My Favorite Bodyweight Exercises - Part 1

There are some exercises that I commonly see men doing, but rarely see women doing. Because of my competitive nature, this instantly makes me want to do those same exercises.

So I thought I'd write a series of posts about some of my favorite bodyweight exercises. Why are these my favorites? Not only are they great exercises that work multiple muscle groups, but frankly some of them just look old school and cool. When a woman does them, and does them well, she will generally earn the respect of both the men AND the women around her. At least, that's been my experience!

The first, and it's a classic, is the push-up. Whenever I talk about push-ups, invariably a man will say, "do you do girl push-ups or man push-ups." I have to roll my eyes! There are two kinds of basic push-ups: from the knees, and from the toes. Your goal, of course, is to be able to work towards doing your push-ups from the toes.

In August 2008, I had my husband take a video of me doing push-ups (from the toes), so I could see my form. At the time, I struggled to do 6. But as I improved my strength and, more importantly, practiced push-ups, I got better at them. Now, the most I've done in a row without stopping is 34, but I've done more than 50 if I break them up into sets. Last summer I was at a town event, and the army had a booth there. If you could do as many push-ups as your age, you won a shirt. I couldn't do it then, but I could now!

So if you want to feel strong, cool, and wow the guys at the army booth (particularly if you are a woman), start incorporating push-ups into your workouts. You can do them anywhere, and there are endless variations to make them harder, easier, and even to make them target different muscles. I could explain all the different varieties and how to do them, but the guys (and gals) at this site do it better: http://hundredpushups.com/

Next post, I'll talk about the chin-up!