Boot camp exercise is high-intensity interval training. We are talking about highly intensified full-body training that promotes functional fitness. Accept this challenge and set a time for the workout! Put together your own boot camp workouts by stringing together some of the best boot camp exercises into an intense circuit.
You will get an excellent shape as long as you work hard, but exercise is not all you need. Since nutrition is responsible for roughly 75% of your progress, it is better to control your food habits than to rely on exercise alone.
While you can practice BootCamp workouts at home, we do encourage joining a gym that offers group BootCamp classes. They will also typically offer additional classes such as kickboxing, weight lifting, and TRX circuits. The main benefits of group classes are:
- structured workouts
- community participation
- accountability
Experts say boot camp exercises work like magic. Are you willing to learn how? Hold on; you need to know preliminary exercises and lifestyle habits before you get started. With no need to join a gym at first, you can just do this at your own pace. Spend an hour a day, five times a week, and prepare for your 3-month journey towards metamorphosis.
Here are 5 of the best boot camp exercises and variations you can use to begin your journey.
What Are The 5 Best Boot Camp Exercises?
Losing weight is a considerable tension irrespective of men and women. Let me make it a bit stable by outlining a few of the best exercises. Morning is the best time to exercise. Wake up early and spend the first 30-60 minutes on light activity to prep for your bootcamp workout.
Probably don’t eat a large meal before BootCamp. My favorite pre-workout meal is usually just a protein coffee and/or a shaker bottle full of XTend, which contains amino acids and electrolytes. You don’t usually want to workout hungry, nor is it good to exercise on a full stomach. That being said, let’s dive into the best boot camp exercises.
1. Jumping Jacks, Star Jumps, Burpees
Basically, choose an exercise to move your body through space. Jumping jacks are very simple to do. Star jumps take jacks to the next level. Burpees are the most advanced, as they incorporate the full body.
These exercises mainly focus on body movement. Spend 5 to 10 minutes each boot camp workout using one or more of this type of exercise. This exercise elevates your heart rate and also increases your cardiovascular conditioning.
- For any of these exercises start standing straight, looking forward. Like the letter ‘I’
- For jumping jacks, as you swing your arms straight up overhead, jump both feet out past shoulder width. Like an upside-down ‘Y’
- Finally, return to the starting position and repeat.
- For star jumps, you’ll squat down and then jump up. At the peak of your jump, your arms and legs should be up and out at 45 degrees. Like the letter ‘X’
- Finally, return to the starting position and repeat.
- For burpees, start by putting your hands flat on the floor in front of you, and jump or step your feet back – land either in a plank or flat on the floor.
- Next for burpees, if you’re flat on the floor execute a push-up so you’re back up into a plank.
- To complete the burpee, jump your feet in towards your hands and either jump or stand up.
2. Push Up
Push ups can really build solid chest, shoulder, and triceps strength. By doing strictly bodyweight push ups with good form, you can bump your reps up to 50, 100, or even more. This builds solid upper body stamina and endurance. Feel free at any time to also alter your hand position – staggered, wide grip, close grip, etc…
To dial up the intensity a bit more, you can add a plyometric push at the top by clapping or jumping your hands up onto blocks or plates a few inches off the ground. Perhaps you have a weighted vest to wear or a sandbag you can balance on your back to increase the total weight you’re pushing up.
- Start in a plank position, putting your hands flat on the floor below your shoulders, legs straight out behind.
- Next, bend at the elbows and lower your body to the floor. Don’t relax on the floor, you want to keep tension on the muscles.
- Finally, push yourself back up to the full plank position, or execute whatever push variation you want to use (plyometric, clapping, etc…)
3. Squat
The squat is a functional exercise that gives strength to bones and makes the joints. It is better to practice doing the movement in the morning. Squatting is also suitable for belly fat reduction. Let’s move to the steps. You’ll find that while you might get some conditioning from using any of the best folding exercise bikes, you’ll get the most lower body bang-for-your-buck with squats.
