20 Bodyweight Exercises and Workouts for People Without Gyms

BODYWEIGHT WORKOUTS ARE good for more than just our most desperate times.

When exercisers can’t get to their gyms and don’t have equipment at home, the common refrain is to find some bodyweight workout as a bare-minimum substitute. But gear-free training isn’t only worth your while when you lack for facility access. For many, minimalist training sessions are far from a last resort. Smart bodyweight workouts build strength, athleticism, and yes, even muscle, using nothing but oneself (and the tools around them like bars for pullups) as a gym.

Bodyweight exercises have another benefit, too: They teach you to manage your weight in various ways, and sometimes, that’s more important (and useful) than moving the heaviest barbell in the gym. There are plenty of guys out there that can bench twice their bodyweight but can’t do, say, an archer pushup.

Whether you choose to exercise without gear out of necessity or convenience, bodyweight exercises can be effective and engaging, offering a progressive challenges so long as you’re willing to get creative and experiment with different movements. Here’s just a handful of our favorite moves that will challenge beginners and veterans alike.

Lunges

This bodyweight staple can be a building block for your gear-free workouts. Unlike air squats, you’ll work unilaterally when you lunge—which can help to develop balance and stability as you ramp up the work.

How to Do It:

• Start with your feet shoulder-width apart. Squeeze your shoulder blades, keeping your gaze neutral at a point straight ahead of you.
• Step forward and slightly lateral with one leg, landing with your heel first. Work to avoid slamming your knee into the ground. Keep your chest in an upright position, bending your knees to form right angles with both of your legs. Turn on your forward glute muscle to help protect your knees.
• Drive through your front leg to step back into the starting position. Keep your torso in a solid upright position by squeezing your core to stay balanced.

Sets and Reps: Perform 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps per leg, or work for time with 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off for 5 minutes.

Pushup

Fundamentals! The classic pushup is a bodyweight exercise that you simply have to master, a foundational move. Know this about it too: You can level it up into much more once you learn it (and you’ll see that on this list too).

How to Do It:

• Start in a high plank position, with your palms flat on the floor, stacked directly below your shoulders.
• Squeeze your shoulders, glutes, and core. Your spine should form a straight line.
• Bend your elbows to descend to the floor, stopping with your chest about an inch above the ground. Your elbows should be at a 45 degree angle relative to the torso.
• Press off the floor, raising up to the top position with your elbows fully extended.

Sets and Reps: Aim for 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps.

Close-Grip Pushup

Once you have the basic pushup down, you can venture into more targeted territory. The close-grip pushup attacks your triceps with fury.

How to Do It:

• Start in a high plank position as you would for a standard pushup. Squeeze your shoulder blades, abs, and glutes to create tension, and keep your gaze on the floor.
• Shift your hands closer together, just narrower than shoulder-width. Turn the pits of your elbows forward to activate your lats.
• Lower your chest to the ground, keeping your elbows from flaring out from your torso.
• Press up off the floor and totally extend your arms at the top of the rep.

Sets and Reps: Aim for 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps.

Inverted Bodyweight Row

Sure, you need some gear (a bar, or even a table will work) to pull this off, but then it’s all about managing your bodyweight, which is inherent to all bodyweight moves. This is also a back-builder, a critical type of movement you want to load up on in your training for physique balance and shoulder health.

How to Do It:

• Start with a bar placed in a rack or Smith machine, lying on your back underneath. Adjust the bar to a height just above your reach with your arms extended.
• Reach up and grab the bar with an overhand grip, with your hands just wider than shoulder-width apart. Put your feet together, forming a straight line from your feet to your shoulders. Pull yourself up off the floor, squeezing your shoulder blades, abs, and glutes to create full body tension.
• Pull yourself up, imagining that you’re pulling the bar down to your chest. Pause for a count at the top of the movement.
• Slowly lower yourself back down.

Sets and Reps: Aim for 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps.

Burpee

The king of all bodyweight cardio exercises can leave you in a pile of mush after less than a minute of reps. But note this: The move is more advanced than some trainers make it. You should know how to squat, do pushups, and own a plank before you venture into burpee territory.

