Build Muscle Without Weights by Darren Firth

How to build muscle without weights is all about planning your workout and fatiguing you're the muscle group you are training by using shorter periods of rest between exercises, a bit like super setting but without the weights.

There isn't one part of my body I can't get a good workout on without weights, from my legs to my forearms I can get the same effect as I do when I am in the gym weight training.

The only forms of equipment I use are a chin-up bar and a set of chairs, just from these two things i can get a full body workout.

As I said at the beginning the art to building muscle without weights is to keep the intensity, this meaning keep the rest between the exercises short or even no rest at all.

Also in each workout perform the exercise as slow as you can keeping super good form and concentrating on the muscle group you are workingout on, this will hit the muscle fibbers to their fullest, don't go to slow just slow enough to make the exercise hard to perform.

In each exercise make sure you are squeezing the muscle you are working on at the top of each movement and stretching the muscle at the bottom, also if you are resting between sets stretch the muscles in-between as well.

Here is an example workout for the chest and back muscles.

I like to start with chest as this also works the back, triceps and shoulder muscles as well.

Upper chest and middle back.

Putting your feet onto a chair and keeping your body straight with your hands shoulders width apart, slowly lower yourself to the floor hold for a second and squeeze your chest as much as you can you can do this by trying to pull your hands together, don't actually pull your hand together but just enough to get the squeeze in the chest muscles. Push yourself back to the top and start again try to perform at least 12-15 reps, if you have trouble performing this sort of push up then put your feet onto a bed this will allow you to put more of your legs onto the bed making the exercise easier, this works for any push up movement by bringing your legs closer to your body or kneeling on the ground to take the weight off.

After performing one set go straight to the chi up bar and with a medium grip rep out 12-15 reps if you find chin-ups to hard at first put a chair under your feet and help yourself up and down by pushing your feet on the chair.

Middle chest and outer back.

After the chin-ups go straight back to the push ups continue this going back and forth from the push ups to the chins for at least 4 sets.

Lower chest and inner back.

Next perform push ups with your feet on the floor using the same techniques as before then taking a close grip on the chin up bar so your hands are about 4 inches apart, perform these exercises for 3-4 sets with 10-12 reps per exercise.

Next putting your hands onto two chairs perform the last set of chest exercises then on the chin up bar taking wide grip so your hands are past your shoulders.

By workingout these two muscle groups together you will find that the push ups help fatigue the back and the chin-ups stretch and fatigue the chest, depending how advanced you are you can increase the number of sets for both exercises also continue with working out on the shoulders and triceps in the same workout, I would perform this at least twice a week or as soon as my muscles have fully recovered.