The Ultimate Guide to Bodyweight Exercises for Muscle & Strength: 45+ of the Best

Your body is the ultimate fitness machine. No membership card required.

In this article, I break down more than 45 of the best bodyweight exercises that build your strength, balance, and coordination while keeping things fun. Plus workouts and programs to help you get the results you want.

Whether you’re training at home, outdoors, or somewhere between the couch and the fridge, these exercises deliver results without requiring anything more than a bit of space (and whatever motivation you can muster).

No gear, no nonsense, just sweat and satisfaction.

Why Bodyweight Training?

You know what bodyweight training (calisthenics) is: resistance training where the weight is you.

Instead of battling iron, you’re fighting gravity.

Boil it down to the bone and bodyweight training is the art of manipulating your body’s position to make gravity feel heavier or lighter.

It’s the oldest way to get strong, used by everyone from ancient Spartan warriors (the term calisthenics actually comes from the Greek words kallos (beauty) and sthenos (strength)) to modern special forces, mostly because it works and you can do it anywhere.

Why It’s Awesome

• The Cost: $0.00.
• The Commute: You train wherever you want. Hotel or living room? Check. Park? Check. While waiting for your dinner pasta to boil? Weird, but check.
• The Equipment: You.

The Catch

The main criticism you’ll hear about bodyweight training is: “You can’t build big muscles or get really strong without heavy weights.”

False.

But there is a nuance. In the gym, if a 100 lb bench press gets too easy, you slide on a 5- or 10-pound plate on each side of the bar. Easy.

With bodyweight exercises, you have to change the physics.

• Example 1: An incline push-up with your hands on a bench is easy. A standard push-up on the floor is harder. A push-up with your feet up on a chair is harder still. A handstand push-up? Welcome to gymnast strength.
• Example 2: Can you do 30 air squats? Cool. Now try to do one pistol squat. Suddenly, bodyweight training doesn’t feel too easy anymore.

Look at male gymnasts. They are composed almost entirely of biceps and triceps, and they rarely touch a dumbbell.

You won’t be building a pro bodybuilder’s physique or a powerlifter’s strength with bodyweight training only, but you can build a super impressive, muscular, strong, functional, and aesthetic body without any dumbbells or gym machines whatsoever.

The kind of body that many prefer, to be honest.

And of course, you get all the benefits that come with strength training in the bargain. Those don’t care about equipment, only the effort you put in.

The Best Bodyweight Exercises

We have more than 125 bodyweight exercises in our exercise library, so it was quite the task to narrow them down to the 45 “best”.

Because who decides which ones are the best? And best for whom? Bodyweight training beginner, calisthenics pro, or someone in the middle?

So if your favorite isn’t here, it’s not necessarily because it’s “worse”. It’s because I had to distill the cream of the crop and still cover the major movement patterns, without neglecting any important muscle groups.

All exercises are detailed in our workout log app, StrengthLog, so you always have proper form at a glance when you’re training.

And with that, we’re off!

Upper Body Push

“Push” means exercises where you use your upper-body pushing muscles: your chest, shoulders, and triceps.

1. Push-Up

The push-up is one of the most classic bodyweight exercises, no doubt. It’s a great muscle and strength builder, equal to the barbell bench press according to studies, at least in beginners.¹

One of the beautiful benefits of push-ups is that you can make them harder or easier without going through hoops (some bodyweight exercises can be a bother and a half to load). In regular push-ups, you’re typically lifting somewhere in the realm of 70% of your bodyweight.² But you can decrease or increase that number by placing your hands or feet, respectively, on an elevation.

You can also make them more athletic by blasting off the floor like a rocket and clapping your hands while you’re in the air (advanced trainees only) or moving your hands closer together to hit your triceps harder.

Here is a breakdown of some of the most common variants, ranked (by me, not anything official) by their difficulty:

Variant	Difficulty
Wall	Level 1
Kneeling	Level 2
Incline	Level 2.5
Regular	Level 5
Close-Grip	Level 6
Decline	Level 7
Clap	Level 8
One-Arm	Level 10

Let’s take a closer look at some of these variants.

2. Bar Dip

The bar dip is another classic bodyweight exercise, training the same muscles as the push-up, but from another angle.

