You do not need to buy expensive equipment to do Body Weight Exercises. You can workout at your home or at a park. Lets get started…

Primary muscle stressed: Chest
Secondary muscles stressed: Shoulders and Triceps

• regular push ups
• incline push ups
• decline push ups
• close grip push ups
• wide grip push ups
• close grip incline push ups
• wide grip incline push ups
• close grip decline push ups
• wide grip decline push ups
• dips

Push ups and dips are a perfect way to build a huge chest. Depending on the angle of your elbows, you can put more stress either on the shoulders or the triceps when building your chest. When you keep your elbows close to your body, you will be working more of your triceps. When your elbows are flared out, you will be working more of your shoulders. Never have your elbows extended past your shoulder level.

You can also build specific areas of the chest when performing your push ups simply but changing the position of your hands. Having your hands wider then shoulder width will target the outer and lower part of the chest. Keeping your hands close together when doing a push up will target the inner and upper part of the chest.

Plus, you build the the triceps more with the closer hand position then you would with the wider hand position. Keeping your hands at shoulder width apart will work the entire chest muscle. To work the shoulder and tricep muscle equally, I like to keep my elbows flared out at a 45 degree angle. This puts less stress on the triceps and shoulders and puts more emphasis on the chest.

Another way to target specific areas of the chest is changing the angle of your body. By raising or lowering your upper body, you can target specific areas of your chest muscle. The incline push ups will stress more of the outer and lower part of the chest. While the decline push ups will stress the inner and upper part of the chest.

While the push up is a great chest building exercise, sometimes you need another exercise to help you get through your plateaus. Dips are a perfect exercise to just that. When you get stuck in a routine and you find yourself doing a certain amount of reps you simply can’t get past, changing the exercise can help.

Dips targets the entire muscle area but at a different angle from push ups, thus confusion the muscle into growth. You will see an improvement in your reps for push ups after you have incorporated dips into your routine. The trick is to completely stop doing push ups and only do dips for a few weeks. Once you have cycled back into your push ups, you will feel the difference and reach new personal best for reps for your push ups.

Also, just like the push ups, dips can emphasis more of the tricep or the shoulders by changing the angle of your elbows. Keeping your elbows close to your body will target more of the triceps, while having them flared outward will put more stress on the shoulders. Just like the push ups, I like to keep them at a 45 degree angle to target more of the chest while keeping the stress equal on both the shoulders and triceps.

Primary muscle stressed: Back
Secondary muscles stressed: Biceps and Forearms

• chins
• wide grip chins
• close grip chins
• pull ups
• wide grip pull ups
• close grip pull ups
• inverted row

What is the difference between a chin and a pull up

Chins are performed by placing your hands on the pull up bar so that your palms are facing you. You then proceed to pull up your body until your chin is at the bar level, hence the name chins. Pull ups on the other hand are when your palms are facing away from you on the pull up bar and you pull up your body until your chest touches the pull up bar. When you want to target more of the biceps when doing either the chins or pull ups, have your hands close together on the pull up bar. To target more of the lats in your back, have your hands wider then shoulder width apart on the pull up bar.

For people who can not do at least 10 reps of either pull ups or chins, I recommend you start out doing inverted rows. This exercise is a simple form of a pull up except your body is at a low angle so you take allot of the weight off the pull up.

To perform the inverted row you will start out by laying on the ground and having the pull up bar 2 to 3 feet above you. In this position, grab the bar while still laying on the ground and raise your body up. Starting out in this low position is the hardest way to perform the inverted row. To make this exercise easier, simply raise the bar higher. This will take even more weight off of the inverted row. Trying a variety of different angles will give you an idea of where you are physically and you can go from there to develop your back.
Primary muscle stressed: Thighs
Secondary muscle stressed: Calves and Lower Back

• squat
• one leg squat
• one leg bench step up
• bench jump up
• high knees
• forward lunge
• reverse lunge
• stationary lunge
• walking lunge

A lot of people (guys in particular) don’t like working out the lower body. But, it is essential for weight loss and upper body growth. Your lower body contains 40 percent of your body weight. Which means when you work out your lower body, you will burn allot of calories with each exercise. Also, the growth of the lower body has a direct correlation with the growth of the upper body. A lot of growth hormones are produced when you workout your lower body. This growth hormone that is produced from your lower body workout helps speed up muscle growth in your upper body. You will be surprise how fast your upper body will grow when you incorporate some lower body weight exercises into your routine.

Squats and lunges are a great way to develop your lower body without the use of weights. Squats target mostly your quadraceps but also targets your hamstrings, calves and lower back. It is a great lower body exercise that everyone should incorporate in their routine. Lunges build the same muscle groups as the squat but the difference is that lunges are easier on your knees. It takes more stress off your knees when done right and is a great exercise to combine with the squat for a complete lower body routine. I like to combine squats and lunges not only to confuse the muscle but also target different areas of the thigh. In this manner you will burn more calories and build more muscle.