How to Do It:

• Start standing with your feet shoulder-width apart.
• Squat down, placing your hands flat on the floor inside your feet.
• Leap your feet back into a pushup position, squeezing your shoulder blades, abs, and glutes. Your feet should be slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
• Bend at the elbows to lower your chest down to the floor. Control this movement rather than throwing yourself straight down.
• Press back up into the pushup.
• Leap your feet forward back to the initial squatting position.
• Explode straight up into the air powerfully, extending through the ankle, knee, and hip.
• Land back on the floor under control.

Sets and Reps: Tack it to the end of a workout for a quick cardio hit. Aim for 2 to 4 rounds of 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off.

Jump Squat

Build your power and stamina with this compound movement.

How to Do It:

• Stand with your feet hip width apart. Sink your hips down and back until your thighs are parallel to the floor.
• Keep your torso upright. Push powerfully through the balls of your feet to explode up.
• Bend your knees upon landing to absorb impact.

Sets and Reps: Add into a circuit and work for 30 seconds, and rest for 30.

Post Pushup

Bodyweight exercises don’t get any more challenging than this move from fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S, which is essentially a one-arm pushup from a slightly more stable position.

How to Do It:

• Setup in a pushup position alongside your anchor point.
• Grab the post with your palm turned forward and your hand just lower than your shoulders. Push into the post to help support yourself.
• Pushup regularly on through your other arm, tucking your elbow down and back at a 45 degree angle.

Sets and Reps: Aim for 3 sets of 6 to 10 reps on each side.

Rocker Bodyweight Skullcrusher

The rare bodyweight exercise that places your triceps on stretch for a brief moment. Don’t expect to do oodles of reps here, but expect your triceps to be on fire nevertheless. Just 6-8 reps will, um, rock your arms.

How to Do It:

• Start in plank position, elbows directly below your shoulders, core and glutes tight.
• Shift your entire torso forward, bringing shoulders in front of elbows and lowering your torso to the ground as far as you can while keeping your forearms on the ground.
• Keeping your elbows and core tight, straighten your arms, pressing your torso upwards.
• Return to the plank position. That’s 1 rep.

Sets and Reps: Aim for 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps.

The Triple-Position-Switch Pushup Countup

Hit every part of your chest (and your triceps and shoulders too) with this series that also challenges you to mix explosive contractions with iso-holds too.

How to Do It:

• Start in close-grip pushup position, wrists just inside your shoulders. Lower into a pushup and do one rep.
• As you come out of that rep, jump your hands into the air and land them in standard pushup position. Do 1 rep.
• As you complete that rep, jump your hands slightly wider and turn your fingers outwards. Land in position for an archer pushup and do an archer pushup.
• Jump your hands back in for a standard pushup, then to close-grip pushup position again. Repeat the entire pattern, this time doing 2 archer reps.
• Add an archer rep every round.

Sets and Reps: Aim to do 2 sets per side.

Hollow Hold

Master the hollow hold, because it’s the basis for a host of other ab moves. And yes, it’s more functional and challenging than a plank—which is precisely why you don’t see people randomly setting Guiness Records for hollow holds.

How to Do It:

• Start lying down on your back. Drive your lower back into the floor by flexing your abs, eliminating any space between yourself and the floor.
• Lift your feet about two inches off the floor. Continue squeezing your abs to drive your lower back into the ground.
• Lift your shoulder blades off the floor and extend your arms back behind you. Contract your abs to hold your rib cage in.
• Hold this position, continuing to squeeze your abs and glutes.

Sets and Reps: Aim for 3 to 4 sets of 45 second to minute long holds.

Mountain Climber

The classic mountain climber will attack your abs, and it’ll do more than that, too, also training your running stride. The key: Doing it in disciplined fashion.

How to Do It:

• Squeeze your shoulders, core, and glutes to create full-body tension. Look down at the floor, keeping your head in a neutral position.
• Drive one knee up high to your chest, as if you were running. Return your leg to a straight position. Repeat with the other leg.
• Continue alternating reps, working to keep your torso in position with your shoulders higher than your hips. Brace your core to stay level.

