Start building muscle at home with minimal training

Are you ready to build a more muscular and leaner body at home? Whether you're tight on money or time, you can still build muscle mass at home. You can easily achieve this with minimal training or just your bodyweight. If you can, invest in a pair of dumbbells, resistance bands, and a medicine ball. You can start with bodyweight exercises and progress to resistance bands and dumbbells over time. Perhaps, as time passes, you will acquire more and more equipment if you have space, and you'll end up having your own mini-gym at home.

You probably imagine that working out at home means doing pull-ups, sit-ups, and push-up. That doesn't sound too exciting and these exercises can get boring over time. But you can challenge yourself with just bodyweight exercises. Use the following tips to help you develop your home-based bodyweight workout.

• Rep countdown: For more efficient results, perform sets of descending reps. For example, do an exercise set of 10 reps, then another one of 9 reps, and so on all the way down to 1 rep. As your muscles begin to fatigue, the workload is reduced, so you get enough recovery to develop a decent volume of exercise.
• Be an animal: Remember those childhood movements like the crab walk or the bear crawl? Those made training fun. You may look funny doing them as a grownup, but these exercises will definitely engage your core and work towards increasing your mobility and endurance.
• Drop sets: You can do drop sets with just bodyweight lifts as well. Begin with a body position that makes the exercise more difficult to perform and then simply drop to a less difficult position that allows you to perform more repetitions. For example, when performing a push-up, you can start with your hands touching each other and then move them to shoulder width. Stop before you reach failure and place your hands on an inclined bench or seat and continue to perform push-ups to failure.

Bodyweight Spiderman Workout

Once you get a hang of these tips, it’s time to apply them in your workouts at home. The following workout is perfect for building muscle and strength with just your bodyweight. The Spiderman Bodyweight Workout has you covered for tip #2 – you’re already doing it!

1. Feet-Elevated Pike Pushup

This is a serious exercise for your core and upper body strength. It works your arm muscles quite intensely, so get ready for the arm burn.

Sets: 4 | Reps: 12 | Rest: 60 seconds

• Get into a push-up position and place tour feet on a bench or another stable elevated object.
• Lower your body until your head is on the floor and push yourself up, while keeping your ab muscles contracted at all times.
• Repeat!

2. Alternating Split Squat Jump

This is a HIIT exercise that will help you burn many calories while building your agility and improving your vertical jump. Make sure you keep your core tight and back neutral for effective results.

Sets: 4 | Reps: 10 (each leg) | Rest: 60 seconds

• Stand upright and put your hands behind your head.
• Take a step forward into a split stance.
• Descend into a split squat so that your front thigh is parallel to the floor.
• Push up from the balls of your feet rapidly to jump up as high as you can. Switch your legs midair!
• Land in the opposite stance and immediately descend back down into a squat.
• Repeat.

3. Spiderman Crawl

This amazing bodyweight exercise builds strength and targets your abs and core. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced lifter, this exercise will definitely challenge you a bit.

Sets: 6 | Reps: 10 (each leg) | Rest: 30 seconds

• Begin in a prone position and support your weight on your hands and toes.
• Keep your feet together and your body straight, and bend your arms to a 90 degrees angle.
• Raise one of your feet off of the ground and externally rotate it to bring the knee towards your elbow.
• Return and repeat with the other leg.

4. Single-Leg Box Squats

This exercise targets your quads and it's a perfect progression exercise for the pistol squat. However, this alone helps you build strength and balance while helping you identify muscle imbalances.

Sets: 6 | Reps: 6 (each leg) | Rest: 60 seconds

• Sit upright on a bench or chair with your back neutral and naturally arched.
• Extend your arms straight out in front of you at shoulder level.
• Raise one foot off the floor in front of your body.
• Keep your torso straight and push your body up to a standing position with the lifted foot.
• Sit back down and repeat!

5. Alternating Side Plank

This is a great exercise to add variety to your workout and improve your balance, core strength, and help you spot if you have any muscle imbalances.

Sets: 4 | Reps: 5 (each side) | Rest: 30 seconds

• Lie on your side with your forearm on the ground, perpendicular to your body. Keep your body straight and pull back your shoulders.
• Raise the other arm up, squeeze your glutes and don’t let your hips drop.
• Twist your body towards the floor lowering your arm and bring it back up as you straighten your body.
• Switch arms and repeat!

Conclusion

This workout along with the tips above is enough to help you start training at home using just your bodyweight. You get a total body workout out of it and if you want to kick it up a notch, you can invest in a resistance band. You can perform these exercises with a resistance band to increase the difficulty level of this exercise and to add an opposing force in order to stimulate muscle growth.

Building muscle at home is very easy. You need to be creative and not afraid to experiment with various exercise. Have fun as you train like Spiderman and don’ t forget to take your protein shake around your workout to ensure your success.