Unlike push-ups (a horizontal press), dips are a vertical press where you push your body away from gravity, and because you’re suspended in mid-air, you have to lift 100% of your bodyweight.

You can change how they hit your upper body by altering the angle of your torso. Want a bigger chest? Lean your torso forward. Want bigger triceps? Stay as upright as possible.

Some consider dips the tippety top of chest and triceps exercises. For example, legendary bodybuilder Mike Mentzer found it to be the most valuable triceps exercise and called it the “squat for the upper body.”

Others claim that dips are inherently dangerous for the shoulders and should be avoided. But I don’t agree with that. They can be bad for some shoulders, like if you lack shoulder mobility or stability, or dive-bomb down too fast. Then yes, you put a lot of shear force on the front of your shoulder capsule. So start with a range of motion your shoulders can handle, and if they feel really wonky or even hurt, stick with push-ups.

3. Pike Push-Up / Handstand Push-Up

More push-ups? Yes, but the pike push-up and the handstand push-up are quite different and deserve their own spot.

Regular push-ups are a horizontal push, like a floor-based bench press, but with your body as resistance. Pike/handstand push-ups, on the other hand, are a vertical push. Like an overhead press but upside down. More shoulders, less chest.

Pike push-ups are harder than regular push-ups; if you can do 20 regular push-ups, you might struggle to get eight good pike push-ups because your mechanical advantage is gone. Your chest is still involved, but you’re shifting more of the work to your shoulders, and they are a good gateway drug if you want to be able to do handstand push-ups.

Handstand push-ups, now we’re talking elite tier. You are lifting 100% of your bodyweight, and you’re doing it almost entirely without the help of your chest. There’s also a big skill and balance component, which makes it even harder. Doing these freestanding is a fantastic calisthenics party trick, but you generally want to progress from pikes to handstands against a wall first.

For most people, I’d say pike push-ups are actually better for muscle growth than handstand push-ups. Why? Because you don’t have to balance, meaning you can push your muscles to failure without falling on your face.

4. Triceps Bodyweight Extension

Isolation exercises for the triceps are few and far between, and most rely on pushing movements like push-ups to build the back of their arms. But there are excellent exceptions, like the triceps bodyweight extension, which gets my best-bang-for-your-buck award for pure bodyweight triceps exercises.

You start almost like in an incline push-up, but hinge almost entirely at the elbow and essentially turn your body into one giant lever to roast your triceps. It hits all three heads of the triceps, but especially the long head because your arms are overhead during the stretch. And the long head, that’s the one that really adds size to your arms.

You can easily adjust the weight simply by changing the height of your hands. And you don’t need a Smith machine like in the animated demonstration above. You can use a railing, a bench, a table, or even a wall (but not the best alternative because you’ll bang your head against it if you go for a full triceps stretch).

Upper Body Pull

Pulling exercises are those where you work your back and biceps. Rear delts are also often trained with the back since they work together.

1. Pull-Up / Chin-Up

The pull-up and the chin-up are two of the most iconic bodyweight exercises. Even people completely outside the fitness world know about these two, and if you’ve ever been in PE class, you’ve probably struggled with one or both.

Some use pull-ups and chin-ups interchangeably, but they are different exercises.

Pull-ups use an overhand (pronated) grip, while chin-ups use an underhand (supinated) grip. Both are great for building back (lats) width, but the underhand grip in chin-ups puts you in a stronger position and lets your biceps do more of the work.³

Feature	Pull-Up	Chin-Up
Grip	Palms facing away (Pronated)	Palms facing you (Supinated)
Primary Focus	Lats	Lats & Biceps
Difficulty	Harder	Generally Easier

Both are top-tier bodyweight exercises, and unless you have an injury or some discomfort (chin-ups always felt wonky for me, but that’s a me thing and doesn’t make it a worse exercise) preventing one, feel free to pick your favorite or rotate them. They hit the back from slightly different angles, and chin-ups are better for building your biceps, but there is no wrong choice when you’re deciding between the two.

