5 Bodyweight Exercises to Build Muscle and Burn Calories

Bodyweight exercises should always be the first form of resistance training when you start your fitness journey. If you’re not doing bodyweight exercises, you’re not enabling your muscles to become used to the movements, resistance, and overall form.

These exercises will allow you to activate the muscles and help with warm-ups once you’ve moved on to weights.

---

Bodyweight exercises for strength and burning calories

The following are five exercises you can incorporate into your workout to gain strength and burn calories.

1) Burpee

Undoubtedly, burpees are one of the most effective exercises for burning calories. You can focus on half-burpees if you’ve never done burpees before and progress to full burpees once your strength improves.

Moreover, burpees are an exercise you can do with any type of training whether it’s HIIT, EMOM, AMRAP, etc.

Find a guide to doing burpees here.

---

2) Push-up

Push-ups are important for improving strength, especially for the chest and triceps. If you keep your arms wide, you will be able to work on your chest. If you keep them too close to the body, you will be working on your triceps.

In push-ups, there are several variations, such as incline, decline, etc. Ideally, start with normal push-ups, and keep adding variations as you become stronger.

---

3) Mountain Climber

Mountain climbers are an exercise that can help with burning calories and strengthening the core muscles. In this exercise, it’s important to keep your back strong, otherwise the body will not be stable.

In fact, one of the reasons mountain climbers work on the core muscles is because you need to engage your core muscles for proper balance and stability.

You can find a guide for doing mountain climbers here.

---

4) Squat

Bodyweight squats are an important bodyweight exercise. In fact, squats are an essential exercise and are known as the king of leg exercises. They can help with improving strength in the quads, hamstrings, and calves.

If you keep your feet shoulder-width apart, you will work on your quads, and if you keep your feet wider than shoulder width, you will work your hamstrings. If you do toe squats, you will work on your toes.

To burn calories, it’s best to add some jumps to the mix and work with jump squats. You must ensure to land soft so that you do not hurt your knees and do not lock your knees at any point during the jump.

You can find a guide for doing squats here.

---

5) Tuck Jump

Tuck jumps are popular for being an extremely high calorie-burning exercise. When you’re doing tuck jumps, you need to try and get your thighs as close to your chest as possible. Of course, the chest will bend forward as well, but the idea is to jump as high as possible to get the thighs as close as you can.

Like jump squats, you shouldn’t lock your knees when your feet come in contact with the floor. It’s ideal to land soft, and allow your knees and ankles to behave like springs that prepare you for the second rep.

---

Bottom Line

Bodyweight exercises are always recommended, even if you’ve moved to weights. Bodybuilders often use push-ups and pull-ups for their muscles, but they add weight plates or resistance bands to the exercise.

Even fitness coaches and enthusiasts couple bodyweight exercises with weights to create a superset for the muscle groups. It’s important to note that bodyweight exercises aren’t only for beginners; they're for everyone.

However, beginners are advised to begin with bodyweight exercises before moving their way to weight training while keeping bodyweight exercises a part of their workout routine.