Not everybody is member of a gym neither has enough money to set a gym at home. Buying a squats stand, a bench press, a dorsal machine, bars for dips and chin-ups, plus a calf exercise machine, a leg curl machine and thighs extensions, a curl bench, in addition a variety of bars, dumbbells and weights, would be close to several months’ salary.
Moreover, lots of people have jobs which demands lots of trips, making impossible to assist a gym regularly or get one at home. And what about those who regularly attend to a gym when they go on holydays in places where there are no gyms (like on camping, or a nature trip in the mountains). They can carry along a gym inside their backpacks.
Finally, we can’t forget about all the bodybuilding beginners still wondering if this is worthy enough to spend their money in it. They need to know how to start building your body without money. In fact, if you are among the previous people, it’s very important for you to know how to exercise when you can have the equipment.
Honestly, despite all this, I have to admit I see no reason for not making a small effort and get some cheap stuff, but effective exercise items such as a pair of resistance bands, a spring chest expander or a couple of dumbbells with a small variety of weights, which will make training effective and convenient.
Resistance bands are especially useful providing they are small and light and can be packed in a travelling case or bag when you go on vacation, and you can do lots of exercises with them, especially for biceps, triceps, and deltoids and spinals.
Actually, the name of this article is a little bit wrong, because even though I’m trying to teach you how to build your body without weights and machines, you need some basic equipment, such as a big enough towel, a pillow, a broomstick, two solid chairs, a big cube, books with hard covers and/or a peace of wood.
When you do your exercises for several muscular groups, you can set a routine just as you would do with weights and machines. Bodybuilders, with months and year of training at the gym can simply replace the trainings I’m about to give you with those they do at gym and use their regular routine four days a week, three for training and one for resting, or four for training and one for resting, etc.
Now some words specially for beginners. I hope you’ve been reading MuscleMag or bought a good bodybuilding book as “Hard Bodybuilding” by Robert Kennedy so you can understand the basic concepts as sets, repetitions, routines, and to know the different muscular groups. Every time you make a certain move, that’s a repetitions (or a rep.). Making the same move a certain number of times, whether they are 10, 15 or 50, it’s called a set. Most exercises in this article are for 3 and 4 sets.
Fundamental principles for producing a change in your muscles, regarding size and strength, are overcharge, adaptation and progressive resistance. Overcharge comprises the principle for the body is submitted to heavier and heavier workout charges to whom it is not accustomed to. When you start training your body, any exercise involves an unusual effort and produces a growth in your muscles because your body gets adapted those efforts as overcompensation, making involved muscles slightly bigger and stronger in order to prepare for next time’s workout.
The problem is body gets quickly adapted to any overcharge, so if you don’t increase the amount of work overcompensation is not produced. This is where progressive resistance comes into action.
You should constantly add weight to the bar or, as in our case, do more and more repetitions with same resistance and shorten the resting time between sets to increase the amount of work and its intensity. If you’ve done 15 press-ups for two sets in each training during the first week, you’ve might have grown a little bit. But unless you increase your repetitions, one or two per time, and from time to time the number of sets, you muscle will stop growing.
For those who train without any equipment, cutting off time is the best way to increase overcharge. For the first one, the resting time you should use between sets is 60 seconds, but eventually you should reduce that time to 15 or 30 seconds. This boosts overcharge and compensation.
As a beginner, you have to make a choice. To lose or to gain weight? If you want to gain it, try to increase the number of calories and quantity of proteins you eat per day.
Have five or six small meals a day instead of three big ones. Eat lots of eggs, meat, fish, curd, cheese, fowls, and if you can tolerate it drink one or two litres of milk per day, plus lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Train four days a week. Monday and Thursday workout legs, abs and back. Tuesday and Friday workout your chest, shoulders and arms. Make two exercises per muscular group, with three or four sets each.
If you need to loose weight, cut down your calories and get rid of all the trash food in your diet. Try to eliminate all fats, sugars and salts. Eat only the eggs’ whites fish and fowls as proteins. Have oat flakes, salads with no dressing, baked potatoes with no butter, and lots of rice and bolied vegetables, and try to have five to six daily meals.
