Beach Body Workout Plan: 10 Best Exercises To Stay In Shape This Summer

Multiple studies have shown that the habit of regular exercising can do wonders in every aspect of life. Well, for now, we just need to cope with summer. If you are not regularly into exercising and also not in shape, then relax. We have sorted the best exercise plan for all age groups to make sure that you look your best this summer!

1. Burpee Push-up

This is the ultimate full body exercise. It alone tests your full body strength and aerobic capacities. Studies have shown that this exercise burns 50% more fat than the regular exercises. The best part about this one is that you don’t need a gym. All you need is a floor and the will to do it.

How it’s done:

3 Sets of 10 repetitions

Keep your feet apart, aligned with your shoulders. Go in a squat position with your hands in front of you on the floor. Kick your feet back to the push-up position. Keep your back straight, tighten your abs and lower your chest, until it is an inch or two above the floor. Push back. Then immediately return to the squat position, stand up and jump as high as possible.

2. Dumbbell Lunge

When you hit the gym, you want your workouts to give you function, strength, and balance. Lots of exercises will give you one or two of these benefits, but very few will give you all three. Lunges are one type of exercise that gives you all of this and much more.

This leg exercise is one of the best, which is not just incredibly easy to learn but also extremely safe and effective. It targets the glutes and quadriceps intensely and also the calves, hamstrings, and the core.

With just the use of your lower body, you can improve your full-body strength and include the perfect workout in your routine. What makes dumbbell lunges such an attractive workout?

How it’s done:

3 Sets of 10 repetitions

For the starting position, stand straight with two dumbbells in your hands by the sides. Step forward with one leg keeping the other stationary behind. Lower your upper body and keep your upper body straight while maintaining the balance. Repeat the whole process again by taking the alternative leg forward.
Caution: This exercise requires a great deal of balance, so if you suffer from balance problems you can avoid it or use your own body weight.

If you aim to get the perfect chest, check out our other chest exercises.

What are dumbbell lunges, exactly?

You might have seen people do dumbbell exercises at the gym, but what’s the point of the exercise? For most gym-goers, it’s an essential exercise that is worth incorporating into many different regimes. One of the main reasons it’s such an essential workout is because it gives your legs a proper workout unlike any other kind of exercise.

Whether you do lunges with or without dumbbells doesn’t matter, it will still do wonders for your legs and your ability to stay balanced. However, dumbbells allow you to progress when it comes to the anabolic part of the exercise. More weight means more muscle mass and you don’t sacrifice anything in terms of stability or safety. 

How do you do one?

If you’re new to dumbbell lunges, you might be wondering how they’re done. It’s a relatively straightforward exercise that will leave you sore the first time you do a fair number of reps. The basic premise of the workout is that you push your leg a significant distance in front of you. However, there are a couple more movements that go into a proper dumbbell lunge. 

You need a bit of open space in front of you to do dumbbell lunges. When you take the first step, make sure that your foot lands on the ground so as to create a right angle in your knee. Only go as far as you feel comfortable, while still accounting for the fact that it has to feel taxing on your legs. During the lunge movement, the knee 3. Body positioning and balance isn’t doing the lunging should end up close to the floor at an angle slightly larger than ninety degrees, while not actually touching the floor.

Balance the rear leg on its toes, while the front leg needs to be positioned firmly on the ground, after touching it heel first. The knee in the front shouldn’t bend too much, so try not to let it get past the toes. 

Body positioning and balance

As with any kind of exercise, body lunges need proper balance and positioning. You have to know which muscles to engage and how to engage them at any given moment to remain stable throughout the movement. So, how difficult is it to balance during a dumbbell lunge?

The weights in your hand make it a lot easier to control your own weight, but there are a couple more factors to take into account. Is your starting position stable? At the start of the exercise, you have to stand straight with your feet being nearly shoulder-width apart. Your arms should be relaxed and gripping the dumbbells next to your torso, with the palms facing inwards.

Keep your back straight throughout the movement, while also making sure your arms aren’t swinging forward and back. As long as you bring them down with your weight, you should feel like they’re just extensions of your arms.  

The dumbbells themselves

When you’re doing a weight-assisted workout, you need to know the appropriate weight to start with. Luckily for beginners, you don’t necessarily need weights while you’re only getting warmed up. Your bodyweight should be enough to give your legs a challenge, at least for starters. Once you feel comfortable with the movement, you can start increasing the weight by adding dumbbells. 

Progress is the name of the game and you have to know your limits before making any significant increases to the weight of the dumbbells. If your form is good, you won’t have issues when using bigger dumbbells. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t make any sudden jumps in difficulty, even when you feel like the starting weight is too easy for you. There’s a lot of balancing involved when it comes to doing lunges, and that means that you have to pace yourself at first. Once you’re able to do three sets of eight reps without issues, you can consider moving it up a notch. 

How to make dumbbells lunges part of your routine

Chances are, dumbbells lunges aren’t the only workout in your fitness routine. Obviously, only doing one workout is going to make your trips to the gym dull and ineffective. Once you’ve gotten acquainted with the proper technique of the lunge, how do you incorporate it into your daily or weekly routine? 

This depends on what your fitness regime looks like. Are you focused on bodybuilding and you separate your leg day from your other muscle groups, or do you incorporate various exercises into a daily weight loss regime? Try doing lunges at the start of your workout, as they can be quite demanding, and then go from there.

This exercise is particularly demanding because it’s effective as a cardio and an anabolic exercise. Because of this, you can reliably say that you’ll be exhausted after a couple of sets. Keeping your energy up is crucial if you want to get through the rest of your routine and build some muscles along the way. 