2. Inverted Row

You don’t have as many options if you want to do rows with bodyweight exercises alone as you have with an arsenal of free weights or machines. However, the inverted row lets you use your body as resistance as you lie under a low bar (or table if you’re doing a prison-style home workout) and pull your chest to it while keeping your feet on the ground, working your upper back, lats, and rear delts.

Fun fact: the inverted row is also called the Australian pull-up. Guess why? Because you pull yourself up from down under ( 🥁 ).

Do you need to do inverted rows if you do pull-ups? Well, “need” is a strong word, but yes, they are different movement patterns and complement each other. Even if you can do 20 pull-ups, you still want to do rows to hit the mid-back and rear shoulders that pull-ups miss.

• Too hard? Bend your knees and put your feet flat on the floor. The more upright your torso, the easier it becomes.
• Too easy? Straighten your legs. Still too easy? Elevate your feet on a box or bench so your body is parallel to the ground. Still too easy? Sheesh. Place a weight plate on your chest or wear a weighted vest.

By the way, you can do these with an underhand grip, too. Like with chin-ups vs. pull-ups, you’ll hit your biceps a bit harder and your back from a slightly different angle.

3. Muscle-Up

If the pull-up is the bread and butter of calisthenics, the muscle-up is the filet mignon. It looks cool, it demonstrates explosive power, and practically speaking, it’s the only exercise that will actually help you climb over a high fence when you’re running from a guard dog.

Muscle-ups are not something you do to build muscle or develop 1RM strength, but they’re an excellent athletic and gymnastic exercise for upper body power and coordination.

Important info if you want to try your hand at muscle-ups: use a false grip on the bar. It will feel weird and uncomfortable at first, but it makes them much easier. If you use a regular pull-up grip, you’ll have to make a bit of a grip switch mid-movement, which ruins your momentum.

I also suggest you avoid the chicken wing. What’s the chicken wing, you might ask. It’s when you struggle during the transition, so you throw one elbow over the bar, squirm around in pain, and then drag the other arm over to join it. The problem with that is that it places an uneven amount of torque on your shoulder joint. If you feel yourself doing the chicken wing, abort the rep, drop down, rest, and try again. I’ve actually seen someone tear a labrum doing it chicken-wing style.

You can use these two muscle-up variants to prepare for the real thing:

4. Bodyweight Biceps Curl

Bodyweight training is often about compound movements, which is great, but sometimes you just want to train your biceps and go for the burn. The bodyweight biceps curl is that exercise. While not an isolation exercise in the strictest sense, it’s as close to a machine preacher curl as you are going to get without setting foot in a gym.

It has one main benefit over free weights: unlike with a barbell or dumbbells, where the tension drops off at the very top of the rep thanks to gravity, leaning back on rings or TRX handles keeps the tension on the bicep through the entire range of motion.

But it does have quirks, the biggest one being progression. Because you have to inch your feet forward slightly to make it harder, it’s really hard to track your progression and gains properly without meticulous measuring. And you need something to hang from.

All in all, though, pretty much the only true biceps bodyweight “isolation” exercise unless you “cheat” with rubber bands, and very likely the best one.

Lower Body: Knee Dominant

In this category, you find exercises that involve bending and extending the knee joint, like squats and lunges. These exercises specialize in training the quads, glutes, and adductors.

1. Bodyweight Squat

If you walked into a room full of strength coaches and shouted, “The squat is the ultimate exercise!” you’d probably get a lot of nodding heads and a few fist bumps.

Some might argue, but few would disagree with the claim that squats are phenomenal. They build your lower body like few other exercises and are great for athletic performance in many sports. They can even prevent or reverse age-related muscle loss in older adults as part of a well-rounded strength routine.⁴

That all being said, there is no beating around the bush: using an external load in the squat is more efficient for muscle growth and absolute strength. Don’t get me wrong, the air squat is an excellent exercise, and it is probably enough for a beginner to see decent strength gains to start. And for rehab and older adults, the even more controlled chair squat can be an even better option.

If you want to stick to pure bodyweight training and build serious leg mass and strength, you’re going to have to advance to single-leg variants like Bulgarian split squats and eventually to pistol squats (more about those below). But even an advanced lifter can benefit from bodyweight squats for mobility or as a warm-up.

