
This guy is the REAL deal. We first met in 2012. His name is Forest Vance and he’s a Bodyweight Expert that has a great story. We’ll talk about that another day… but today, you’ll discover how to get stronger using your own bodyweight…
… that’s right… JUST your own body.
And you know that when you get stronger, you can get fitter… MUCH easier.
Save your joints and get stronger starting in 3..2..1…
Top 3 Body Weight Exercises for STRENGTH
by Forest Vance, author, Body Weight Strong 2.0
Today I want to talk to you about the top three exercises you can use to gain strength.
If you’ve been doing body weight training, odds are you are doing it for fat loss and conditioning. You are probably used to doing high reps until you’re fatigued using exercises like body weight squats, lunges, and burpees.
Now those exercises are great, and I’m a big fan – don’t get me wrong.
HOWEVER, if you’re going to use body weight training to gain STRENGTH, you need to be doing more difficult exercises that are going to challenge you at a lower rep range.
To gain strength you’re going to be doing less reps and more sets. So you might have BEEN doing 3 sets of 25 squats or burpees. Now you’re going to be doing 5, 7, or even 10 sets of 1 to 3 reps – maybe a few more, depending on the exercise.
Sounds crazy? It might. But remember, the goal is not to go until fatigue, so you won’t be getting smoked out on these exercises. Our focus is more on strength and skill development.
Let’s move on to my top three exercises for building strength. I’ll give you three exercises and progressions for each one.
The first is going to be a split squat or a one leg squat variation. The first level is a regular split squat. If you’re a beginner this might be challenging for you. Keep a reasonable tempo, two seconds up, two seconds down, keeping perfect form. Make sure you’re staying nice and tall and keeping that front knee over the toe.
If you want to progress it up from there, the next step would be a Bulgarian split squat where you elevate your back foot. The body mechanics are similar but it makes the exercise more difficult.
There are several other progressions we go through in the program that will eventually progress you to doing a pistol squat. This is a great exercise because you’re lifting more of your body weight and it’s more challenging so you’re able to work on building strength with just your own body weight.
Another good example of progressions – and my second top exercise for building strength with body weight only training – would be push ups.
Maybe to start you have your hands elevated on a tire or box.
Once you can do regular push ups and feet elevated push ups you can work up to doing a one arm push up. I might only be doing 5 to 10 of those on one arm and I’m really challenging myself using just my own body weight.
Third and final top exercise for building strength with your own body weight is the pull up (and progressions).
You can use a box to boost yourself up to the pull up bar, you can do chin ups, you can do slow pull ups, or full chest to bar pull ups.
If you’re doing rows you can use a suspension trainer where your feet are on the ground.
Rows/pull ups, split squats, and push ups are three good examples of body weight exercises that you can actually use to get yourself stronger. If you like these exercises, definitely check out the full body weight strong program. We teach you how to do the exercises in a progressive manner and show you how to get strong and gain muscle using body weight only training. Get details and grab your copy here:
Thanks, train hard, and talk soon –
– Forest
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Great stuff from Forest – you can get the full 12-week step-by-step system by clicking here.
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