Depending on how you do them, bodyweight exercises can help you build muscle, improve endurance or raise your metabolism as part of a cardio weight-loss workout. The intensity at which you do the exercises determines the results you achieve. To lose weight with bodyweight exercises, do them with less muscular effort and at a higher pace to elevate your heart rate.
Bodyweight Exercises
Common bodyweight exercises include pushups, pull-ups, chin-ups, dips, squats, lunges, calf raises, sit-ups and crunches. You can do pushups on your knees or from the full plank position, depending on your strength. Placing your hands in different positions makes the exercises easier or more difficult. You do chin-ups with your palms facing you, recruiting more of your biceps and pectoral muscles. Pull-ups, done with your palms facing away from you, are more difficult, because you rely more on weaker triceps and lats.
Higher Loads/Lower Volumes
If you do bodyweight exercises slowly, you use more muscular effort to raise and lower yourself. This helps build muscle. For example, after you slowly raise yourself to do a chin-up, pause, and then lower yourself slowly, resisting gravity. Instead of dropping quickly, use your muscles to lower yourself. Stopping before your arms are completely straight forces you to brake yourself, using more muscle.
Lower Loads/Higher Volumes
If you do bodyweight exercises quickly, you can use gravity and momentum between movements to propel yourself. Eliminate the pause between moving down and up during an exercise. This requires you to use less muscular effort and creates less muscle fatigue. During chin-ups, you can let yourself drop, then bounce slightly to help yourself start moving up again. Keep your torso straight during uplifts and downlifts to prevent a back injury. Doing bodyweight exercises this way helps you raise your heart rate and work longer, burning more calories.
Weight-Loss Bodyweight Workout
To burn the most calories with bodyweight exercises, create a circuit-training workout. Do one exercise for one or two minutes, and then take a two- or three-minute break to recover. To prevent muscle fatigue, use less muscular effort and alternate between upper- and lower-body exercises. Do the circuit for 30 minutes or more, keeping your heart rate as high as you can without having to stop the workout --- working longer at a moderately intense pace is better for burning calories than working at maximum intensity and burning out after 10 minutes.
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