The most difficult body part to work with no equipment is your back, so firstly I'd recommend getting a Chin Up bar.
You can pick a basic one up for as little as £6.99 from Argos so it won’t break the bank.
Chin Ups and their variations are one of the best exercises you can do – not just for your back, but your whole upper body.
If you can't quite get your chin over the bar yet, don't let it put you off getting one. It's one of the best investments you could make in your situation, and you can use our step by step tips to get you there.
Your lower body
The other notoriously difficult body part to work from home is your legs, or just lower body structure in general.
Your lower body is capable of lifting an awful lot of weight. Even if you can’t manage much now, believe me when I say it’ll get very strong very quickly.
Step Ups are a good bodyweight exercise and all you need is step about knee height. Just step up with your leading leg, then back down starting with the other leg. You can hold your arms out in front of you at arms length to help keep your balance.
Not enough for you? Try immediately doing a couple of sets of One Legged Squats. You can put your hands on your hips, or outstretch your arms to the side to help keep your balance, then with one leg bent behind you, squat down as far as you can on your other leg. There are also other squat variants like squatting with your back against a wall for example.
Your upper body
For the rest of your body, there's Push Ups and their variants to work your chest, shoulders, and upper arms. Ab Crunches and their variants will cover your abdominals and Back Extensions work your lower back.
Stepping up a gear
The main complaint about bodyweight exercises is that, unlike weights where you can continually add extra weight as needed, the weight you're lifting is finite and limited by your bodyweight. This means as we get stronger, we have to look for other ways to make the exercises harder.
One way is to slow your reps down. Try building up to a strict 10 seconds each way. So for a chin up, that would be 10 seconds from arms straight to chin over the bar, then 10 seconds back.
Be aware though that this technique wont work with some exercises like Step Ups, where you'll just fall over! So use your discretion.
For other exercises try increasing the range of motion. With Push Ups and their variants, for example, you can elevate your hands, feet, or both.
You can also try pausing in the contracted position in some of your exercises, so for an Ab Crunch, you would curl up, then pause for 5-10 seconds at full crunch before lowering back to the starting position.
You can also mix the techniques for even more variation. Good luck!
