The Hottest Fitness Trend: Skipping the Gym!

SHAPE magazine

by Heidi Pashman

Bodyweight exercises are the newest weight-loss craze.
Bodyweight exercises are the newest weight-loss craze.

Turns out you already have all you need for one of the most popular fitness trends of 2013. That's right, no gym membership, fancy equipment, or drill-sergeant trainer is required. All that's necessary is your body.

In a survey from The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), 3,346 fitness professionals named bodyweight-baring exericse as the third top trend for 2013, making it the newest craze to join the list. (And our deepest regrets to Pilates, stability ball, and balance training, which got the boot.)

The accomplishment is well-deserved, but we want to know what took so long! We've always loved this type of exercise.

As the name implies, it involves using your body's own weight as the source of resistance to build up strength and endurance. Think push-ups, squats, deadlifts, the gazillion variations of planks-the list goes on (and on and on!).

Better yet, because you don't need any equipment and oftentimes little space, these exercises make it possible to accomplish a full total-body workout at home, in a hotel room, on the beach, or practically anywhere.

The only downside to all of this is that you really have no reason to miss a sweat session now, especially if you want to be ahead of next year's hottest fitness trends.

To help you join (or perhaps start) the craze, we put together this short list of some of our favorite bodyweight workouts. Try them and you'll see why the world's top trainers finally gave this type of exercise the credit it deserves.

1. Ultimate Arms and Abs Workout
Make over you upper body and say goodbye to arm flab with this fast-paced, effective routine.

2. Lose Fat Fast: HIIT Bodyweight Workout
This calorie-burning workout is perfect for when you want to give your body a high-intensity interval shock to tone and slim.

3. Lindsay Ellingson's Bodyweight Workout
The Victoria's Secret Angel has been privvy to the benefits of bodyweight bearing training, and have you seen her body? Proof that this trend really gives you banging results!

4. Work Every Muscle in 5 Moves
Yep, that's all it takes to hit every inch of your body so you look absolutely a-mazing from head to toe.

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