Train six days a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday workout your legs, abs and back. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday workout your chest, shoulders and arms. Make three or four exercises per muscular group (if possible) and do them as a cycle, or giant sets, which means, doing each exercise without a resting time and then you rest for one minute once you finish the four exercises. Then you repeat the cycle two more times. Try to make more repetitions, at least 20 per exercise. Also have a 30 minutes walk each day after dinner.
Are you ready? Then let’s go to work!
Starting with the inferior part of your body, here we have some really effective exercises for your calf.

One leg calf elevation:
This exercise is specially conceived for the big gastrocnemius muscle, located just behind the knee. Calf muscles are mostly composed of slow contraction muscular fibres and it’s hard to tire them, so xx repetitions are needed to build it. Fortunately, it’s quite simple to work them out at home, specially if you have stairs. If not, use a thick book and a chair for support.
Let’s assume you have stairs. Stand on one foot in your tip toes. Lean on the handrail or against the wall. Lower your heel as much as you can to stretch your calf muscles. Then lift yourself on your tip toes to fully contract your calf muscles. Do at least 15 to 20 repetitions but only until fail, until you can’t do another repetition. Once you do the last one, keep on the low position for about 20 seconds to stretch the muscles completely. Feel the burning! Repeat three or four times with each leg.

Calf elevation bent
This exercise works out soleus muscles, the big muscles under de gastrocnemius, which gets also worked out.
Bent under a doorframe, your tip toes on a thick book or a wood plank, grab the doorframe to keep balance, reach your heels with your gluteus. Keep ypur legs and knees together. Point your fingers forward, or inside if you want a to workout the exterior part of your calf or outside for the interior part of them. Now simply lift yourself with your fingers as high as you can while you keep squatted. In the highest point of the motion prees your heels against your gluteus. Descend as much as possible for a better stretching. Make one or two sets with the fingertips pointing inside and one or two pointing outside. Do all the repetitions you can, trying to achieve 20 per set, and resting no more than one minute between them.
The will skip to the femoral exercises, the muscles in the back side of the thigh. Femorals and hard to workout without specialized equipment, as the leg curl machine, despite you can tone and stretch them with a super set of strides and dead weights parrillo style.

Here’s how to do it:
With a broomstick on your shoulders to help you keep the balance, on your feet a meter distance from a solid object between 60 and 90 cm high (a low stool, a chair, the second or third step of a staircase or a flat sofa can be easily used). Make a stride forward with your right foot on the object. Your left leg should be straight behind you and you should stay as if you were about to climb a huge step. Make sure you keep your head up, your back flat and your hip forward. You should feel a good femoral and left gluteus stretching. Go back to the starting position and do it again 10 or 15 times more. Then change to the other leg.

As soon as you finish the repetitions for the right leg you’ll be ready to start the second exercise of the super set, the femoral dead weight Parrillo style. Grab the broomstick at half your thigh height so that your arms will hang straight. To start, first arch your back. This position isolates the femorals. Don’t try to lower the broomstick as if you were doing dead weight with rigid legs. Move your buttocks rear as much as you can, while you keep your back arched. You will automatically lower the broomstick and you’ll feel a sharp pull in your femoral muscles. Make sure everything is tense and under control. Don’t be surprise if the stick is only at knees or half your calf (the front side of it) height, because your femorals are completely stretched. Do 15 repetitions without resting and start again with your strides. Make three or four super sets of this combination
You can stretch your femoral even more by sitting on the floor with legs straight forward and knees blocked. Bend down arching your back and holding the tip of your toes with your fingers.
Completely stretch your feet tips towards you, tighten hard and count to ten.. You can do the rest between super sets.
Then we’ll do some effective exercises for quadriceps, the great muscle in the front parto f your thighs. I have to warn you, however, this muscles can be killers, specially if you are out of shape.

