Doing ONLY NO EQUIPMENT Workouts For a WEEK! (are they effective for muscle growth?) + What I EAT!

No equipment workouts are not effective for muscle growth. Only weights will help sculpt your body. Do you agree with that statement? Well, I don't. And in this video, with the help of 5 different workouts from 5 different fitness YouTubers, I want to show you how it's still possible to achieve muscle definition using only your body. So if you don't have any equipment at home, then this video is for you. That was your last message. On Sunday, which was day 1, I did a no equipment workout from my all-time favorite fitness YouTuber, Anna, from the channel Growing Ananess. If you watch my other videos, then you would know I've talked about her so many times. I do her workouts basically on a daily basis, and she's actually the one who made me fall in love with bodyweight workouts, so I give her major credits for that. She has so many no equipment workouts to choose from, and it was tough to decide which one to do for this video. Do more push-ups. Eventually, I chose to do her most popular workout, the No Equipment Intense Full Body Crusher HIIT Workout. Now the title was not clickbait. For only 30 minutes, this workout was absolute killer. This workout got my full body working and time went by so quickly. Now I want to focus on answering the question: can bodyweight exercises build muscle? The short answer is yes, you can for sure gain muscle and definition doing bodyweight workouts. You'll just need to make sure to implement progressive overload, meaning upping the reps, sets and timing of each move. An orthopedic sports medicine surgeon, Alexis Colvin, says, "To build muscle, you need to challenge the muscle. So whatever you do, if it challenges your body, then muscle growth is right around the corner, equipment or not." I remember when I first started doing home workouts, right when gyms closed, I would only do workouts with my barbell and dumbbells. I had this assumption that doing bodyweight workouts would only make me gain weight and lose all the muscle I have previously gained. But of course, now I know that's just a misconception. There definitely are advantages when it comes to bodyweight movements and workouts, one being you are doing movements that let you focus on form without the added resistance. From here on out, I'll be doing fitness YouTubers you guys have requested me to try. I'm starting off my Sunday by doing Penny Barnshaw. I think that's how you pronounce her, also known as Garage Fitness Girls Workouts. She's definitely one of the underrated people on this list. She has a lot of no equipment workouts which are also no repeat, so you bet I'm doing them. This specific workout is a 40-minute intense full body workout, lots of new movements. I didn't think I'd ever find a workout harder than Growing in an Ass, but this right here was a challenge. Not because it was 10 minutes longer, but because it included a lot of exercises I haven't done. Thus, it worked parts of my body that I haven't worked out in a while. For instance, push-ups. I was a pro at push-ups. Notice how I said was? Yeah, I don't think I am anymore. My arm strength has definitely decreased, which comes to now one con of bodyweight workouts: there's only so much strength you can build doing them. Bodyweight workouts have increased my endurance for sure, which I'm happy about, but with one increase in improvement, there's always a decrease or a fallback on something else. Today's breakfast consisted of a yellow smoothie bowl with mango, and pineapple. I added this beautiful creation into a coconut bowl, which I recently purchased from Amazon. It was pretty cheap, and if you also want to make your breakfast look extra tropical, then I'll leave the Amazon link below. I was craving some dessert, so I made banana chocolate chip walnut muffins. This recipe is my go-to whenever I want something sweet but at the same time want a recipe that's less time-consuming. For dinner, I had some zucchini. In French, it's la courgette. La courgette.

Courgette.

