Your weight can be your best friend and not your enemy

You have one great thing about your body that can help you lose weight and you don't even know it. Your own weight can be one of your greatest assets in your fitness goals. There are a lot of exercises that can be done that utilize your own body weight that work multiple muscle groups(burn those calories!) at one time.
The key to performing not only these exercises, but any exercise is proper form and mixing it up to work different areas. A lot of these exercises can be done at home, which means you won't need that expensive gym membership.

Chest and Triceps
Pushups work both your pectoral muscles as well as your triceps. You can target what areas you want to work by varying your hand position and the angle of your body. Adding chair dips will give you extra work for your triceps. For guys really building your triceps is what gives your arms the size that the ladies like looking at. Ladies working your triceps targets that area that you complain about, so work those dips and blast those bingo wings.

Standard pushups are performed with your hands shoulder width apart, straight back a tightened core. The key to an affective pushup is reaching a deep contraction(lowering your chest as low to the ground as you can) and a full extension by ensuring that your arms are fully extended and locked out. Remember that it's about quality not quantity. 20 pushups with proper form is better than 100 pushups with crappy form. So take it slow and control yourself on your way down and and really concentrate on squeezing your chest muscles and triceps on the extension. One area where people go wrong with pushups is they take their spine out of alignment by looking forward because they were told to keep their head up. The best way is to look straight down keeping your spine in full alignment. The saying keep your head up comes from when people tuck their chin to their chest.

To mix up what areas you work in your chest bring your hands closer together or spread them farther apart. By spreading your hands farther apart you really target your chest, by bringing your hands closer together you target more of your triceps. You Off set your hands with one set with your right hand farther forward an one with your left hand farther forward. If you want to target your upper and lower pectorals either elevate your feet for a decline pushup working the upper portion of your chest, or do an incline pushup by leaning agains a counter or table to work your lower chest.


By performing dips on a chair you can work your triceps. Simply place your hands on the front of the chair with your hands facing forward. Your lower back should be agains the front of the chair and your legs extended outward. Lower your body until your arms form a 90 degree angle and then extend your arms upward squeezing at the full extension. If you want to add some difficulty you can place your feet on another object like another chair or exercise ball.

Some simple body weight exercises with variations that target different areas and different degrees of difficulty. There isn't a need for a gym membership if you have the discipline to exercise while at home. This can be a go to routine or a back up for days you can't make it to the gym. Stick to your plan, stay motivated and reach those goals.

Stay tuned for back and bicep body weight exercises!