Sets and Reps: Set a timer for 6 minutes. Work for 20 seconds, and rest for 10.

Bird Dog

This underrated core exercise flips the script on anyone who thinks that an ab session starts when they flop onto their back on a yoga mat.

How to Do It:

• Start on all fours. Your wrists should be stacked directly beneath your shoulders, and your knees under your hips.
• Look straight down at the ground to maintain a neutral spine.
• Squeeze your shoulder blades together to create tension, then squeeze your abs to set your ribs. Your spine should be straight, not rounded.
• Extend one arm straight out, keeping it in line with your torso. At the same time, squeeze your glutes to raise the opposite leg. Pause for a count at the top, maintaining tension to keep your shoulders or hips from dropping. Lower your limbs down under control.
• Repeat the movement with the opposite arm and leg.

Sets and Reps: Aim for 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps.

Dragon Flag Elevator Flutter Challenge

The dragon flag is one of the best (and most vicious) all-around ab moves out there. Here, you’ll have to manage that position while adding in flutter kick reps to build a well-rounded core.

How to Do It:

• Lay back on a bench.
• Reach behind your head to hold the bench to brace yourself. Squeeze your core to lift your legs, butt, and lower back off the surface. Your body should form a straight line down to your shoulders.
• Perform 3 flutter kick reps.
• Squeeze your core and shift your leg position upward by a few degrees. Come to a stable position you can hold, then perform 3 more flutter kick reps.
• Lower back down to the original dragon flag position, then repeat the series.

Sets and Reps: Aim for 3 sets.

Situp Roll Burpee

This burpee variation combines a heart-rate inducing hit-the-ground-and-jump with a situp for abdominal activation.

How to Do It:

• Start standing with your feet shoulder-width apart.
• Squat down, placing your hands flat on the floor inside your feet.
• Leap your feet back into a pushup position, squeezing your shoulder blades, abs, and glutes. Your feet should be slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
• Bend at the elbows to lower your chest down to the floor. Control this movement rather than throwing yourself straight down.
• Roll to your back, and sit up so that your chest meets your knees. Do the same thing in reverse, and press back up into the pushup.
• Leap your feet forward back to the initial squatting position.
• Explode straight up into the air powerfully, extending through the ankle, knee, and hip.
• Land back on the floor under control.

Sets and Reps: Set a timer for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. Work for 30 seconds, and rest for 30.

Don’t want to program your own workout? No worries—we got you. Whether you’re looking for a cardio hit, an upper body workout, or a quad burn, these workouts will give you a quality sweat in under 20 minutes.

The 60-Point Burpee Challenge

Blend burpees and pushups in this super-quick burner that has you racing the clock, mostly so you won’t have to do quite as many pushups.

Bodyweight Quad Crusher

When you think of bodyweight exercises, you likely think of big compound movements that require work from multiple muscle groups, like burpees, squat jumps, and mountain climbers. Finding bodyweight workouts that isolate a specific portion of the body takes a little more creativity. Here, Erik Bartell, ACE, takes you through a quad-focused workout that only requires a bench, step, or couch to prop your foot on.

Core Burner Workout

Your core powers everything you do, so it’s important to keep it strong. And, doing so doesn’t require equipment. Here, trainer Korey Rowe, ACE, carries you through a routine that you can do anywhere, anytime. No excuses.

20-Minute Back Blast

If you’re looking for a back specific workout, but are lacking equipment, do 3 rounds of 15 to 20 reps of each of these three exercises.

Archer Pushup Dropset Hell

Build stability with this super-difficult pushup routine by breaking out of just one plane.

32-Rep Triceps Mayhem

This triceps-focused burner hits your arms from multiple angles, but it’s still over in 10 to 15 minutes.

For more bodyweight exercises you can do at home, check out All Out Studio app.

Brett Williams, NASM-CPT, PES, a senior editor at Men’s Health, is a certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.

Cori Ritchey, C.S.C.S., is an Associate Health & Fitness Editor at Men’s Health, a certified strength and condition coach, and group fitness instructor. She reports on topics regarding health, nutrition, mental health, fitness, sex, and relationships. You can find more of her work in HealthCentral, Livestrong, Self, and others.