Bodyweight Strength & Conditioning
No matter how advanced you are, your ability to handle your own body weight will always serve as a foundation for strength and conditioning. From this foundation, you’ll be able to build other skills. Let’s sharpen your skills and upgrade your bodyweight exercises. All you need is a foam roller 18.
1. Triceps Death, Roller-Style
The “triceps death 105” exercise was popularized by Westside Barbell. That version combines a close-grip bench press with an escalating thickness of wooden boards on your chest. As your triceps give out, a thicker board is added to reduce the range of motion and extend the set even further.The same can be done with push-ups (or loaded push-ups if you have a weighted vest or band available). To make them more triceps-dominant, keep your elbows tucked.
Do full range of motion reps first, then grab a roller and place it under your chest. Squeeze out some extra partial-range reps, touching the roller each time to really finish off your triceps.
2. Roller W-Y
If you don’t have a pull-up bar or suspension trainer, working your back with just your own body weight can be difficult. You can try “Y”, “W”, “T” and “I” arm positions laying prone on the floor, but using a foam roller will elevate you and help prevent your low back from kicking in.A roller W-Y is a lift of your arms off the floor in a “W” position — activating your rotator cuff, traps, and rear delts — followed by a reach forward into a “Y.”
Sixty-second timed sets work well here. With these, you won’t build massive back thickness, but you’ll hit some neglected areas and improve your posture and overall shoulder performance.
3. Roller Split Squats
Rear-foot elevated split squats are a staple for building single-leg strength. Working on one leg at a time improves lower-body functional strength, significantly transferring to athletic performance. They’ll also help even out any asymmetries you might have.Elevating your rear foot will take your back foot out of the equation. This, in turn, forces your front leg to work harder. It’s particularly useful when trying to load your lower body with little weight.
Split squat stands are becoming an essential accessory in many strength and conditioning facilities. They allow you to hook your foot over the top, which is a better position than just placing your foot on top of a high bench. With your foot hooked over the top (as opposed to toes down on a bench), it’s more comfortable for most, and it limits rear-foot involvement even further.
If you don’t have a split squat stand, all you need to do is place a foam roller on top of a bench or step. It’s also a little less stable than a stand, which makes it even tougher to use your back leg.
4. Roller Hamstring Walk
These look a little weird, but there’s definitely a method to the madness. They’re a great bodyweight substitution for machine hamstring curls and really challenge your hamstrings more than you’d expect.By plantar-flexing your ankles (toes down) you create an active insufficiency of your gastrocnemius, increasing the activation of your hamstrings.
Walk the foam roller up to the point just before you lose hamstring tension. Walk it back down as far as you can, getting as far out as you can with your toes pointed.
For a more advanced version, loop a band around your ankles to increase tension as you walk the roller inward.
5. Roller Hamstring Bridge
Your hamstrings and glutes are big powerful muscles – or at least they should be – so finding bodyweight exercises that challenge them is a hard task. Hamstring-dominant bridge variations are an obvious choice to work both muscles simultaneously. To make them even harder with your bodyweight, you’ll also want to go single-leg.Why not just do them on the floor? Well, first off, the small amount of elevation changes the angle, which creates more hamstring activation. Second, the slight instability from the foam roller challenges your already challenged single-leg stability. Not to the point where you’ll look like a circus clown riding a unicycle, but just enough to increase the challenge to your hip and knee stabilizers.
6. Roller Ab Walkout
There’s no denying the effectiveness of ab wheel rollouts 26. If you don’t have an ab wheel, or you just want a novel variation to mix it up, try using a foam roller.As you walk your hands out with the roller, the lower your torso goes, the more your core will have to resist spinal extension and anterior pelvic tilt. As you walk back, you can go into spinal flexion while fully exhaling and contracting your abs hard. Your upper body will get a good workout here, too. These also work with a medicine ball.
7. Roller Abdominal Hold
A foam roller is useful because it can act as a pivot point for many exercises and drills. For example, laying on your back with it resting on your thoracic spine can act as a pivot point from which to get some spinal extension.Lay on your back with the foam roller approximately under your sacrum. As long as it’s not directly in your lumbar curve, it’s fine. Now, reach your arms overhead to create a longer lever arm.
If this isometric hold is too hard, just keep your arms by your sides. Engage your entire mid-section to remain just off and parallel with the floor. If your whole body isn’t trembling by this point, then you’re probably not doing it right.
8. Roller Dead Bug
While rollouts and abdominal holds primarily work your core through anti-extension, dead bugs have more of an anti-rotational component to them. Some consider these exercises a little more transferable to activities such as running and sprinting or any athletic activity involving contralateral arm and leg movement.There are heaps of dead bug variations, but one way you could progress them is to crush something between your opposing elbow and knee. A foam roller works great here, as would a light medicine ball or even a soccer ball.
This forces you to control your core and pelvis while creating a ton of tension in your abs. It also engages your lats further as you drive your elbow down, which makes it a more “complete” core exercise.
9. Roller Mountain Climbers
Mountain climbers come in all shapes and sizes. You can hop and switch sides, you can march, and you can use a suspension trainer. But one thing you might not have thought of is what your arms are doing.For some, elevating their arms just a little off the floor can be the difference between a great conditioning exercise and having to stop too soon because their shoulders gave out first.
A foam roller gives just enough elevation, and it adds an element of instability and progression from the basic bodyweight versions. Some also find these more comfortable than the floor.
10. Roller “Better” Burpee
No respected strength coach has ever programmed a burpee. Instructors notoriously use them as a filler exercise for when they’ve run out of ideas. Or they just hate you. Either way, the common burpee has many flaws.Burpees are most commonly done by bending over from your lower back and creating a hinge from your lumbar region. It’s a good example of how to incorrectly pick up something from the floor, so doing endless jerky reps of it probably isn’t a good idea.
One simple change you could make is to jump forward into a wide squat. Your hands could be on the floor here if you don’t want them elevated with a roller. From here, you could either jump up, stand up, and squat down again or stay in the squat and just reach overhead.
Depending on how you program them, they’ll make you vomit, too, if that’s your goal.