Squat with hands free or deep knee bent
Everybody tried this once. If you have problems with the balance, put a book (between 5 and 8 cm) or a block under your heels. Keep your hands on your hips and the tips of your feet 30 to 40 cm apart. Keep your head up, the back flat and slowly descend until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Then, and slowly using your thighs strength, get back on your feet. Remember to keep still and slowly go up and down without loosing control.
Start with 20 repetitions sets (2 or 3 of them) and gradually increase them until you reach 100 repetitions per set.
To make these even harder squats, use continuous tension, you bend until your thighs are parallel to the floor, but you go up just in two thirds. Don go all the way up. This should make your thighs burn.

Three stages squat
This is my favourite weightless leg exercise. Believe me, is killing. This is how it is: open a door and stay on your feet with one hand in each side of the doorframe. Grab it to hold and balance yourself. Start going down as if it were a normal squat, but in the middle of the move, imagine there is a bar at door handle height and you have to pass the upper part of your body below it. When doing this, the upper part of your back will be parallel to the floor and your knees and hips will move forward. It’s a kind of sissy squat as you are leaning back as in those exercises, but you’ll be able to lean more as we are using the doorframe. Don’t go all the way up, reaching two thirds it’s enough.
As you make each repetition if the first part of this move, you should feel a good stretching in the front part of your thighs. Once you get to the 10 or 12 repetitions, they will be burning
Make as many repetitions as you can, and when you can no longer keep it up go to the second stage of the exercise. Keep holding the doorframe and do normal squats, but again, only go down two thirds of the path to keep the tension on your quadriceps. Also, lean back a little bit to get a more pure quadriceps move. When you reach muscular fail in this exercise, go straight and without resting to the third stage, the partials. Partial repetitions are a 10 to 15 cm short move meant to burn a previously tired muscle
To get this burning, stand on your feet and quickly bend your knees 10 to 15 centimeters. Do as many and as fast as you can.
As you get tired, you will go on but slower, no matter how hard you try, doing the fastest repetitions. Once you can no longer hold the pain, then it will be the end of the set. Do three of four sets of the three stage squat.
One leg squat
This is a really hard move. Not many people can do 10 squats on one leg, most of them aren’t capable of doing just one. I suggest start doing this exercise under a doorframe to lean on it and so keep the balance and your support. Extend your right leg straight in front of you and slowly squat on your left leg. Do as many repetitions as you can and the change to the right leg.
Don’t be upset if you are able to do one or two repetitions. Try adding more repetitions and make all the progress you can. Once you can put up 10 repetitions on each leg without grabbing anything to hold yourself, your thighs will be hard enough as if you had done sets with 90Kg on your back. Do three sets for each leg.
Stretching cuadriceps is excellent to increase flexibility and to extend the gap between thighs. To stretch your own cuadriceps, stand next to a solid chair or wall. Raise your right heel behind your gluteus as high as you can. Press the gluteus and the heel against the wall and then bend back. Hold it for 10 seconds and repeat with the other leg. Try making this stretching after each set of any cuadriceps exercise for better results. Now let move to the abs exercises.
Leg elevation:
Lay down on the floor with a pillow or a towel folded under your hips and lower back. Keeping knees slightly curved, raise your legs until they are perpendicular to the floor. Lower them 5 cm max (don’t touch the floor with your feet) and repeat to get the desired repetitions. Start with 15 repetitions per set and increase to 50 repetitions. Do to or three sets, resting just 45 seconds between sets.
Knees shrug:
Use the same position than before. But this time, bend your legs and shrug them until the knees touch your chest. Contract your abs during the end and slowly go down. Do 15 repetitions as a start-up and increase to 50 repetitions. Once again, do two or three sets.
Shrugs:
Lay down once again on a pillow or towel folded under your lower back. Put your legs on a chair or sofa. Raise only your head and shoulders at the same time you contract your abs. Do 15 repetitions per set as a start-up and then increase to 50 repetitions. Do two or three set.
Spins:
Put a broomstick on your shoulders and stand with your feet at shoulders width. Push you hips front and then spin right as much as you can. Immediately spin left as much as possible. Do 50 repetitions for each side and increase until you do 150 spins for each side. Do two or three sets.
