The 5 Best Exercises Without Equipment

Every exercise here can be done in a bedroom with no purchase of any kind. They are ranked on how much they change rather than on how hard they look.

This is a documentary review of published evidence and standard clinical practice rather than a laboratory test run by us. Around 20 commonly recommended no-equipment movements were considered, including burpees, mountain climbers, glute bridges, planks, step-ups, dips between chairs and the five that made the list.

Each was judged on five criteria: whether it transfers to something people actually do, whether it can be made harder for years without buying anything, whether there is published evidence behind the muscle group or the movement, whether it can be scaled down for pain or deconditioning, and whether it is safe to do unsupervised at home.

The sources read for this page were the NHS physical activity guidance for adults aged 19 to 64, a 2019 Cochrane review of exercise for falls prevention, a 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis of the Nordic hamstring exercise in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, a 2026 meta-analysis of hamstring injury prevention programmes in Annals of Medicine, and a 2019 cohort study of push-up capacity in JAMA Network Open. Evidence checked in August 2026.

What could not be checked: there is no head-to-head trial ranking these five exercises against each other, and there never will be. The ordering below is a clinical judgement built on the evidence for each movement rather than a measured result.

Four questions separate a home routine that changes something from one that fills 20 minutes.

Does it get harder? An exercise you can do 40 times is a cardiovascular activity. Strength needs an exercise that becomes difficult inside about 15 repetitions, which without weights means changing leverage, range, tempo or the number of limbs involved.

Does it match something you do? The exercises that hold their value are the ones that look like standing up, climbing stairs, pushing a door, and pushing off the toes. Transfer is the reason a split squat outranks a burpee here.

Can you scale it down? Anything that cannot be regressed is useless the week you have knee pain. A press-up done against a kitchen worktop and a press-up done with the feet on a chair are the same exercise at two ends of a long ramp.

Is there evidence behind it? Very few individual exercises have their own trials. The Nordic hamstring curl is the rare exception, which is why it is on this list despite being unpopular.

What it is

A controlled bend and straighten at the hip, knee and ankle under body weight, either from standing or by rising out of a chair without using the hands.

Who it suits

Everyone, at some point on its range. The chair sit-to-stand suits anyone deconditioned, over 70, or recovering from surgery. The paused single-leg squat to a low chair challenges a trained athlete.

How to do it

Stand with the feet somewhere between hip and shoulder width, turned out slightly. Push the hips back and bend the knees, letting them travel forward over the middle of the foot, and go as deep as you can control without the lower back rounding. Drive back up through the whole foot. Three sets of 8 to 15 repetitions.

What the evidence supports

Sit-to-stand work is a core component of the balance and functional exercise programmes that hold the strongest falls evidence. The 2019 Cochrane review by Sherrington and colleagues, covering 108 trials and 23,407 community-dwelling older people, found exercise reduced the rate of falls by 23 per cent, with balance and functional exercise the most effective single category at 24 per cent. The certainty of that evidence was rated high.

Limits and cautions

Knee pain at the bottom of the range usually means the range is too deep for now rather than that squatting is harmful; cut the depth to where it is comfortable and rebuild it. Hip or groin pain that pinches at the bottom is worth having assessed. Anyone with a recent knee or hip replacement should follow the range their surgical team set.

Time and effort

About four minutes for three sets. No warm-up needed beyond the first set itself.

Why it made the list

It ranks first because it maps onto the movement people lose first and notice most. Someone who cannot rise from a low chair without pushing off the arms has a strength problem that limits their day, and this exercise is the direct treatment for it.

What it is

A horizontal push with the body held rigid from head to heels, lowering the chest towards the floor and pressing back up.

Who it suits

Anyone wanting upper-body strength without kit, and anyone whose trunk gives way in other exercises. A press-up demands the trunk hold a straight line while the arms work, which a bench press does not.

How to do it

Hands slightly wider than the shoulders, elbows travelling back at roughly 45 degrees rather than flaring straight out to the sides. Squeeze the glutes so the hips do not sag. Lower until the chest is a few centimetres off the floor, then press up. Three sets, stopping two or three repetitions before form breaks. Regress to a worktop or a wall; progress by elevating the feet or slowing the lowering phase to three seconds.

What the evidence supports

Press-up capacity tracks with health outcomes. A 2019 study in JAMA Network Open followed 1,104 active adult male firefighters for 10 years and found that those able to complete more than 40 press-ups at baseline had a far lower incidence of cardiovascular events than those completing fewer than 10 (incidence rate ratio 0.04, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.36). That is an association in one occupational male cohort, so read it as evidence that press-up capacity is a useful marker of fitness rather than proof that press-ups themselves prevent heart disease.

