It’s time to stop stressing if your workout space isn’t as ample as you’d like.
Even if you are in a small apartment, your bodyweight workout doesn’t have to suffer. If there are tons of people at the gym, don’t fret.
There are many bodyweight exercises that you can perform to enhance those chest and arms muscles, hamstrings, and glutes in a smaller space.
If you have enough space to spread out a yoga mat, you have enough space to work out. This is fantastic news for anyone who often travels for work and is constantly in a hotel room.
Pack your yoga mat because our bodyweight workouts are ready for you.
Things to Consider When Exercising in Small Spaces
Before we dive into some of the best bodyweight exercises to perform in small spaces, let’s review some things to consider when you exercise in a small space.
Whether you are at a crowded gym or away for work in a hotel room, spatial awareness is your friend.
Take note of who or what is around you, and make sure you have enough space if you were to put your arms straight out to the side.
You don’t want to kick anyone in the leg when you step back for your lunge or smack someone in the face as you start doing jumping jacks. That is not the way to make friends at the gym.
Also, you don’t want to hit a piece of furniture and injure yourself in a small space.
Make sure all of your movements can be performed within your given area, and change your workout routine to perform different exercises that will work better for your allotted space.
Are Bodyweight Exercises Legit?
We’re glad you asked. We take bodyweight training seriously at Calisthenics Gear, and we even ranked some of the best calisthenics programs.
The truth is that using your body weight for exercising provides strength, endurance, and it’s cost-effective.
There’s no need to buy tons of weights and workout equipment when you have the best gear right at your fingertips–your body weight.
You can get a full-body workout by varying different bodyweight exercises and creating a workout schedule for your week.
More advanced calisthenics athletes sometimes plateau as they are limited by their body weight and can’t push higher at some points.
However, it takes quite a while before that happens, and your excellent physique that occurs in the meantime proves bodyweight exercises are legit.
Best Bodyweight Exercises for Small Spaces
We’ve done some teasing, but now it’s time to introduce you to the exercises you can perform in small spaces.
Get out your pen and paper and jot these down.
- Jumping jacks or star jumps – Jump and bring your feet apart while bringing your arms up and then jump back with your feet together, bringing your arms down to your side.
- High knees – Run in place and drive your knees up as high as you can.
- Mountain climbers – Hands placed on the floor in a push-up position, alternate bringing in one knee at a time like you are running.
- Burpees – Everyone’s favorite. Pick your variety and go.
- Push-ups
- Wide push-ups – Performed with arms placed on the floor further than shoulder-width apart, push down, and then back up.
- Diamond push-ups – Hands placed together in a diamond shape before performing a push-up work your chest and shoulders in a compound exercise.
- Narrow push-ups – Place hands close together under shoulders for tricep work with this push-up.
- Reverse hand push-ups – Instead of placing your fingers forward the way you are facing, rotate your hands and point fingers to the feet before performing a push-up. Don’t worry. It’s supposed to be complicated.
- Lunges
- Reverse lunges – Step back with one foot and press down into a lunge with your knee hovering over the floor
- Squats
- Pistol squats – Squat with one leg straight out in front of you and lower down with the other leg as far as you can go. It’s complicated, so practice, practice, practice!
- Squat jumps – Jump into the air and land in a squat position.
- Box jumps – Jump onto a box and then jump back down.
- Tricep dips – Place hands on a coffee table or chair and bend your elbows as you lower your body down with your feet shoulder-width part and knees bent.
- Plank
- Side plank – Stack your hips and lift onto one elbow and hold as long as you can.
- Up and Down Planks – Place an elbow on the floor one at a time while in plank position and then come back up one at a time.
- Wall sits – With your back against a wall and slide down into a seated position and hold.
- Crunches
- Bicycle Crunches – Alternate pulling one knee in at a time with the other leg straight and crunching towards the bent knee and then switch.
- Sit-ups – Lying on the floor, lift your upper body to your bent knees and lower back down.
- Superman – Lying flat on your stomach, bring your arms back and lift the chest off the floor and then come back down.
- Leg Lifts – Lying on your back with your legs together and straight, slowly lift your legs until they are above your hips and lower back down.
- Lying Hip Raises – With your feet flat on the ground and lying on your back, lift your glutes up until your body is in one line from shoulder to knee and then lower back down slowly.
- Scissor jumps – Start in a lunge position and jump straight up and switch to the other leg in front in a lunge.
- Leg extensions – Raise a padded bar by placing your legs under the bar and lifting up.
- Pull-ups – Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip and drive your body up until your chin comes up over the bar and lower back down.
- Chin-ups – Same as above except you need to use an underhand grip to activate different muscle groups.
More Bodyweight Workouts
Now that you know some of the best bodyweight exercises that can be performed in a confined space, there are quite a few full-body workouts available as well. Let’s take a look.
There’s an App for That
Isn’t there always an app? We love it because there are many calisthenics and fitness apps available right from your mobile device.
In case you missed it, we did a review of some of the best calisthenics programs, and plenty of them are available via an app.
These programs give you a schedule that fits your needs and space. It’s the easiest and most inexpensive way to get fit right at home.
Full Body Circuit Training
While full-body circuit training is essential for your workout, it’s crucial to change your routine so that your body doesn’t get complacent.
Change up your exercises every day to promote muscle growth and increase recovery for muscles previously worked.
Ensure that your workouts engage muscle groups for the upper body, lower body, core, and cardio every time. Maybe start with 20 seconds of jumping jacks, followed by 20 seconds of high knees.
Then get your lower body involved by doing 20 scissor jumps and then 20 jump squats.
Finish with 10 push-ups of your choice and 30 seconds of crunches. Got all that?
As they say in the shampoo world, lather, rinse and repeat up to 10 rounds. You’re going to be fit in no time.
Split
It’s possible to do a split workout when you are doing bodyweight exercises.
Schedule your workouts so that your week is split and your upper body starts the week, then move to the core, lower body, and finally cardio.
Circle back around once you have completed it all. The idea behind this is that you work each area intensely and then have several days ahead to rest that particular muscle group.
Complete a Challenge
A little competition is just what we need to give us some motivation.
The best part of a challenge is that you are competing against yourself. Sometimes that is the most challenging competition we have.
If you have selected an online app, there are usually many challenges offered. They are an excellent way to get into shape, and they are fun. Here are some examples.
10 to 1 Workout
With this challenge, pick a few exercises and start with 10 reps of each.
Once complete, subtract one rep and do them again. Keep going until you reach one rep. Fun, right?
100 Challenge
It’s essential with this challenge to start with an exercise that you are comfortable performing because you are going to do a lot of it.
Choose your exercise and then work up to doing 100 reps of it in one set.
Keep in mind this is all about progression, so don’t go for 100 right out of the gate. Slow and steady, people.
100’s
Pick three or four exercises and start with 40 reps of each per week.
Each week work your way down by increments of ten.
You will end up doing 100 reps of each exercise once you have worked your way down to 10 reps.
Small Space? No problem.
We’ve proven that small spaces don’t mean less working out.
Bodyweight workouts for small spaces just mean you have to use some creativity in your workouts.
Since bodyweight training requires little to no equipment, as long as you have space for your yoga mat, you can get to working on that chiseled physique.
Think about the people in prison. They work out constantly in a jail cell and make it work.
Don’t let your tiny hotel room bring constraints to your fitness routine. Hit the ground running, in place, of course, with some high knees, and then bust out some push-ups or sit-ups.
Before long, you will wonder why you ever needed a considerable room to work out. Happy training!
