5 No-Gear Exercises for Bartenders

By Richard Thomas

Being cooped up at home while losing gym access isn’t a recipe for staying fit, but there is more to living with lockdown than that.

These are stressful, anxious times, and many will find the loss of social activity legitimately depressing; exercise is a classic tool for alleviating those moderate emotional troubles.

For working out with no gear and limited space, here are some exercises even a marginally fit person can start and build up with.

fitness girl doing Burpees

Burpees

Give each exercise a try for difficulty, and tune in on the degree of intensity that is right for you. Then start by doing 15 to 20 reps of each exercise as a circuit. Repeat that circuit 5 times to complete your workout. If you feel an exercise isn’t tiring you during your fourth circuit, than it’s become too easy, and you should adopt a tougher variant.

There’s no time like the present, has never been more true.

fitness girl doing planks, brick wall background

Plank

Squats

First, lose the idea that squats only have value if you have a barbell with massive weights across your shoulders. Even without the barbell, doing a squat moves your entire body weight (minus your feet), so each squat uses a lot of energy. Some styles of squats are actually intended for bodyweight only, such as the Hindu squat, jump squat or pistol squat, but these are all more demanding than the traditional squat and should be avoided by beginners.


Crunches

Never been a fan of planks? The world record for doing a plank is a staggering eight hours and fifteen minutes, and if a human can hold the position for that long, it’s not a very effective core exercise. Instead, do crunches (also, the next exercise includes some planking anyway). If basic crunches are too easy, you can move up to crunches that are either more demanding or target specific parts of the abdominals, like reverse crunches and bicycles.

CLICK HERE to watch the video.


Burpees

Folks who do performance classes at the gym curse burpees for a reason. Although not as hard on your legs as squats, it is one of the few exercises that call on more muscle groups in total. If you are masochistic enough, make your burpees more difficult by doing a push up out of the plank.


Pushups

Everyone should know this classic from their school gym classes, but there are many variants. If you don’t have the upper body strength to do many pushups, start by resting on your knees instead of your toes. If you want to build stronger wrists and grip, do pushups off the knuckles. For the full macho man experience, give one-armed pushups a go.


Alternating Lunges

Most of your muscle mass is in your legs, so having three out of five exercises that targets the legs is a sound plan. Plus, bartenders are always on their feet.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!