2. Bulgarian Split Squat

The Bulgarian split squat is arguably the single most effective unilateral leg builder out there (although the lunge might want a word). You place one foot on a bench (or couch or chair) behind you and squat down with the front leg.

Split squats require a mix of balance, strength, and mobility (and a bit of tolerance for discomfort), and they can be both a primary quadriceps builder and a butt builder, depending on how you position your body:

Focus	Torso Angle	Shin Angle	Where you feel it
Quad Focus	Upright	Knee travels forward over toes	Front of the thigh
Glute Focus	Slight forward lean	Shin stays nearly vertical	The glorious glutes

Since you are a bodyweight warrior, you can’t just “add 5 lb” unless you use a backpack or something similar. But you can create progressive overload without iron, for example by putting your front foot on a book or a low block. Your back knee can drop deeper down, and you get a longer range of motion and greater stretch.

3. Lunge

I mentioned lunges above, so let’s talk about them! One of the exercises many people like not to do because, frankly, they take a lot out of you. Like vegetables: sometimes you just want to push them to the side of the plate, but you know they’re good for you, so you eat them anyway.

And there are not one or two types of lunges you can enjoy in your bodyweight workouts, but a veritable plethora. All lunges are great for dynamic leg strength and stability, and they all work your quads and glutes. Here are a few of my faves:

4. Pistol Squat

Pistol squats deserve their own spot in a collection of the best bodyweight exercises. They are the big guns you bring out when progressing your leg training becomes hard without external loads.

They are easy in theory: stand on one leg, extend the other straight out in front of you, squat down as deep as you can, then stand back up. Easy peasy. Not so much in reality.

Pistols are admittedly a steep step up, even from split squats. If you try a pistol squat right now and fall backward, welcome to the club.

Sometimes, the hardest part isn’t even your strength but your mobility. If you have stiff ankles, pistol squats will let you know. The quick and easy fix is to elevate your heel; it will work wonders, at least while you work on your flexibility.

Once you’ve got the mobility in place, you still need to be strong enough to push yourself back up with only one leg. A neat trick is to stand in front of a doorframe and do a full pistol squat while you hold the doorframe. Use your arms as much as necessary, but no more, to pull yourself out of the hole or keep your balance. You can then wean yourself off the arm assistance over time.

5. Box Jump

Now we’re getting to the athletic stuff with the box jump. They are great for showing off your vertical leap on Instagram, but there’s more to them. They are a staple in strength training for athletes.

• First, they hit your type II (fast-twitch) muscle fibers and train your nervous system to fire muscles quickly and forcefully.
• Second, they force you to extend your hips, knees, and ankles simultaneously, which is called triple extension and is something of a holy grail of athletic movement for things like sprinting, Olympic lifting, or pretty much anything that involves jumping or leaping.

Start lower than you think you need to. If you land butt to heel, the box is too high. You should land softly in a quarter-squat position on the balls of your feet, rolling back to your heels and absorbing the impact with bent knees. If you sound like a bag of wet cement hitting the floor, you’re doing it wrong.

Also, don’t rebound (when you jump backwards off the box) unless you are an advanced athlete to spare your Achilles.

6. Step-Up

The step-up is another unilateral (single-leg) exercise that builds strength, stability, and coordination in the entire lower body. When done correctly (more on that in a second), they activate the glutes arguably better than squats or hip thrusts.⁵

Since we are talking bodyweight training, you can’t just add a plate. Here is how to make step-ups harder as you get stronger:

Variable	How to Apply It
Tempo	Slow it down. Explode up, then resist on the way down and take 3–4 seconds to lower yourself.
Range of Motion	Use a higher box as long as your form doesn’t break.
Jump	Drive up fast, sprinter style, and do a jump at the top, but keep the descent slow. Doing step-ups this way is particularly effective for sprinting faster, according to studies.6

What you don’t want to do is to push off with your bottom foot or use your upper body to gain momentum. That’s cheating. All the work should come from your top leg.

Fun story: I saw someone doing step-ups onto a chair with wheels once. I only noticed after the fact, or I would have said something. It ended well, but let’s just say that it didn’t end as intended. So don’t do that. Use a sturdy platform.