As most gym-goers will tell you, whey protein is the best way to keep your energy up during exercises and provide your body with muscle-building nutrients. Whey has been proven to help increase strength when consumed before and after a workout. This is because it contains all nine essential amino acids, which are used in muscle protein synthesis. Your body craves amino acids immediately after a workout in order to use them to build and expand new muscle fibers. 

Why bother with lunges?

What’s the main reason anyone bothers with fitness? There are a couple of key reasons. You might want to lose a couple of pounds, which means you need workouts that burn calories. On the other hand, perhaps you’d rather work on your muscles and start bodybuilding. This requires anabolic exercises that demand strength and explosive movements. Where do lunges fall on this spectrum of workouts? 

The best part about lunges is that they provide benefits in both cases. You might have noticed that lunges leave you feeling exhausted after a short while. This is because lunges aren’t all that bad cardio exercises. You can lose your breath alongside quite a few calories while doing them, especially if they are assisted with dumbbells. 

The anabolic effect of dumbbell-assisted lunges can’t be overstated. They’re one of the very few workouts that truly isolate your glutes properly. This allows the muscle to build mass without engaging too many of your other leg and back muscles. You can easily add weight via the dumbbells without putting pressure on more sensitive and delicate muscles. 

Lunges might be one of the few workouts that absolutely everyone can benefit from. They give you a bunch of benefits without being all that difficult to master. As long as you incorporate them into your routine, you will see massive benefits in terms of muscle strength and size, while also significantly improving your balance.

3. Mountain Climber

Mountain climber requires perfect coordination and quick feet. Therefore, it is excellent for improving and testing agility. This one is known for building lower body strength because of the repetitive movements which also helps in increasing the flexibility of the joints.

How it’s done:

3 Sets of 20 repetitions

Start with the push-up position. Lift your one leg off the floor and bring the knee as close as possible to the chest keeping the toes on the floor. Go to the starting position and repeat it with the other leg. Choose the pace of the exercise based on your current fitness. If you’re not in a great shape, then keep it slow and with time and experience, increase the pace.

4. Planks

It is one of the best and effective exercises to get a flat and toned stomach. To the ones who have never done a plank before, it may look far too easy to be beneficial, but that’s not true! It improves flexibility, balance, and posture, reduces back pain and last but not the least, tones your stomach.

How it’s done:

3 Sets with 30 sec hold

Get into a press-up position, supporting your weight on the toes and forearms. Keep your bent arms directly below your shoulders. Hold the position for 30 seconds, sucking in the stomach.

5. Ab-wheel Roll

Despite the name, it does not only work the abs, but also the whole body. It develops strength in the upper back, lower back, shoulders, arms, thighs, and hips. Along with the core stability, flexibility and mobility that it provides, it results in improved sporting performance.

How it’s done:

3 Sets of 15 repetitions

 

Kneel on the floor and hold the wheel with both hands in front of you for the starting position. Now, slowly roll the wheel straight forward stretching your body without letting the body touch the floor. And then start pulling yourself back to the start position.

6. Side Planks

Side plank requires you to balance on one arm, thus making it a great pose for strengthening arms, wrists and shoulders. But that’s not all, it also works your core to a huge extent, simultaneously improving balance, concentration and strengthening legs.

How it’s done:

3 Sets with 30 sec hold

Lie on the left or right side with your legs stretched. Prop your upper body up and take the weight on your forearm. Raise your hip until your body forms a straight line and brace your core. Hold the position as long as possible. Increase the difficulty level by raising a leg or arm. Roll over and repeat on the other side.

7. Deficit Deadlifts

Deadlifts are all about working the major muscle groups of the body. This exercise is the one which works on both upper and lower body, including the back muscles.

How it’s done:

3 Sets of 10 repetitions

Stand on an elevated platform like bumper plates or weight plates with 1-3 inches in height. Keep your feet hip-width apart. Squat down and grasp the bar, look forward, keep your back arched and lift the bar. And, then slowly lower the bar.

8. Bench Dips

This exercise is perfect for those who wish to create a swimmer’s body. It basically works on your triceps, the muscles that are found on your upper arm and located beneath the shoulders. It strengthens and tones theses muscles. You don’t have to stay in the gym. Enjoy the nice weather and go out to find some nice benches or stairs to do these exercises. You can also check other easy stair exercises to get back into shape.

How it’s done:
3 Sets of 10 repetitions

Keep your feet together and legs straight, grab the edge of a bench pointing the elbows backward. Lower the body slowly, keep the back straight and press back up powerfully.

9. Incline Dumbbell Press Reverse Grip

The chest muscles include pectoral muscles which work in coordination with arms, shoulder, neck and the core muscles to produce movement and power. This exercise works wonderfully on these muscles to strengthen and tone them.

How it’s done:
3 Sets of 10 repetitions

With dumbbells in both of your hands lay down on an inclined bench, arch your back and put your feet on the ground. Extend your arms above your torso and then lower the weights beside your chest and bend the elbows. After a brief pause, take the weights back to the starting position.

10. Side Lateral To Front Raise

Dumbbell lateral to front raise targets your shoulder. It tones the front shoulder muscles which provide the definition for the top of the arms. It also makes your shoulder strong for the everyday activities which include lifting.

How it’s done:
3 Sets of 10 repetitions

Hold a pair of dumbbells by your side. Slightly bend your elbows, raise the weights to your shoulder height moving it in front of you. Lower the weights without swinging and then repeat this movement again.

At last, always remember to maintain a good hygiene because an excessive amount of sweating can lead to skin infections. Keep tea tree oil wipes or natural body wipes handy to avoid any kind of infection. Or even better, never share your personal items and always take a shower with antifungal body wash after your workout.

It is rather simple to achieve a new height than to maintain it. It is not easy, but it is also not impossible. All you need is the will to do it because these amazing exercises can be learned with time and effort. So, let this summer be the best one ever.