Body Weight Workouts To Get Ripped
Best Body Weight Workouts
When people think about how to get ripped, a lot of them think that you need all of the fancy equipment that you can only find in a gym. Thankfully, that is not the case. You can get an amazing workout using nothing but your own body weight.
If you are looking for the lean muscular look, you need to do 2 things.
1 – Burn Calories
2 – Build/Tone Muscle
Body Weight Workouts to get ripped combine both of these components, working the muscles while keeping the heart rate elevated. There are a few ways to do this.
Technique # 1 – Doing back to back exercises, leaving very little break in between them. An example of this would be doing regular pushups, wide pullups, military pushups, chin ups, etc…going right from one exercise to the other.
Technique # 2 – Do your core work between sets of your other exercises. This will key you from sitting around letting your heart rate drop. A quick example of this would be; Standard pushups, crunches, wide pullups, planks, military pushups, side planks, chin ups………. Instead of doing an exercise, taking a break, doing another, taking another break, your are going from exercise to exercise, keeping the heart rate up, preferably in your target heart range (we’ll cover target heart range in a minute).
Both of these techniques will help if you want to know how to get ripped. In both situations, you are not sitting around resting between sets. Obviously, take time if for water when you need it. Do not sit around resting though. The goal for workouts to get ripped is to be working out in your target heart rate, which is fairly easy to calculate.
Step 1 – Find your Max Heart Rate (MHR). To do this, simply use the formula 220 – your age. If you are 20 years old, it would be 220 – 20 = 200
Step 2 – Multiply your MHR by .65. This will give you 65% of your MHR, which in this case is 130
Step 3 – Multiply your MHR by .85, which will give you 85% of it, which is 170 in this example.
The number that you got during steps 2 and 3 form your target heart range. For a 20 year old, that range is 130 – 170. Working out in your THR is very important if you really want to know how to get ripped.
So, what kind of body weight exercises can you do that to make workouts to get ripped? Here are some great, simply (not to be confused with easy) exercises.
Pushups, using varied hand positions and angles; standard, military, wide, diamond, incline and decline are some examples. Pushups are a great way to work your triceps, shoulders, chest and core.
Pullups, using varied hand positions; standard, reverse (chin ups), wide, close, and alternating are some examples. Pullups are great for your biceps, back, shoulders, lats(to develop the V shape) and core.
Squats are one of the most effective leg exercises that you can do. For safety, I always recommend having your feet slightly wider than shoulder width. You can play around with depth, weight shifting and speed to mix up your squats. Also, add in wall sits, mixing up the angle that you are at. Squats are a great overall leg exercise, with primary focus on the quadriceps.
Bridges (hip raises). A lot of people neglect their hamstrings. This leads to muscle imbalances in your legs, and often pulled hamstrings. Lay on your back and bring your heels in towards your butt. Press your feet into the ground and raise your hips until you have a straight line from your knees to your head. You can hold this for a while, or treat it as a set/rep exercise. A great variation of this is to keep your body straight, and alternate straightening your legs.
A few more great moves for your body weight workouts include jumping jacks, squat thrusts, mountain climbers, running, and anything else you can come up with to work your major muscle groups while keeping you in your target heart range.
The easiest thing to do is find a fitness program that will show you what to do. There are a lot out there, but the most effective ones if you want to get ripped include, and use minimal equipment, keeping it more like a body weight workouts are; P90X, Insanity, The Asylum and TurboFire. You can check out more on the Fitness Products Page.
