Tutorial Roundup: Advanced Bodyweight Exercises

This post is part two of our Tutorial Roundup series. We’re bringing you a collection of exercise tutorials that we do a lot in our 12 Minute Athlete workouts to help you challenge yourself and unlock your potential. 

In part one, we talked about why it’s important to build a solid base with the basic bodyweight exercises and went over the proper technique of some of the most important exercises and ones we do a lot here on the site. We covered squats, side lunges, push ups, V ups, burpees, dips, jump rope exercises, and box jumps. If you’re a beginner, haven’t worked out in a while, or if you just want to double-check your form, check out the last post before reading this one.

Today’s post will be a roundup of more advanced skills and strength exercises that are also often included in our workouts. Remember that you can always find the workouts using the 12 Minute Athlete app or by heading over to our workouts page.

While this post focuses on more difficult exercises, don’t think that they’re not for you. Sure, they take more time and practice, but you can always modify exercises to make them easier while you build up strength to do the full thing. We hope you find our tips helpful!

Here’s How to do Some of Our Favorite Advanced Bodyweight Exercises

Double Unders

In part one of our tutorial roundup, we (re)introduced you to the jump rope, a super fun and effective workout tool that you may have forgotten about. This time we take it a step further with tips on how to master double unders.

Double unders are jumps where the jump rope goes under your feet twice during one jump. Doing them is a great way to amp up your workout intensity, because they require more energy than regular jump rope exercises.

L-Sits

L-sits may look easy, but don’t be fooled… they aren’t! You should learn to do L-sits if you really want to build a strong core, triceps, and hip flexors, all of which you need get your body ready for exercises like handstands, pull ups, and pistol squats. L-sits are a great exercise on their own but also a good accessory exercise, and one you should definitely master if you want to be able to do even more advanced bodyweight exercises.

Headstands

Headstands are not only fun, they also teach you balance and get you comfortable with being upside down, should your goal be do a handstand one day (and it should be your goal!). Just like every balancing exercise, headstands are also great core strengtheners.

If you’re a newbie, we get it that they may seem scary at first, but with the help of this post, you should be able to get over your fear and get practicing.

Pull Ups

Most people dream about being able to do pull ups and chin ups one day. Yet too many of people never even give it a try because they seem so tough.

In this post, How to FINALLY Do a Pull Up, we show how to get started with pull ups. If you want to dig a bit deeper and get a focused program with tons of helpful videos and tutorials, we recommend you give our Pull Up Mastery course a try.

Pistol Squats

We’ve talked about pistol squats quite a bit, and you’ll find a lot of workouts including them in both our app and workouts page.

If you want to master this ultimate leg exercise, you can an overview of how to get started in this post: Pistols: The Ultimate Guide to Mastering the Ultimate Leg Exercise.

For an even more focused workout plan, instructional videos, progress tracking journal, and more, you may find our Pistol Squat Course useful.

Handstands

We absolutely love handstands, so much so that they often make an appearance even in our short HIIT workouts (handstand shoulder taps, anyone?). There are many variations of them, from wall walks to tuck ups to actual freestanding handstands. We’ve talked about them a lot, and last year, we even had a 6-week handstand challenge that included tutorials, exercise descriptions and homework for participants to make sure everyone stayed on track.

If you’re serious about getting your first handstand, our new module-based handstand course will give you even more tips, accessory exercises, and tutorial videos that will all help you to master handstands even faster.

Front Lever

Front levers are something that we’re still lightyears away from being able to do (a full one at least), but we do have a good tutorial on them here: Becoming Superhuman: How to Master the Front Lever with Coach Steve Maples.

Check out this post where gymnastics superstar Sean Maples helps to demonstrate some progressions that will help you get closer to doing a front lever!

Work Hard, Have Fun!

All of these exercises are definitely next level in terms of what most people can do, and may seem intimidating at first. Yet even if they seem nearly impossible now, if you put in the hard work, believe in yourself, and are consistent with your training, you can get there. Building a super strong, unbreakable body is worth it!

If there are any exercises you’d like us to do a tutorial for, please let us know in the comments!