Need to sneak in a quick pump session, our at home chest and back workout has you covered. And here's the best bit: all you need is a pair of dining room chairs and a broomstick.
Now you have your DIY gym it's time to get to grips with the workout, which goes beyond the usual home workout fare of burpees and sit-ups. This sesh delivers a real dose of muscle-building stimulus straight to your pecs, back and arms.
Work your way through the following four movements using a ‘descending ladder’ protocol: beginning with 10 reps of each move, followed by 9 of each, then 8, continuing in this fashion until you reach 1, for a total of 220 muscle swelling reps. You got this.
1. Dips x 10-1
Grab yourself a pair of dining room chairs, or a couple of boxes and place your hands on both, lifting your feet from the ground with your arms locked out straight, supporting your bodyweight (A). Bend at the elbows, slowly lowering yourself until your elbows are at right angles, ensuring they don’t flare outward (B). Drive yourself back up to the top and repeat.
2. Inverted rows X 10-1
Place a bar, broomstick or dowel across your chairs or boxes and hang below with straight arms, a wide grip and a tight midline (A), Bend your elbows and pull yourself to the bar, pause here for a second (B) before lowering yourself under control back to a full hang, repeat.
3. Feet elevated press-ups x 10-1
Kick both feet up onto your bench, creating a strong plank position with your hands on the ground, shoulder width apart (A). Slowly lower your chest to the ground (B) before explosively pressing back to lockout.
4. Leg assisted chin-ups x 10-1
Jump back into your inverted row position and walk your feet backwards until your torso is almost upright, and turn your palms to face you. (A) Keep your knees bent and pull your chin above the bar, squeezing your biceps hard at the top (B) before lowering.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