To boost abs workout, do this exercise as a giant set without resting between exercises. Three cycles of the four mentioned exercises will provide you a wonderful abs workout.
We have covered legs and abs. Now lets crush some trunk muscular groups, starting with pectorals.
Dips between two chairs:
If you have two solid chairs, strong enough to support your weight, you can do parallel bars dips between them. Place the chairs shoulders width apart or a little bit more, parallel to each other, backs facing. Place your hands on each back of the chairs and bend your knees to do the dips low enough to stretch your pectorals.
Slowly go down as much as possible and then go back to the starting position. Do 10 repetitions sets as a start-up and increase to three or four of 15 to 20 repetitions each. Warning: don’t try to do this exercise unless you have real solid chairs or any heavy object to place on them so they won’t fall as you do the dips.
Press-ups with wide grip between two legs with raised feet:
This is a good alternative for the previous exercise because this time you don’t need the chair’s backs but the seats are meant to support much more weight. Place the chairs 15cm apart plus your shoulders width, facing each other. Make sure the chairs are 120cm apart from another chair or couch you will place your feet on. Use the normal press-up position with your feet on the third chair and your hands on the two front chairs. Lower your body as much as possible, trying to keep it still. The wide grip and the chair’s height allow your pectoral to stretch much more than in the normal press-up position. Start with two sets of 15 repetitions and workout until you can perform 25 to 50 repetitions sets. Remember, the wider the grip, the more your pectorals stretch. If at the end you consider you can do this easily, you can do super sets of dips and press-ups and get a great pectoral congestion.
Now let’s focus on dorsals. Without any piece of equipment, as a chinning bar or a pair of springs, it’s hard to workout your dorsals at home, but not impossible. If you can get any kind of chinning bar, excellent! Do several chin-ups with wide and narrow grip and  your dorsals will be more than satisfied.  If you have a pair of spring chest expanders you can do some APERTURAS from the extended arms position above your head to the chest and neck and give dorsal an outstanding stretching. In case you don’t have any auxiliary equipment, you have two exercises left: rowing between chairs and rowing with cube. Here’s how to make it.
Rowing between chairs:
Place two chairs 150cm apart with a thick stick through the back of the seats. Lay on the floor between the two chairs and grab the stick at shoulders width.
Keeping your heels on the floor, slowly rise until your chest touches the stick and then slowly go down to get a full stretch. Make sure your body is still and that you lift under control. Do three sets of 30 repetitions, increasing until at least 50 repetitions per set.
Sloped rowing with narrow grip bucket:
Hold the bucket handle with your hands almost together. Bend down at the waist and lower the bucket until your arms are extended in order to stretch dorsals (you should stand on a chair or bench to get the full move). Lift the bucket until it touches your lower chest or upper abs. Hold for two seconds. Do 10 to 15 repetitions during three or four sets.
This move can also be done as a super set with the rowing between chairs move.
After each set of the previous exercise give your dorsals a good stretch bending down at your waist and pulling strongly from a resistant band. At the same time, spin your hips left to stretch the right dorsal and vice versa. Hold for ten seconds.
This exercise will also provide you some workout to your back dorsals, plus the biceps.
Now it’s the turn of deltoids. Delotids have been worked out during the dips and press-ups, but most of that training was applied to the front head or rear of the muscle. To workout the lateral head, which provides you that wide aspect, you can do some laterals raises with one arm with a thick book, an ashtray or a bucket of water. This one allows you control the amount of resistance simply adding more water as you get stronger.
Once again, as I said at the beginning of this article, a couple of dumbbells and resistance bands will provide you a better training, but if this isn’t possible, a heavy book or a bucket of water also works.
One arm lateral raises:
Start holding the book or bucket in front of your thighs, arms almost extended, slightly bent at the shoulder. Slowly, using the strength of the lateral head, raise the book or bucket to the exterior part of your side until it is a little higher than your deltoids height. If possible, Supine your hand so your little finger is higher than your thumb. Slowly descend as you struggle against the resistance. Do 10 repetitions with each arm during four sets, adding a some water in each set to increase resistance.
