stage.
Knee push-ups. After a couple of sessions, you should feel comfortable with the bodyweight with your knees on the ground and you should progress towards doing 8–12 proper knee push-ups.
Negative push-ups. And once that gets easy, it’s time to increase the load on your arms by straightening your legs and pushing your entire body off the ground. It might feel like a big jump from the previous exercise but you can also shorten your body by bending your knees slightly and doing the push-ups too.
Full push-ups. Finally, you can progress towards the full push-ups whereby you’re pushing your whole body weight off the ground.
Weighted form of push-ups. As you get stronger, you’ll likely progress towards different variations of the normal push-ups. You might consider doing:

Weighted-push ups by putting weights on your back
Decline push-ups that target a different part of your chest
One-arm push-ups with variations like the typewriter push-ups

Soon you might be able to do the L-sit, handstand, or even handstand push-ups.

Even though it sounds like a simple exercise, it’s one of the most versatile yet effective exercises that anyone can use literally anywhere to build a strong upper body.

The Most Hated Exercise (By Men)

Most guys despise leg days.

We often think that having a strong upper body is the key to getting women. But without a strong lower body, your foundation is effectively pretty weak. Even if you have a strong upper body, your body might be feeling too great when injuries start to surface.

But squats should definitely be part of anyone’s workout routine. Even if you can only rely on your body weight, there are ways to maneuver your body such that you can perform leg focus exercises that will leave feeling exhausted. A couple of exercises include the:

If you realize, these exercises that I just mentioned don’t just involve having a strong upper body. You’ll need good mobility and abdominal strength as well otherwise you’ll have trouble doing those movements.

Apart from these strength-based exercises, it’s often best to work on other variations that involve single-leg workouts, isometric holds, and even plyometrics to improve performance as an athlete.

The Exercise That Will Leave You Crying

Building a strong body should also come with a strong cardiovascular system.

Most people think that they have to train at their top-end speed for a really long time before they can start to see progress. But in fact, that’s the opposite of new studies these days. Instead, your cardiovascular training should consist of:

80% of slow zone 2 training at 70–80% of your max heart rate
20% of high-intensity zone 5 training close to your max heart rate

But what most people do is train too hard at zones 4 and 5 such that they do not have much time for recovery and they end up feeling more exhausted than they should.

The idea of cardiovascular training is to build up a strong aerobic base and that only comes when you’re doing your zone 2 training. Once you’ve done that for a couple of months and you start to get stronger, introduce some zone 5 speed training to increase your VO2 max so that you can also run faster for a longer period.

The thing is you don’t always have to rely on running anyway. You can opt for other forms of cardiovascular training such as trucking, cycling, swimming, etc.

In a nutshell

Building the body you always wanted shouldn’t be difficult or complicated.

If it is, more people would have given up much earlier. Instead, you just need to make a consistent effort to show up 3–4 times a week and focus on those foundational movements and progress towards a tougher progression. Over time, your body will get stronger and you’ll start seeing the results you always wanted.

I’m finding myself coming to weighted calisthenics type of workouts and running again and I don’t think I’ll be hitting the gym as often. It’s the way of the hybrid athlete.

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