Lose weight build muscle workout
Every exercise involved utilizes multiple muscle groups, gets your heart rate pumping, and burns tons of calories.
Essentially, circuit weight training, or circuit bodyweight training, burns more calories than interval training, and that in turn burns WAY more calories than steady cardio. When you strength train, you burn calories. Then, your body needs to spend hours and hours afterwards rebuilding your muscles, which in turns burns even more calories (they call this the ‘afterburn effect).
As we cover in the Academy and throughout Nerd Fitness, our nutrition will account for 80-90% of our success or failure when it comes to getting in shape, might as well spend our time exercising being efficient and strong, right?
If you’re trying to lose weight, spending hours doing cardio on a treadmill is a really crappy, boring, inefficient use of your time.
If you’re a busy person (and I know you are), why spend hours doing something when you can be MORE efficient and build a better physique with less time?
Enter the beginner bodyweight workout.
I’m going to take you through a basic workout today that can be completed in your house, apartment, out at a park, in your basement, on the moon, wherever.
As always, make sure you are cleared by your personal physician for physical activity before attempting these exercises.
Beginner Body Weight Workout
This is a basic body weight circuit.
In a circuit routine, you’ll do each exercise in succession without a break in between (if you’re able). Once you’ve finished all exercises in the circuit, do it again.
If you’re still able after the 2nd run through, go for a third.
Because all of these exercises come one after another, you’re bound to get tired – and that’s okay! We all start somewhere.
It’s better to stop and take a break than to do an exercise incorrectly. If you can’t do all three circuits without stopping, great! That gives you something to work towards.
Before you start, don’t forget WARM UP – Never ever ever ever forget to warm up. Make sure to get your heart rate pumping and get your muscles warm or you’re just asking for injury.
You can run in place, jump rope, do a few push ups, pedal on a stationary bike, do some punches and kicks, jog up and down your stairs, and/or twist and swing your arms and legs to get them moving! Give it about 5 minutes, and don’t wear yourself out completely, but get your heart rate elevated and little bit of sweat never hurt anybody.
After the warm up, here is exactly what you need to do:
- 20 bodyweight squats
- 10 push ups
- 20 walking lunges – 10 each leg
- 10 dumbbell rows (using a gallon milk jug or another weight)
- 15 second plank
- 30 jumping jacks
After you’ve completed your workout, do some stretches. All of your muscles have been contracted from lifting and need to be stretched back out and rebuilt.
For either the body weight squats or lunges, if you can’t do them properly yet, it’s okay to put your hand on a support to keep your balance.
For the body weight squats, think of it like sitting back into a chair. If you can sit down onto a chair, and then stand immediately right back up without having to lean forward, you are in balance.
For the lunges, keep your eyes ahead and your upper body completely vertical. I had a slight bend at times in the video due to trying to exercise and explain at the same time.
I used a milk jug for my dumbbell, but you can use whatever is heavy enough for you. Find something that is challenging to lift 10 times in a row.
Do this routine 2-3 times a week, but never on consecutive days. You don’t build muscle when you’re exercising, you build muscle when you’re resting.
Generally, I try not to do a strength training routine (of the same muscle groups) two days in a row, as your muscles need plenty of time to recover.
Along with this routine, you need to make sure you’re eating properly!
A good workout and crappy diet will not get you anywhere.
Lots of real foods (vegetables, protein, healthy fats). Eat natural, whole foods whenever possible, and leave the soda, candy, and junk food out of your system.
Your diet is at least 80% of your success or failure. I’m not kidding when I say that. If you don’t develop a healthier relationship with food, no amount of exercise will get you there.
- Sugar is worse than Jar Jar Binks – cut back on sugar and liquid calories wherever you can. The stuff is in everything!
- Swap out the grains on your plate for vegetables when you can
- Make sure you get enough protein each day – this helps with rebuilding muscles and things like that.
Help Me Help You
Thanks for reading up to this point – I hope you had a great time getting stronger and challenging yourself in a new way. Strength Training is one of the pillars of Nerd Fitness – it makes literally every part of life better, will improve your physique, help you lose fat and build strength and muscle, and it can be done quickly, anywhere.
Stick with it! Do this routine a few times a week and note how much better you get at it.
If doing just one circuit of the workout was really challenging, read the PS below. We’ve got you covered!
-Steve
PS: If you’re looking for tons of bodyweight workout plans (with different levels of difficulty), high definition video demonstrations of each exercise, boss battles, a full questing system, more than a dozen more workouts, and a full guide on how to eat properly, check out the Nerd Fitness Academy!