Vertical rowing with bucket:
This exercise will provide deltoids and trapezium a fine workout. As in every bucket exercise, you control the amount of resistance by the quantity of water in the bucket. Grab the bucket handle with hands almost touching themselves. Raise the handle to your nose, allowing your shoulders to open to both sides. Do three or four sets of 10 to 15 repetitions each.
Front and rear raises with bucket:
As in the case of using dumbbells, you can use a bucket for one arm frontal raises and rear raises with bent arm. Try to do three sets of 10-15 repetitions for each arm.
Next we have triceps, and there are several good exercises without weight you can perform for this muscular group. A pair of resistance bands or a couple of light dumbbells will give you more options; you can do one arm triceps extensions, one arm triceps extensions with resistance band, triceps kicks, one arm triceps extensions laying down crossing the face and normal triceps extensions, just to mention some exercises for resistance bands and dumbbells for triceps, but for our purpose, we will assume you have no equipment at all.
Press-us with narrow grip:
Press-ups are a great exercise for pectorals, front deltoids and triceps. The wider the grip, as it has been mentioned, the more strength you put in your pectorals. The narrower the grip is, the more strength that goes to your triceps.
Use the normal press-up position but keep your hands very close together, no more than 10 or 12 cm underneath your chest. You’ll find this exercise is even harder to do than press-ups with shoulders width. Start with 10-12 repetition sets and increase to 50 repetitions if you can. Do three sets.
Triceps dips:
This is the same exercise you have seen many times before in magazines when a bodybuilder is doing dips between to flat benches. You can do the same exercise at home with two robust chairs. Put your feet on a chair and your hands behind on the other chair. Go down as much as possible to feel a good triceps and front deltoids stretching and then, using only the strength of your triceps, lift yourself to the initial position. As you lift, pull yourself back in the higher part of the move to contract triceps. You should get a good burning with this move. Do three sets of 15-20 repetitions each.
If you want, you can give triceps a good congestion doing super sets with narrow grip press-ups and triceps dips. Do five super sets for a maximum of repetitions and you will get such a good workout as in the gym, well, almost like it.
Triceps extensions with towel:
Standing in front of a mirror, hold a towel with your right hand. Let the towel hang across your back to catch it with your left hand. Keep your right shoulder pointing the ceiling. This puts you in the same position as in one arm triceps extentions with a dumbbell, but this time you will apply the resistance by pulling the towel up and down with your left hand. You will control how hard repetitions are according to how hard you pull. Do 15 repetitions with each arm during three or four sets.
Finally, we have biceps. I don’t need to mention that a couple of light dumbbells, a chinning bar or a pair of resistance bands will give your biceps a good training since you would be able to do dumbbell curls, cable curls, chin-ups with normal grip, etc; but if you don’t have equipment at all, you will be limited.
One arm curl with bucket:
As you did with one arm lateral raises for the lateral head of deltoids, you can do a one arm curl with a bucket of water. The bucket provides a very good workout because the handle pivots when you perform the curl and you can control the resistance according how much water you pour in the bucket. Do repetitions slowly and strongly press your biceps in the high part. Try four sets of 10 to 15 repetitions for each arm.
One arm rear curl with bucket:
This is the same exercise than before but here you hold the handle with your knucles pointing down. This heavily crushes the higher part of your forearms and gives the lower biceps an extra workout. Try to do three sets of 10 to 15 repetitions each.
Curls with towel:
This exercises involves a gym mate to hold the towel and offer resistance, but I’m mentioning it because it’s an excellent biceps builder for home bodybuilders or those who often travel. Grab a thick towel spongy and folded with both hands (or you can use one arm at a time), and ask your partner to stretch the towel down at the same time you do the curl upwards. Do the move slowly and controlled, tightening your biceps throughout the hole path up and down. Try doing 10 to 15 repetitions.
Well, here it is, exercises for the hole body. Do this exercises regularly, increasing the number of repetitions and decreasing the resting time in between and this way you’ll get the perfect training. Add some aerobics every day, go on a proper diet and you will be able to develop a body to be proud of. All weightless! What are you waiting for? Try it!