- Keep the lower back straight and mostly flat; do not round your back!
- Keep knees pointing out slightly, do not let them creep inwards as you push yourself up.
- The bar should rest on the upper trap muscles and the rear heads of the shoulders.
- Push from your glutes (butt), not your knees; your hips should raise first and everything else should raise with them.
- Fill your stomach with air before descending and keep it tight with your chest out while pushing up.
- Push up with your eyes focused 30-45 degrees above average eye level.
- Try to keep your knees behind your toes to avoid injury.
4. Sit-Up Variations
The sit-up is a basic core exercise that we usually learn early on as kids. When it comes to integrating this exercise into your workout, there are a number of variations to build a stronger core, than just the basic sit-up. This exercise can be done by holding a medicine ball or any weight, tossing a medicine ball to a partner, or bouncing it off a wall.
- Start lying down on the ground, on your back. Put your feet flat on the floor, knees at 90 degrees.
- With conventional sit-ups, you place your hands beside your ears or behind your head but, don’t lock the hands together. Using variations your arms could be overhead, straight ahead, or holding equipment.
- To execute, use your core to lift your chest to knee height. Don’t hyper-extend so that your body is between your knees.
- Finally, lower back to the floor. If possible don’t lay completely on the floor, stop your upper back an inch short to keep tension on the core.
5. Hollow Hold with Flutters
Flutters, aka “Scissors”, is one of the best exercises for the core. It reduces abdominal pain and also helps to strengthen the entire mid-section. If you can execute flutters using a hollow hold, you’re really pumping up the jam.
- First, lay on the ground with legs bent at the knees. I prefer to keep my arms at my chest to better execute the next step.
- Now, press your lower back firmly into the floor. Your low back should remain pressed to the floor for the duration of the movement.
- Next, raise your upper back off the floor at least an inch or more.
- Extend your arms straight back behind your head, but slightly elevated. (to reduce resistance, extend the arms straight out at your sides, fingers pointing towards toes)
- Extend your legs straight out in front, but slightly elevated.
- At this point you’re in a hollow hold, your body should resemble the profile of a really shallow cup – curving down from the fingers to the lower back and curving back up to the toes.
- Now flutter! Move your arms and legs up and down a few inches fairly rapidly, never letting them touch the floor. Try doing this for 30 seconds, and you’ll see why it’s such a beloved bootcamp exercise.
Honorable mention – rows, pull-ups, and chin-ups
None of the 5 best exercises listed above really targets the back. In fact, we were almost going to put chin-ups at #5 but more athletes are really more concerned with core training than back training, to be honest, it is just as important to include some back training as it is to include chest training with push ups.
Most folks can do rows, but they do require some sort of equipment. You can row a dumbbell, kettlebell, barbells, or hang from a bar to do inverted rows. These work the back using a horizontal movement.
Chin-ups and pull-ups are very similar and target the back using a vertical movement. Simply hang from a bar, a TRX strap, or anything horizontal and flat allowing you some vertical space to pull your body up. Chin-ups place your palms facing towards you and involve more biceps strength. Pull-ups are a little harder, with your palms facing away from you, and really just target the back muscles with of course some tension on the arms.
Final Thoughts
Day to day most of us experience a hectic schedule but spending one hour with a few of the best boot camp exercises is good. You can hope to live longer without dementia, vertigo, osteoporosis, and other health problems. Also, as a former personal trainer and self-admitted “fitness freak”, I recommend everyone to spend at least one hour on health care, including both exercise and relaxation/recovery.
Start exercising today and reduce all your sedentary lifestyle baggage. Keep in mind, that body language speaks to your personality, so keep your chin up, shoulders back, and live your best life with positive self-esteem, strength, and discipline.
You might also be interested in the original post we wrote about the top 5 best bootcamp exercises part 1 to really be able to switch up your strategies and exercises from session to session.
Tags: best exercises, boot camp, bootcamp, exercise, fitness