Limits and cautions

Pain at the front of the shoulder in the bottom position is the common complaint, and it usually improves by narrowing the hand position and stopping short of the floor. Wrist pain is often solved by pressing on fists or on the edge of a step. Our article on front shoulder pain covers what else produces that pattern.

Time and effort

Four minutes for three sets, at whichever version of the exercise puts you in the 8 to 15 repetition range.

Why it made the list

It is the only upper-body push that needs nothing at all and still scales from a wall to a one-arm variation. Nothing else on the upper body covers that much ground.

What it is

A squat performed in a staggered stance, one foot forward and one behind, lowering the back knee towards the floor and driving back up mostly through the front leg.

Who it suits

Anyone whose activity involves one leg at a time, which is walking, stairs, running and most sport. It is particularly useful after a knee or ankle injury, when one side has quietly given up work to the other.

How to do it

Step one foot forward about a stride length. Keep the torso upright and lower straight down until the back knee is close to the floor, then drive up through the front foot. Hold a wall or a chair back for balance at first. Three sets of 8 to 12 each side. Progress by putting the rear foot on a sofa or a step, which shifts more load onto the front leg.

What the evidence supports

There is no trial of this specific exercise, and any page claiming otherwise is overstating it. What is well established is that progressive strengthening improves pain and function in knee problems, and that single-leg work reveals side-to-side strength differences that a two-legged squat masks. In clinic that difference is the useful part: someone who squats well on two legs and cannot control five split squats on the injured side has found their actual deficit.

Limits and cautions

Front-of-knee pain often means the shin is travelling too far forward, so lengthen the stance. Balance problems are a reason to hold something rather than a reason to skip it. Avoid the rear-foot-elevated version until the flat version is comfortable.

Time and effort

Five minutes, because both sides need doing. Expect the weaker side to fatigue several repetitions earlier for the first few weeks.

Why it made the list

It is the most honest exercise in the set. It shows you where you actually are, and it doubles as the fix.

What it is

Kneeling with the ankles held down, the body lowers forward as slowly as possible under hamstring control, then the hands catch the fall and push back up.

Who it suits

Anyone who sprints, plays a field or racket sport, or has strained a hamstring before. It is the highest-value item here for anyone still doing fast running.

How to do it

Kneel on something soft with a partner holding your heels, or hook the heels under a sofa, a bed frame or a heavy chair. Keep the hips extended so the body stays in one line from knee to shoulder, and lower forward as slowly as the hamstrings allow. Catch yourself on the hands and push back to the start. Start at two sets of three to five repetitions, once or twice a week, and build slowly.

What the evidence supports

This is the best-evidenced exercise on the page. A 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine pooled 15 studies covering 8,459 athletes and found programmes including the Nordic hamstring exercise reduced hamstring injuries by up to 51 per cent, with an overall injury risk ratio of 0.49 (95% CI 0.32 to 0.74). A 2026 meta-analysis in Annals of Medicine of exercise-based hamstring prevention in football reported a similar overall effect (risk ratio 0.51, 95% CI 0.36 to 0.71) and found the protection was strongest where adherence reached 75 per cent or more.

Limits and cautions

Started too enthusiastically, it produces some of the worst muscle soreness in the exercise catalogue, which is the main reason people abandon it. Three repetitions in week one is the correct dose. Do not use it inside an acute hamstring strain; that needs a graded rehabilitation plan instead.

Time and effort

Three minutes, once or twice a week. Adherence is the hard part rather than the time.

Why it made the list

Nothing else you can do on a bedroom floor has a halving of an injury rate behind it.

What it is

Rising onto the toes of one foot and lowering under control, ideally from the edge of a step so the heel can drop below the level of the toes.

Who it suits

Runners, walkers, anyone recovering from an ankle sprain, Achilles pain or plantar heel pain, and anyone whose calves cramp on hills.

How to do it

Stand on one foot with fingertips on a wall for balance. Rise as high as you can onto the toes, pause for a moment at the top, and lower slowly over about three seconds. Three sets to within a couple of repetitions of failure, comparing sides each time. From a step, allow the heel to drop below the toes for the full range.

What the evidence supports

Progressive calf loading is the core of rehabilitation for Achilles tendinopathy and a standard component of ankle and foot rehabilitation. The specific value of the single-leg version is measurement: the number of good repetitions on each side is a simple, repeatable test, and a large gap between sides is usually the thing that has been missed. Our sheets on tibialis posterior exercises and shin splints exercises both build on the same principle.