La courgette. I don't know if I pronounced it right, but yeah, it's definitely a hard but fun word to say. I also added some other delicious food onto my plate, and it looks absolutely stunning. And then for dinner, we were too lazy to cook, so we ordered a shawarma wrap, and it was absolute heaven. So good. For day 3, I'll be following a 30-minute HIIT cardio workout by one and only Sydney Cummings. Many of you guys have requested for me to try her, and here I am doing her workouts again after a while of not doing them. I don't know why, but I can never stick to them for some reason. However, after doing this workout, I'm asking myself, am I okay? I mean, her workouts are crazy, and not just crazy intense, but crazy good. Oh my gosh, you guys, this is hard. She is the definition of a really great personal trainer and coach. She's so encouraging and so motivating, and the way she articulates her thoughts and everything she says just makes me want to keep going. A lot of the workouts I follow, they don't have a lot of Talking, and her workout was definitely a change of scenery. Hopefully after this challenge I'll be incorporating more of her workouts throughout my week because they are definitely hard. You can't see the sweat, but I'm sweating like crazy. Okay, so now I'll give you guys another tip. Something you can add to your no equipment workouts that can bring more challenge and as a result help with muscle growth are pauses. By pauses I mean little stops in between your moves. For example, holding your squat or push-up for a couple of seconds before you come up again. This challenges your muscles. And as we established earlier, whatever challenges the muscle is what brings the muscle. What did I notice and how did I feel doing only no equipment workouts for a week? So the first thing is this week my steps have increased. Before, I've been getting an average of 5,000 to 7,000 steps every day, and this week I got 10,000 to almost 14,000 steps daily. And that's why doing these full body no equipment workouts plus going on 1 to 2 walks throughout the day. With these bodyweight workouts, I got 2,000 steps just from doing the workout alone. And if I were to do a workout with weights, my steps would usually range from 500 to less than 1,000 steps. Day 4's no equipment workout was brought to you by the one and only Heather Robinson, another fitness YouTuber you guys have been begging me to try. Honestly, I don't do Heather's workouts as often as I should. And they're actually really great. I did 2 workouts from hers and each workout was 20 minutes, which means I had a 40-minute workout session. Now keep in mind, all the workouts I did so far ranged from 30 to 40 minutes, so here's proof that you don't need to work out for an hour to be exhausted. A 30-minute workout, which is usually my max length, burns me a ton of calories and I still feel satisfied at the end. Anyways, so the second workout of hers I did was the inner plus outer thigh toning workout. This one was on the lower impact side, but that's okay, it still got my legs on fire. Well, kinda, not as much as I would if I were to add a resistance band or weights, but it still did the trick. Without equipment, the one thing you can do is increase your reps and perform the move slowly. Then you're really working the muscle, and those reps and slow movements will replicate the equipment you could have been using. For snack, I had some yogurt, and I also left some for Koozie, my cat, because he loves yogurt so much. It's his favorite dessert. And I was still hungry, so I also had a few pretzels, a cucumber, and some hummus on the side. I also noticed I was a lot more hungrier this week, and I probably— not probably, I most last definitely ate a lot more food just because I've been burning a ton more calories throughout the day. Today was kind of a very random day. I had two pretty good meals at the beginning, but then I was really lazy, so for dinner I just had some cereal and ice cream while watching the show Lost with my family. I'm not freaking kidding, it's the best show out there and it's the only show I'm ever going to recommend, period. Okay, you guys, it's finally day 5. Sadly, the last day of this challenge. Well, not really, since I am still gonna continue doing bodyweight workouts after this. But to end off this video, we will be doing a Caroline Girvan workout. This wouldn't be a proper workout challenge without Caroline, who we have already established is the queen of home workouts despite being fairly new on YouTube. Now, I did her 1-hour calisthenics full body workout. If you do only calisthenics, it is more than possible to build muscle. And doing calisthenics, which we basically focused on throughout the whole week, is a great alternative to the gym. Guys, this one was definitely a longer one, and I'm kind of bored.

I just don't—

I'm not enjoying this calisthenics workout. I don't know why. And at the end, I didn't finish the workout. Here I'm just doing some gymnastics, and here I am struggling to even do a back walkover. For breakfast, I had a chocolate matcha smoothie bowl, and I'm always on the lookout for a really good matcha. Can definitely be hard to find, but I stumbled upon Tiangle just recently, and their matcha is actually so, so delicious. If you guys are looking for good matcha, then I definitely recommend their company. I realized that bodyweight workouts are way harder than weight workouts. I think that's one of the reasons why it's harder to put on muscle mass doing bodyweight exercises alone, because the movements are just, are just challenging. Finally, at the end of this challenge, I realized that I prefer no no equipment workouts over equipment workouts any day. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to be using weights. I actually just purchased a new pair of dumbbells recently, so I'm going to be incorporating those in my workout routine. But I think from here on out, I'll be following workouts like these in this video more often than weight workouts. To summarize, don't worry too much if you don't have equipment. Weights aren't the be-all and end-all. A good balanced diet and your body is all you need. And weights, of course, of course, are just a bonus.

I guess I never loved you like I love me. I guess I never loved you, and that's okay with me, 'cause someday I'll love someone like I love me, but I have to wait a little, and that's okay with me.