7. Sissy Squat

The sissy squat is a great bodyweight leg exercise for building bigger quads without weights.

Don’t let the name fool you: it doesn’t come from the playground insult but from King Sisyphus from Greek mythology. You know, the guy cursed to roll a giant boulder up a hill for eternity.

And that’s essentially what your quads feel like they are doing when you sissy squat. It’s a classic old-school bodybuilding movement (legendary trainer Vince Gironda loved them) and one of the few ways to isolate the quads almost completely without a leg extension machine.

The potential downside is that sissy squats put a lot of shear force on the knee joint. Now, they don’t ruin healthy knees. If anything, controlled stress makes tendons and ligaments stronger. But if you dive bomb into these guys without warming up, or if you already have knee issues like bad patellar tracking, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Remember not to bend at the hips. If you stick your butt out, you’re just doing a weird tiptoe squat. You want a straight line from your knees to your shoulders, then squeeze your glutes to lock your hips forward.

1. Nordic Hamstring

If you are a strict bodyweight training aficionado, the Nordic hamstring exercise is tops for posterior chain development. Without a barbell or dumbbells for some kind of deadlift or a leg curl machine, your hamstrings can get neglected, but the Nordic fills that gap.

Basically, the Nordic is a bodyweight leg curl. You anchor your feet, keep your body straight as an arrow, and lower yourself toward the ground using only your hamstrings to hit the brakes. It’s an eccentric-focused exercise, meaning the good stuff happens while the muscle is lengthening (lowering down), not shortening (curling up).

Perhaps even more than building muscle and strength, the Nordic hamstring exercise’s number one claim to fame is how exceptional it is for preventing hamstring injuries. It is extensively researched in sports science, and studies show that it can cut hamstring tears and other injuries in half, which is huge.⁷ It does so by changing the very architecture of your muscle fibers, making them longer and stronger.

If you can perform a full Nordic without using your hands, you possess elite-level posterior strength. But 99% of lifters cannot just jump into it. What you want to do is to start with eccentric-only reps: you resist as much as you can and use your arms to push yourself back up. It’s the eccentric part that’s the most important, after all.

And confession time: it’s the eccentric version you see in the instruction GIF above because no one here at StrengthLog is athletic enough to do the full version.

2. Glute Bridge

The glute bridge is your entry ticket to glute land. You can do it as a stand-alone butt builder or for waking your glutes up before your actual workout. Bridges are fantastic if you’re having a hard time activating them; you’ll find that you do, in fact, have a butt.

Once standard bridges feel easy, it’s time to make it harder.

Each step increases load, range, or stability demands without you having to use any equipment.

3. Bodyweight Leg Curl

Bodyweight leg training is very quad-dominant. You can do squats, lunges, pistols, and step-ups until the cows come home, and you’ll end up with big and muscular quads but hamstrings that look like string cheese.

Yes, you have the Nordic hamstring, which is perhaps the single best bodyweight hamstring exercise there is, but not even the eccentric-only variant is beginner-friendly. The bodyweight leg curl, however, is. And it’ll only cost you the sum of a pair of socks.

Your hamstrings have two jobs: bending the knee (knee flexion) and extending the hip (moving your leg back). A neat thing about this exercise is that you do both simultaneously. You keep your hips bridged up (extension) and curl your heels in (flexion). Like combining a machine leg curl and a stiff-legged deadlift into one.

If you find standard bodyweight leg curls too easy, you can lift one leg in the air and do the curl part with only the other leg. You’ll notice it becomes a lot more challenging and that you need quite a bit of core stability to stop your hips from rotating.

4. Heel Raise

Heel raises are a basic but effective exercise for the calves, the most stubborn muscle group known to man, often tacked onto the end of a leg day workout with a few half-hearted bounces.

Since you’re dealing with bodyweight training, you have to be smarter than gravity. Your calves walk you around all day, so they don’t care very much about your weight for a few extra heel raises.

First of all, if you are doing calf raises on the flat floor, you need a step so you can drop your heels below the level of your toes. The lower part of the movement is the most important, so only going halfway down is like robbing yourself of 50% of your potential gains.⁸

Second, you probably want to do one-legged heel raises. By taking one leg away, you instantly double the load on the working calf. Two-legged raises can be good for high reps, beginners, warming up, or finishing off the muscle, but eventually, they’ll become too easy.