Limits and cautions

Sharp pain at the back of the heel that worsens over a session should be assessed rather than pushed through. In an insertional Achilles problem, dropping the heel below the step can aggravate symptoms, so keep to flat ground until it settles.

Time and effort

Four minutes for both sides. This is the exercise most easily done while the kettle boils.

Why it made the list

The calf is the muscle group most consistently left weak after a lower limb injury, and it is the one nobody notices is weak until it is tested one leg at a time.

Note the fourth column. Only two of these five have evidence for the exercise itself; the rest inherit their case from the evidence for strengthening the muscle group. That is normal in exercise research, and it is worth knowing which is which.

If you have 10 minutes and want the most for it, do the squat, the press-up and the split squat. Those three cover the largest muscle groups and the two movement patterns you use every day.

If you run or play a field or racket sport, the Nordic hamstring curl and the single-leg calf raise are the two with the most to offer, because hamstring and calf injuries are what stop those seasons.

If you are over 65 or worried about falls, build around sit-to-stand and single-leg calf raises, add standing balance work, and read our guide to strength and balance work for falls prevention for the programme those trials actually used.

If you are rebuilding after surgery or a long inactive spell, start with the regressed version of every exercise and hold there for two weeks before progressing anything. Rehab for seniors covers how that ramp is normally set.

If something hurts while you do them, keep the movement and change the range first, the tempo second, and the exercise last. Pain that climbs across a session, or that is still there the following morning, is the signal to get it looked at.

The belief that arrives with this question is that bodyweight work is the beginner tier, and that anything meaningful starts once you own weights. Age UK East Sussex runs strength and balance classes across the county, and the home programmes handed out alongside them are almost entirely bodyweight: sit-to-stand, heel raises, step-ups, standing balance. Those are the programmes with a fall reduction behind them.

What testing shows is that the ceiling is much higher than people expect, and it is usually reached from the wrong direction. Someone doing 30 easy repetitions has left the strength range entirely, and the fix is a harder version rather than a longer set. In the Uckfield clinic the useful measurement is nearly always a single-leg one: how many controlled calf raises on each side, how many split squats before the knee starts to wander, how far the sit-to-stand goes before the hands come in to help.

If you want a programme built around what your body currently tolerates and progressed as that changes, our 1:1 rehab and strength training sessions are set up for exactly that.

Can you build muscle without equipment?
Yes, for as long as the exercise keeps getting harder. Bodyweight training adds difficulty through range, tempo, pauses, leverage and moving to one limb rather than through added weight. Untrained and moderately trained people gain strength and muscle from that progression. A well-trained lifter chasing maximal strength eventually needs external load, because a two-legged squat stops being challenging long before the legs stop adapting.

How often should you do bodyweight exercises?
The NHS advises strengthening activities that work all the major muscle groups on at least 2 days a week, alongside 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity. Two sessions a week covering these five exercises meets the strengthening half of that guidance. Three sessions suits anyone rebuilding strength after an injury or a long inactive spell.

How many sets and reps should you do?
Three sets of 8 to 15 repetitions per exercise, stopping two or three repetitions before the point where form breaks down. When 15 good repetitions feel comfortable, make the exercise harder rather than adding more repetitions: slow the lowering phase to three seconds, add a pause at the bottom, or move to a single-limb version.

Are bodyweight exercises enough for people over 60?
For most people over 60 they are a strong starting point. The 2019 Cochrane review of 108 trials and 23,407 community-dwelling older people found exercise reduced the rate of falls by 23 per cent, with balance and functional exercise the most effective category. Those programmes are built largely on sit-to-stand, step-ups and standing balance work, all of which need no equipment.

Is a press-up as good as a bench press?
A press-up trains the same push pattern and adds a genuine trunk demand the bench press does not, because the body has to stay rigid between the hands and the feet. The bench press wins on load, since the weight can be increased in small steps indefinitely. For general health and shoulder resilience the press-up is enough; for maximal chest strength it eventually is not.

Where does the plank fit in?
The plank is a useful trunk endurance exercise and it earns a place in a home routine, though it did not make this five. The reason is transfer: the five listed here each train a movement used daily, and holding a static position transfers less directly than standing up, pushing, stepping and pushing off the toes. Add a front plank and a side plank as a sixth and seventh item if trunk endurance is your specific goal.

What order should you do these exercises in?
Do the hardest and most technical exercise first, when you are freshest. A sensible order is Nordic hamstring curl, split squat, press-up, squat, then calf raises. If one exercise matters most to you, move it to the front regardless of the order given here.