Once your routine includes sets of 15 or so reps of whatever pushup you’re doing, you may want to add to the difficulty in order to stimulate muscle growth.  This can be achieved  by adding weight (a backpack with weights in it), or by elevating your legs (i.e. doing pushups with your feet on a chair or couch).

Or you can investigate the wonderful “Hindu Pushup”.  Hindu pushups are a fantastic exercise that are a little more challenging than the normal push-up.  Hindu push-ups are a much more dynamic exercise.

Not only do they work your chest but they work your shoulders and triceps as well, in a much different way than regular pushups:  they will challenge you more than regular push-ups.  They can be used (as with the Hindu squat) as a conditioning exercise and not merely a strength building exercise.

Hindu push ups are a total body workout that will:

• give you much greater endurance

• increase your overall flexibility and range of motion

• increase your all-important functional strength.

What is a Hindu Pushup (dands)?

Hindu Pushups, like Hindu Squats, have been used by Indian wrestlers for centuries to build upper body strength and endurance. The difference between this exercise and regular pushups is that it involves an arching movement — it’s like an ocean wave — that stretches and strengthens the hips, shoulders and back.

How do you perform a Hindu Pushup?

The starting position for this exercise, unlike the regular pushup, has legs spread wide and butt up in the air.  From there, bend your elbows as in a regular pushup, bringing your back down in a circular arc, straighten your arms and end up with your chest up and your hips almost touching the ground.  Like the Hindu Squat, the Hindu Pushup has a nice rhythm.  You will find it after very few attempts.

Start with your feet wide apart, butt up and head looking back at heels.  The legs remain straight throughout the exercise.  Lower your hips to the floor and bend your arms.  Finish with head up and back arched, with your hips almost touching the floor.  Now, keep your arms straight and push the buttocks back to the starting position, reversing the arc you made in the first half of the exercise.

Again, do as many repetition as you can. And, as always, stay within yourself. You will probably find, as with the Hindu squats, that this is a deceptively simple looking exercise. You will find that it challenges strength, endurance and flexibility of spine, shoulders and hips.

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Hindu squats (called bethak or Uthak-bethak) is an Indian calisthenic body weight exercise used by Indian wrestlers for centuries to build incredible lower body strength, power, speed and endurance.

Barbell squats (and weight training exercises in general for the legs), have the potential to cause severe trauma and injury to knee joints and the lower back. Hindu squats, on the other hand, actually rehabiliate the knees and strengthen the muscles of the legs. Hindu squats, when done properly and combined with deep breathing, not only strengthen the entire body, but they rehabiliate the knees and ankles and build unbelievable lung power. For those who are used to barbell squats, you’ll find these squats to be a challenging, vigorous workout.

The important consideration here is working into them slowly.  Never force progress in this, or any, exercise.  No less an expert than Matt Furey has proclaimed that Hindu Squats “lay the foundation for strength and endurance.”  This high repetition, rhythmic version of body weight squats develops the hips, thighs, calves, and lower back – and lung power.

What is a Hindu Squat?

The Hindu Squat is basically a deep, upright squat done on the toes with an assist from the arms; the arms come down and behind the body as you lower yourself, and then swing up as you rise. It feels wonderful once you get the groove and the rhythm.

How do you perform a Hindu Squat?

Hindu squats are performed by starting in a standing position, feet shoulder width apart, hands tight to chest. Begin by extending arms in front of you parallel to the ground.  From this position, begin to descend into a squat position while simultaneously bringing your arms down in a sweeping motion continuing the motion by bringing the arms behind your back, brushing the buttocks as you sweep the arms forward to begin the upward motion of the squat.

The squat motion/ position here is different than a regular squat because you should be on your toes with knees pointing forward, not on your heels with your butt sticking out.

Some of the fine points for performing this exercise successfully:

• Begin with your hands pulled in tight to the chest.

• Bring your hands down and lower your body.

• Keep hands behind your back for balance.

• Come up on toes at the bottom. Keep your body upright and your arms down.

• Swing the arms forward and push off your toes.

As you rise, the arms continue up to chest level.  When you’re upright, pull your hands in to the chest and begin again.  Do as many nonstop repetitions as possible. In the beginning, depending on your condition,

Furey says, you’ll probably be able to do 25 to 50 – 100 reps is good – but it’s not a competition, and what you can safely handle is always the best advice. Don’t overdo this, or any exercise.  You WILL improve with practice!!

I’m pretty sure that you will be amazed and gratified with the results of this exercise, after a very short period of time.  Truly a full-body developer!!

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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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I am a huge fan of bodyweight exercises.  I feel these are the only form of exercise you will need for gaining strength and size.  I would like to discuss what I feel is one of the best exercise for building huge biceps.  The exercise I have chosen is the close grip chin-up.  This may surprise some, but let me explain.

I used to be a huge fan of bicep curls with dumbbells, preacher curls and so on.  However, I started to notice a few people at the gym begin to experience problems with their elbows.  A close friend of mine needs surgery on his elbow.  He has been avoiding it by using anti-inflammatory drugs and getting cortisone shots.  He was a firm believer in preacher curls and it was one of his favorite exercises.  Now he can no longer perform this exercise without pain and discomfort.  I also feel that concentration exercises such as bicep curls do not effectively build any real-world strength.  Close grip chin-ups on the other hand will build real-world strength as well as size.

So what makes close grip chin-ups the most effective?

Reason #1

One reason is because is because close grip chin is a closed-chain bodyweight exercise.  This means that you are moving your body through space, rather than just moving weight relative to your body.  These types of exercises have proven to elicit the absolute highest growth and strength responses of all exercises.  Your body simply has a greater response to these types of movements versus concentrated exercises.

Reason #2

The tension is also constant on your bicep throughout the full range of motion.  With this exercise there is never a point at which you relax the bicep as there is always constant tension on the muscle.  With a weight based curl movement you start to feel your muscle relax near the top of the curl movement.  With the close grip chin-up your bicep is constantly working in every position- top, middle and bottom of the movement.  This provides a greater breakdown in the muscle fiber and promotes a greater growth response.  It also eliminates the possibility of injury.

Now what I suggest is that you take this advice and run with it.  Drop the weights, hit the pull-up bar and you will never look back.  If you get strong enough and need more weight buy a weighted vest and continue to do the same movements.  This will increase the difficulty and build massive biceps that will make the girls drool.  They say in the gym “curls are for the girls”.  I say close grip chin-ups “separate the men from the boys”.

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Thought I would share this video with everyone.  This is one of my all time favorites movies and is an awesome circuit routine.  This is not a workout that you do everyday you must condition yourself for this type of workout.  If you guys have videos of yourself completing this workout I would love to put them on the site.  Just contact me using the link above and I will get it posted to the site.

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