You might not believe it, but you can get fitter, stronger and leaner with just bodyweight exercises and minimal equipment. However, following a program that has you repeating the same exercises in the same way (technique, reps and sets) will quickly make you plateau and stall with regards to your goals. You have to exercise in a way that is progressively more challenging to achieve long-term success. This is slightly more difficult when it comes to working out at home or with minimal equipment as you can’t always easily add more weight or resistance to an exercise like you can in a gym. You also don’t want to be always adding on more reps and sets as this can just lead to overly boring lengthy workout.
The best way to reach your goal with bodyweight workouts is to gradually make exercise harder with a combination of higher volume, harder exercise variants and advance training methods. That all sounds really complex, but I’ve created this bodyweight + mini-band workout plan to help you put it all into practice.
How To Do This Workout
The workout plan consists of two full bodyweight + mini band routines. The idea of this workout plan is that you start by working through the initial exercises. However, once you are able to complete an exercise for the reps and sets in the plan, you can move onto the progression exercise instead.
For example:
- If you complete 2 sets of 20 reps of the Hip Thrust the first time you do Workout A then the next time you do the workout you will do 2 sets of 20 reps of the progression exercise Mini Band Hip Thrust.
- However, if you can only manage 2 sets of 15 reps of the Incline Push-Up then the next time the workout, you’ll try to get to 20 reps or as many possible of the same exercise.
Rest 30 to 60 seconds between each exercise. Feel free to perform the workouts as circuits or supersets. Most importantly keep track of your workouts, so you know what you what you did last and monitor your progression.
The Workouts
Click the exercise title for exercise demonstrations.
Workout A
| Sets x Reps | Initial Exercise | Progression 1 | Progression 2 |
| 2 x 20 | Hip Thrust | Mini Band Hip Thrust | Hip Thrust with Abduction |
| 2 x 20 | Incline Push-Up | Push-Up | Decline Push-Up |
| 2 x 20 | Reverse Lunge | Curtsy Lunge | Band Curtsy Lunge |
| 2 x 20 | Renegade Rows | Renegade Rows with Rotation | – |
| 2 x 20 | Straight Leg Bridge | Hamstring Walkout | Elevated Hamstring Walkout |
| 1 x 20 | Crunches | Bicycle Crunches | Double Crunch |
| 1 x 20 | Modified Russian Twist (Feet on Ground) | Russian Twist (Feet Off Ground) | Advanced Russian Twist (Bring Leg In) |
Workout B
Adding in Cardio
Cardio is absolutely optional with this plan and you can do whatever you like in terms of activity. With regards to High Intensity Interval Training (or HIIT) cardio; I suggest no more than 2 sessions of 20 minutes per week as more can really start to impact your recovery and increase your stress levels. Low Intensity Stead State (or LISS) cardio is much easier to recover from and is also great for fat loss for example a long brisk walk or 30 to 60 minutes on a bike. An effective way to incorporate cardio is to add it in progressively – using low intensity and shorter sessions to begin with than gradually adding longer or higher intensity session the nearer you get to your goal.
You can set up the workout frequency as you like (cardio is optional). Below are a few suggestions:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Workout A | Cardio | Rest Day | Workout B | Cardio | Rest Day | Rest Day |
or
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Workout A | Workout B | Cardio | Workout A | Workout B | Cardio | Rest Day |
or
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Workout A | Workout B | Workout A | Workout B | Workout A | Workout B | Rest Day |
You can do cardio on the same day as well but do Workout A/B first.
