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Top 5 Army Calisthenics Exercises
Oct 26, 2021
Train anywhere, anytime with these army calisthenics movements.
Gym machines and free weights are excellent ways to build muscle and strength. But when you're busy working or traveling, you won’t always have the luxury of accessing a weight room. When that happens, you need proven exercises that you can use anytime, anywhere to stay on the path and achieve your PT goals.
Enter: army calisthenics. In this OA guide, we’ll introduce the top 5 military workout movements that you should apply to your daily physical training. We’ll also show you variations for each exercise that you can use to make your calisthenics workouts more challenging.
The Squat – Full-Body Power
If you had to choose one army calisthenics exercise to do for the rest of your life, it would be the squat. From its endless variations to its full range of motion, the squat targets your entire posterior chain. The result? One of the most complete and effective bodyweight exercises.
Squat Variations
- Weighted Squat: Throw on a weighted vest or tactical plate carrier to immediately make your squats more challenging.
- Jump Squats: A simple but effective way to build power. Slowly reach the bottom of your eccentric movement, pause for a moment, then explode up into a jump.
- Pistol Squats:
Begin your squatting motion and lift one leg off the ground. Keep it elevated and stay balanced as you complete the squat.
The Push-Up – Strength and Explosiveness
The push-up is an iconic army calisthenic exercise – for a good reason. Although it seems simple, a properly executed push-up is an excellent movement for building upper-body strength and explosiveness. Push-ups are also a key metric in SOF PT tests, so remember to include a few sets into your daily workouts.
Push-Up Variations
Already a push-up master? Good news: you can easily make this army calisthenics exercise more difficult with a few minor tweaks.
- Incline Push-Ups: Put your legs on an elevated surface to shift more weight onto your upper body.
- Diamond Push-Ups: Move your hands from the traditional shoulder-width placement and put them close together. This variation is excellent for targeting your triceps. Just be careful if you have an existing shoulder injury – diamond push-ups put increased strain on your shoulder joints.
- Wide Hand Push-Ups:
The opposite of diamond push-ups, wide hand push-ups target your chest and put less emphasis on the triceps.
The Plank – Head-to-Toe Endurance
Few bodyweight exercises will help you build endurance
like planks. This army calisthenics exercise requires you to activate your entire anterior chain to stabilize and balance your body. Simply get into the plank position and hold it as long as possible – the endurance gains will come.
Plank Variations
- Oblique Plank: Turn to your side and support your body weight on one arm. Tighten your glutes and lower-side obliques, and make your chest perpendicular to the floor.
- Up and Down Planks: Get into plank position. Alternate between supporting your body weight on your forearms (traditional plank) and your hands (push-up position).
- Mountain Climber Planks:
Get into a push-up position plank. Drive your knees to the chest in a running motion.
The Situp – Core Stability
A PT test classic, the situp is a key army calisthenic exercise for developing your core strength and stability. Whether you do them fast for explosiveness or slow and controlled for endurance, few abs exercises can beat the situp. As such, it should be a part of your daily army calisthenics PT routine.
Situp Variations
- V-Ups: Lay flat on your back. Lift both your legs and torso to resemble a V-shape. Slowly return back to laying flat in a controlled manner.
- Scissor Kicks: Lay flat with your back on the ground. Lift your legs and rapidly move them up and down in a scissor motion (as if you were swimming).
- Hollow-Body Holds:
Balancing on your tailbone, lift your legs and torso off the ground. Breathe, stabilize, and hold this position for time.
The Burpee – Killer Cardio
Do you like to suffer? Great. Few army calisthenics exercises are more strenuous and demanding than burpees. They’re an excellent way to supercharge your endurance training or take your HIIT workouts
to the next level!
Burpees start easy but quickly become a nightmare as you get past a dozen or so reps. The full-body activation – from your pecs and shoulders stabilizing to your legs exploding – will put you into overdrive.
Burpee Variations
- Push-up Burpees: Do a pushup at the bottom of the movement for an extra intensity boost.
- High-Knees Burpees: Drive your knees to your chest when you jump to increase explosiveness and make the exercise more challenging.
One of the best ways to improve your physical performance fast is to start an OA workout program. All of our training plans are proven to be effective and are created by special forces cadre who know what it takes to join the teams. If you need to enhance your physical performance in record time, you can depend on an OA workout program to get you the results you’re after. Don’t delay – browse our workout programs now.
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