Gymless Exercise Options - Upper Body

Recently a friend asked for my opinion on some exercises one can perform at home with little or no equipment. There a many body weight exercises you can do at home without the luxury of gym equipment  The bonus of some of these exercises is the ability to tweak it to either make it more difficult as your conditioning improves or to provide different combinations to keep your workout interesting.

My friend was more interested in upper body routines. 

Here are my current favourites to do on a rainy or bad weather day( hello up coming Boston winter which i am dreading) or during those months in which you're on a tight budget and a gym member ship sounds like a luxury 

You can find picture or animated demonstrations of all the moves at google.com

1. Push Ups Variations – works chest and Triceps

a       a. With feet elevated on a chair/stool/couch anything with elevation

b. Handstand Push Ups – Lean on Wall for balance

c. Spider-man Push Up

2. Planks – Great for ABS! 

3. Planking Variations

   a. Plank walk up to Push Up 

   b. Plank with leg or arm lift ***Difficult****

  c. Sideways plank with either a leg or arm lift…***Difficult***

4. Tricep Kickbacks 

5. Burpees – EXCELLENT cardio = Squat + Push Up + Vertical Jump

6. Squat and Press 

7. Dips Using a chair – works on triceps

8. Rows

9. Other Row Variations ****Difficult

a. Single row

b. Leg Lift Row

10. Lunges with Hammer Curls…using your free weights or milk gallons

Free weights can be used with some of these moves. Since this is about exercising on a budget, a great option to buying free weights is using any empty liquid gallons like the milk or water gallons...filling them with water..and viola...a home made free weight apparatus ^_^

You can find picture or animated demonstrations of all the moves at google.com

Happy Work Out