That all being said, I have to be honest. The calves are very strong and can take a lot of punishment. You’ll keep them strong and in good shape with heel raises, but unless you add weight in some way, by holding a dumbbell in one hand, for example, you have a hard time building strength and muscle over time.

Core

Your core, that’s the muscles around your midsection that keep your spine stable and your organs in place. And gives you that six-pack look.

1. Leg Raise

The leg raise comes in different variations, and no matter which one you do, you’re training your core, from your six-pack abs to the obliques at the sides to the deep transverse abdominis, with some help from the hip flexors.

Speaking of variations:

2. Plank

Planks are one of the best no-equipment core exercises for building ab strength, endurance, and stability, and come in several variations.

Eventually, you might outgrow regular planks, too. If you can do the regular plank for five minutes, I don’t see many benefits of doing it for even longer, unless you’re training specifically for a personal record in holding the plank as long as possible.

Instead, even if we’re talking bodyweight training, you’ll want to add some form of resistance. If weights are out of the question, have a child or a cat sit on your upper back. Then it’s still bodyweight training, even if it’s not just your bodyweight.

Can planks build muscle? Yes, but while they are great for anti-movement strength, they aren’t the very best for 3D abs on their own. You eventually need to add exercises involving flexion (like leg raises or crunches).

3. Hollow Body Hold

A little-known exercise on commercial gym floors, the hollow body hold (or just hollow hold) is a staple in athletic training and the bread and butter of gymnasts. You know, those people with cores that look carved out of marble and the strength to back it up.

Exercises like crunches train your abs through flexion. All well and good, but you want anti-extension as well, which hollow holds bring to the table. Basically, when your body wants to arch backward, your abs can keep your spine flat and stable, but to do so, they need that anti-extension strength. And that strength translates into better performance and stability in many sports and compound exercises like squats and overhead presses.

4. Crunch

Your abs have one main job: to pull your ribcage toward your pelvis. And that’s just what you do when you crunch.

For pure ab isolation, they don’t come any better than crunches. Or oblique crunches if you want to target your side abs more.

However, you will soon be able to do a lot of them. And you won’t get bigger and better abs or burn more fat around your midsection by cranking out thousands of crunches.

Losing belly fat is almost all diet, and your abs work like any other muscle group: to grow bigger and stronger, you have to progressively overload them with more weight, not with endless reps.

You can still include crunches in advanced bodyweight training, but for the best ab results, you want to do some more challenging exercises, too (or skip the strict bodyweight-only requirements and add load to your crunches).

5. Dead Bug

The dead bug sounds like a pest control problem, looks like a flailing beetle, but burns in all the right ways if you do it correctly.

Dead bugs teach you how to separate hip movement from spine movement. It’s an anti-extension exercise where you prevent your spine from moving while your arms and legs are flailing about.

It’s also an excellent exercise for the transverse abdominis, your body’s weight belt. When this muscle gets strong, your waist tightens up, your core becomes more stable, and your heavy lifts become both safer and stronger.

6. Copenhagen Plank

The Copenhagen plank forces your adductors (inner thighs) and obliques to work together in a way that no other exercise does.

Standard static Copenhagen planks are tough enough, but you can also add a dynamic element by lowering and raising your hips while in position.

Many people, including coaches, say that doing Copenhagen planks is a great way to prevent groin injuries in sports like soccer and running, but there is little actual evidence that this is the case.⁹ It feels logical that they would, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they do, but research has yet to find such a link.

And if you haven’t done dynamic Copenhagens before, expect soreness (DOMS). The first time I tried them, my adductors were wrecked for a week. Not dangerous, of course, but just be prepared that you might have trouble walking if you go all-out from the get-go.

7. Floor Back Extension / Superman Raise

Two of the best bodyweight exercises for the lower back are the floor back extension and its superhero partner, the Superman raise. They are quite similar, but the latter is a bit more advanced and involves more muscle groups.

Regardless of which you do, your goal isn’t to bend yourself in half backward. You only need to lift a few inches to activate the proper muscles.

