Illustration: Benjamin Currie
Tons of home workouts swear they’ll make you stronger, but many are full of empty promises. If your heart is beating out of your chest and you’ve lost count of how many dozens of reps you’ve done, what you’re doing is probably not a good strength-training workout.
Most of those workouts just aren’t hard enough once you get past the beginner level. If you’re strong enough that you’d be squatting 100 (or 200 or 300) pounds in the gym, your muscles aren’t going to get much of a challenge from air squats, no matter how many of them you do.
Just as with lifting heavy in the gym, appropriately challenging bodyweight moves are the ones that you can only sustain for a small number of reps, and require you to rest before your next set. So let’s look at some moves that actually fit the bill.
