The no-equipment home workout: bodyweight strength that actually progresses

Why "just do more air squats" fails

Muscles grow from sets taken close to failure in roughly a 5–30 rep range. Twenty easy air squats stop being close to failure within weeks. After that you're doing cardio, not strength work. Instead of adding endless reps, bodyweight training progresses by making each rep harder: longer levers, single-limb versions, slower tempos, and paused positions.

The bodyweight strength menu

• Push: push-up → feet-elevated push-up → archer push-up → pike push-up (shoulders). Each shift moves more bodyweight onto fewer working muscles.
• Squat: tempo squat (3-second descent, pause) → cossack squat → wall sit finishers. Tempo is the free weight you already own.
• Hinge: single-leg Romanian deadlift → Nordic curl eccentrics, one of the best-evidenced hamstring builders in sports science.
• Pull (the honest gap): with literally nothing, rows are hard to load. Inverted rows under a sturdy table work; a doorway pull-up bar (~$25) solves it completely.
• Core & conditioning: hollow holds, dead bugs, bear crawls, shadowboxing, stair climbs. All zero-gear, all quiet.

How to run it in Stolen Reps

1. Check nothing but Bodyweight in the equipment list (or uncheck everything while traveling).
2. Pick Strength or HIIT + your time. The generator programs real progressions (pike push-ups, tempo squats, wall sits, Nordic curls), not filler air squats.
3. Log your reps. When a movement gets easy, the app's variation system offers the next-harder version, the bodyweight equivalent of adding weight.
4. Short on time? The same session compresses to 15 minutes; see the nap-time workout guide.

Related: quiet home workouts · workout generator by equipment · the 20-minute dumbbell upgrade.