Conditioning / Full Body

Short and sweet, this category contains only one exercise. But what an exercise! I’m sure you’ll love it.

1. Burpee

The burpee is a full-body strength and aerobic exercise. It combines a squat, a plank, a push-up, and a vertical jump into one motion.

It was invented in the 1930s by a physiologist named Royal H. Burpee to assess fitness levels. I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend for millions to hate his invention, but here we are.

Burpees work many of the major muscle groups in your body, torch calories, and love them or hate them, no one can deny that they are great for improving both overall strength and muscle endurance in one painful exercise. They won’t build tremendous amounts of muscle mass or improve your 1RM strength in any dramatic way, but that’s not the point of doing them.

Since burpees are very high-intensity, you generally don’t want to do them for traditional sets of 8–10 reps with long breaks. They work best as part of a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) session or as a conditioning finisher after your regular workout.

Regular burpees too easy for you? Too hard? Don’t worry, there are both easier and more challenging variants for you to enjoy:

Level	Variation	Description
Beginner	The Sprawl	Drop down, kick back to a plank, stand up. No push-up, no jump.
Intermediate	Standard Burpee	The classic version described above.
Advanced	Burpee Pull-Up	Do a burpee under a pull-up bar, jump up, and do a pull-up.
Elite	Devil’s Press	Holding a dumbbell in each hand, perform a burpee, then snatch the weights overhead.

Bodyweight Workouts and Training Programs

With the bodyweight exercises we’ve just gone through, you have all you need to create a workout or training program for any kind of fitness goal.

But what if you don’t want to design your own?

Then follow one of ours!

In our workout log app, StrengthLog, you’ll find several great bodyweight workouts and calisthenics programs based around these exercises.

Here are three of the most popular:

1. Beginner Bodyweight Circuit

• Goal: Build functional strength without equipment
• Experience Level: Beginner and up
• Equipment: Bodyweight

What Is It?

Exercise	Rounds	Reps
Bodyweight Squat	2–3	20
Kneeling Push-Up	2–3	10
Glute Bridge	2–3	12
Inverted Row	2–3	8
Plank	2–3	30 seconds
Jumping Jack	2–3	30

• Repeat 2–3 rounds total
• Rest for ≤30 seconds between exercises
• Complete all exercises (the circuit) = 1 round
• Rest 1–2 minutes after each round
• Do this circuit 2–3 times per week

Who Is It For?

This circuit is for anyone, but is especially useful if you:

• Are new to strength training.
• Prefer working out at home.
• Want to build a foundation of strength with your bodyweight.
• Are looking for a quick but effective full-body workout.

2. Beginner Calisthenics Workout Plan

• Goal: Get started with calisthenics and build strength, endurance, and confidence in foundational bodyweight movements.
• Experience Level: Beginner and up
• Equipment: Bodyweight

What Is It?

Workout 1

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Push-Up	4	8–15
Pull-Up / Inverted Row	4	Max reps/8–15
Bodyweight Squat	3	20–25
Lunge	3	10–12/leg
Hanging Leg Raise	3	12–15

Workout 2

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Dips	4	8–15
Pull-Up / Inverted Row	4	Max reps/8–15
Step-Up	3	20–25
Box Jump	3	10–12
Plank	3	45–60 seconds

Workout 3

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Bulgarian Split Squat	4	8–15
Push-Up	4	Max reps
Pull-Up / Inverted Row	3	Max reps/8–15
Glute Bridge	3	10–12
Core Twist	3	12–15

Who Is It For?

The beginner calisthenics program is for:

• Anyone looking to get into calisthenics without any prior experience.
• Those who can train three times per week.
• Trainees who want to learn basic bodyweight movements and get stronger.

3. Intermediate Calisthenics Workout Plan

• Goal: All-round bodyweight fitness
• Experience Level: Intermediate and up
• Equipment: Bodyweight

You train four days per week following this schedule:

1. Upper Body (Push & Pull)
2. Lower Body + Core
3. Upper Body (Push & Pull)
4. Lower Body + Core

Which weekdays you train and which you use as rest days doesn’t matter; you can mix and match them to fit your schedule.

