When it comes to sculpting your ideal body, you really don’t need to be spending loads on gym memberships or fancy home equipment. Bodyweight training, also known as calisthenics, is a form of exercise that utilizes the weight of your own body as a means of resistance. Here are Sarah’s top 5 reasons why bodyweight training might work for you:

Own bodyweight resistance = less risk of injury

You are less likely to injure yourself by overloading your joints or your muscles, because you are working with your own resistance. BUT don’t let this fool you into thinking you’re not going to get much of a workout – you may be surprised at just how challenging a bodyweight workout can be!

The flexibility

Not being confined to specific places to exercise, or the opening hours of your local gym, gives you so much freedom and therefore eliminates any excuses not to work out! Bodyweight training allows you to workout when and where you want, giving you the option to exercise inside, outside, or at 4am in the morning if that’s what suits you

You can use your environment to enhance your workout – be a big kid and have some fun with it!

Try doing tricep dips and step-ups using a park bench, monkey bars for pull-ups or perform plyo jumps off a curbside.

Everyone can do it! 

From complete newbies to total fitness junkies, bodyweight training is going to provide you with a range of exercises that will enhance your strength and change your body composition for the better! Of course, if serious bulking up is your goal then you might want to complement your bodyweight workouts with some heavier resistance training, but you will still get stronger and leaner whilst practising bodyweight training. 

Example –PUSH UPS

Beginners – perform on your knees

Intermediate – regular push-ups

Advanced – clapping push-ups. push-up jacks, one-legged push-ups, one-armed push-ups – there’s no limit to how crazy you can get! with it! 

Example – LUNGES

Beginners – static lunges

Intermediate – walking lunges

Advanced – jumping lunges – ouch, my quads are burning just thinking about it!

You can combine cardio and strength training.

For serious results, try mixing strength moves like push-ups and lunges with jumping jacks or squat thrusts for cardio, not forgetting of course my very favourite bodyweight move – burpees! I literally have hundreds of burpee variations I could share with you, but that’s another blog post! 

Getting fit doesn’t have to be complicated. Bodyweight training is a super-efficient workout, where you can burn fat—fast. At any fitness level, it’s still challenging and there’s never an excuse to not work out. 

I’ve been known to deliver entire bootcamp sessions using no equipment whatsoever and my clients still get an amazing workout (I know because they moan to me about how much they ache the next day)

So start bodyweight training today!

A big thank you to Sarah Swainsbury of Celebrity Circuits for this article.