Improve Your Quality of Life with Body Weight Exercises

Body weight exercises are exercises used to develop strength and endurance that do not require the use of free weights or exercise machines: the practitioner’s own weight provides the resistance for the movement. Perfect for traveling, living room or backyard workouts or adding a bit of variety to your regular exercise routine. Most body weight exercises are designed to build and tone muscle, however, when used in conjunction with aerobic activities, can also help you lose weight quickly. Studies indicate that those following a strength training program for two months will, on average,  burn about 200 calories more per workout than those whose regimen did not include strength training.

This is sometimes a major consideration for women, who have the (mostly irrational) fear that strength training will make them “bulk up”.

In reality, a body weight exercise routine has many benefits (for both men and women), among them:

• increases endurance and flexibility
• protects joints (reduces the risk of injury)
• increases bone mass (helps prevent fractures and reduces bone loss [osteoporosis])
• increases energy level
• boosts metabolism (for ongoing weight management)

Stretching exercises are a fundamental form of bodyweight exercise, although the lengthening and toning of muscles afforded by stretching are rarely associated with strength training or weight loss. In actuality, they are effective on both counts and should be incorporated into any exercise regimen.

Most body weight exercises  are simple to perform, which means you will enjoy doing them, and because they do not require weights, bodyweight exercises are the ideal choice for individuals who are interested in fitness but do not have access to strength training equipment. Some of the basic movements: sit-ups, crunches, pushups, pull-ups, twists, squats, lunges, dips. Along with these fundamental movements, a whole list of movements has been designed to add variety to an effective body weight strength training exercise regimen.

Weights can be incorporated to increase the difficulty of most body weight exercises (they say Charles Atlas lifted pails of cement!) and some exercises do require some sort of apparatus to lean on or hang from, but for those exercises a substitute can usually be improvised, for example a chair or tree branch.

So, no equipment is required- or (as mentioned) you can incorporate your own modified version of weight lifting with household items: cans of soup in each hand for chest-flies and curls, small water bottles filled with sand or kitty litter, (increasing the weight gradually) etc. etc…

In this way, using no equipment, or rudimentary items like chairs or jugs filled with water, or branches, there is literally no muscle group which cannot be effectively worked: abdominals, legs, arms, chest, back, buttocks…

You can design a very effective and beneficial body weight strength and aerobic exercise routine to improve the quality of your life!

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1. Building Functional Strength with Bodyweight Exercises
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