Here is a snapshot of a week of training (the in-app version has built-in progression and periodization):

Workout 1: Upper Body (Push & Pull)

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Push-Up	4	8–15
Pull-Up	4	Max reps
Dips	3	Max reps
Inverted Row	3	10–15
L-Sit Hold	3	20–30 seconds
Plank to Push-Up	3	12 reps

Finisher Superset:

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Push-Up	2	Max reps in 90 seconds
Crunch	2	Max reps in 30 seconds

Workout 2: Lower Body + Core

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Bulgarian Split Squat	4	8–12
Step-Up	4	8–12/leg
Nordic Hamstring Eccentric	3	6–10
One-Legged Glute Bridge	3	8–12/side
Calf Raise	3	20–25
Hanging Leg Raise	3	12–15
Core Twist	3	20

Finisher:

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Jumping Lunge	2	20

Workout 3: Upper Body (Push & Pull)

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Push-Up	4	8–15
Chin-Up	4	Max reps
Dips	3	Max reps
Towel Row	3	10–12
Pike Push-Up	3	10–12
Superman Raise	3	10–12

Finisher:

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Dead Hang	2	Goal: 1 minute

Workout 4: Lower Body + Core

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Bodyweight Squat	4	20–25
Lunge	4	10–12/leg
Box Jump	3	10
Bodyweight Curl	3	10–12
Calf Raise	3	20–30
Hollow Body Crunch	3	15–20
Plank with Shoulder Taps	3	15 reps

Finisher:

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Burpees	2	15

Who Is It For?

The intermediate calisthenics program is for:

• Trainees with at least several months of serious calisthenics training experience.
• Those who have time for four workouts per week.
• Those who are serious about calisthenics and want a structured program to get better.

Follow These Workouts and Programs in StrengthLog

These programs and many more are in the StrengthLog workout tracker app. The app is free to use, forever, with no ads.

• The Beginner Bodyweight Circuit and the Beginner Calisthenics Workout Plan are also 100% free to follow in the app.
• The Intermediate Calisthenics Workout Plan is a premium program with built-in progression and advanced periodization, which means it requires a subscription to follow in-app.

We offer all new users a free 14-day premium trial. You can activate it in the app without any strings attached.

Download it and start tracking your gains today!

Final Rep

Wrapping up our tour of almost four dozen of the best bodyweight exercises, I hope you found some favorites to help you reach your goals.

You carry your body everywhere you go, which means your training equipment is always with you. And now you don’t need to wait for the guy in the stringer tank top to finish curling in the squat rack.

The beauty of bodyweight training is that progress is always within reach.

Now go lift yourself up.

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Or, you can view our full list of strength training exercises here.

Last reviewed: 2025-11-28

References

1. J Exerc Sci Fit. 2017 Jun;15(1):37-42. Low-load bench press and push-up induce similar muscle hypertrophy and strength gain.
2. J Strength Cond Res. 2011 Feb;25(2):497-503. The effect of position on the percentage of body mass supported during traditional and modified push-up variants.
3. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 24(12):p 3404-3414, December 2010. Surface Electromyographic Activation Patterns and Elbow Joint Motion During a Pull-Up, Chin-Up, or Perfect-Pullup™ Rotational Exercise.
4. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 33(8):p 2019-2052, August 2019. Resistance Training for Older Adults: Position Statement From the National Strength and Conditioning Association.
5. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2020) 19, 195 – 203. Gluteus Maximus Activation During Common Strength and Hypertrophy Exercises: A Systematic Review.
6. Eur J Sport Sci. 2024 Aug;24(8):1086-1094. A kinetic analysis of four high velocity, horizontally focused step-up variations for acceleration training.
7. Br J Sports Med. 2019 Nov;53(21):1362-1370. Including the Nordic hamstring exercise in injury prevention programmes halves the rate of hamstring injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 8459 athletes.
8. J Strength Cond Res. 2023 Sep 1;37(9):1746-1753. Greater Gastrocnemius Muscle Hypertrophy After Partial Range of Motion Training Performed at Long Muscle Lengths.
9. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2025 Aug 19;35(8):e70119. The Copenhagen Adduction Exercise Effect on Sport Performance and Injury Prevention: A Systematic Review With Meta‐Analysis.