Bodyweight Exercises To Warm Up For Weight Loss Workouts

Posted 14 August, 2008 in Fitness Workout

This weight loss workouts works for people that have a limited amount of time to exercise. Reality is that most of us don’t have 6-8 hours per week to workout, nor do we really need it. If you’re a professional athlete, you might need that, but not someone that just wants to lose some fat and tone muscle.

Most people use bodyweight exercises to warm-up. But bodyweight exercises are a great way to improve strength, flexibility and endurance. Not to mention that they help to build muscle. Bodyweight exercises are a form of weight loss workouts used to develop strength and endurance, where the only resistance to movement is supplied by the weight your own body. When completed with other forms of interval training they can help to burn fat in a short amount of time. Consider using the following bodyweight exercises prior to your workout programs and you’ll be able to get in and out of the gym in 45 - 60 minutes, three times per week.

5 bodyweight exercises to warm-up

a) Wall walking - Stand with your back to a wall or tree or anything else you can wall walk down. Make sure you are about 3-4 feet away from the wall. Lean backwards and place your hands on the wall behind you. Slowly move your hands down the wall until your hands hit the floor. Arch your back and come up to your tippy-toes as you move further down. THEN, either 1): Turn to your stomach and repeat or 2) Walk BACK UP the wall.

b) The Tower - a yoga position that’s perfect for balance, strengthening your neck and your core. Be sure you know how to bail out of this exercise, so you don’t injure yourself. First ensure you have plenty of room. Once you are in the position and feel like you might fall over, either tuck your head and roll, or make a quick ¼ turn and bring you legs down. Place your head and palms on the ground in the shape of a triangle. Bring you knees up to rest on your elbows. Lean your torso back and use your abdominals to bring your legs up. When you are completely straight, you should feel less pressure on your arms and your weight should be distributed evenly down your body into the ground. Make sure you breathe naturally.

c) Bear Walks – for your arms, back, chest and lower body. These get you out of breath really quickly if you perform them correctly. It’s basically an animal walks. Find a large area to do this exercise. Put all your weigh on your hands and feet. Bring your right hand and left foot forward and then your left hand and right foot. Start RUNNING like this on all fours. Keep going until you’re out of breath.

d) Press Ups - also known as a push-up. This fat burning exercise is performed in a prone position, lying horizontal and face down. Raise and lower the body using the arms. Push ups develop the pectoral and triceps muscles. There’s also some development of the deltoids. To develop other arm, chest, shoulder and back muscles, you can perform variations of the push-up. Planche press-ups are completed with the feet elevated. Boxer’s push-ups are completed while wearing boxing gloves. This means the exercise is done on your knuckles without using your wrists.

e) Knee Jump – this fat burning exercise work the hamstrings and develop some explosive power. Start the exercise by kneeling on the ground. Make sure that you feet are flat and that you butt is resting on your calves. Look forward at all times. To initiate the exercise, swing your arms back and then forward immediately.

As you can see, bodyweight exercises are the best exercises to get functional use of your entire body. After you finish these exercises, you can move into weight loss workouts and do at least 3-4 fat burning exercise that performed twice each with minimum rest between each. This not only cuts your workout time, but maximizes results. This way you only need 20-25 minutes to complete your fitness exercise program.

If you only have 30-45 minutes for your workout and you spend it all on a cardio machine, then you won’t have time to train the rest of your muscles and sculpt your body. It’s fast, it works, and it’s fun!

Check out more workout programs at Workouts that Burn Fat and Tone Muscle

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