[Canuck Wisdom]

Yes I can help you. You need to take me serious though.

The bench is great, it gives you an edge for doing weights or mass building. However, you don't need any equipment in order to exercise your entire body and get in the best shape of your life. If you have dumbells those can be of great use as well, but again not necessary.

You need to be creative. In my opinion, the measure of true strength is strength against your own body and weight, how well you can move your own person. Be creative. Form is everything.
Do push ups, try different hand positions to target triceps, biceps upper and lower chest and back. If you listen to your body you can figure it out for yourself, but I will try to direct you. For example, spacing your hands out further will help develop your lats/back. Close by your side straight up and down, will help to target your arms. Do push ups on your fists, as opposed to palms, for greater range of motion. Try putting your hands down low, near your navel, or up high, just above your shoulders. Try raising your feet, put them on a step, a hill, or a bed.

Do you see what I am getting at?

You can do sit ups everyday (unlike many strength building exercises which need downtime). Be creative, do crunches, full sit ups. Try lifting your feet off the ground and holding your knees in the air, bring your elbows to your knees, keep your back straight (I don't know how well I've described that but its my basic sit up). Do this with a twist so that your elbow is outside the opposite knee. Do crunches and twist so that your elbows touch the ground beside you. I can't stress enough targeting your obliques (side abs) for building core stability which is crucial for overall fitness and cardio development. Lye on your side and do sideways crunches even, or leg lifts. On your back, do bicycle kicks. Planks, on your elbows and toes and hold for as long as you can.

Lye on your stomach and do like reverse sit ups, to develop your lower back, thats a hard area to target. If you have something you can lean off of and get a greater range of motion without falling, do that with your hands up by your head.

Warm up your legs by running on the spot, or your blading or whatever, and do squat jumps, or even just jumping and bringing both knees up repeatedly. I bet you are exhausted after doing 2 sets of 20 squat jumps, I bet you can't do three. Squat jumps are amazing strength building for your legs. Don't bend your knees beyond 90degrees though. Calf raises on the edge of a step or something like that, in different feet positions can target your lower legs and really help with vertical jumps.

You see? Be creative and you don't really need any equipment at all. If you have somewehre you can do pull ups thats a great advantage. The back of stairs maybe? Palms facing away from you will do your back and arms, palms towards you will target your arms more. Wide grip palms facing away are super hard, and a great back exercise, I bet you cant do even seven or eight.

Different types of jumping on the spot, knee raises, kicking your legs back/kicking your bum can help with your hamstrings.

Be sure to stretch properly, don't do static stretching without warming up before a work out. Static is better for after your work out. Dynamic, swinging your arms and legs in a controlled fashion is a good way to get warmed up.

I used to think jumping jacks were useless when I was a kid and stopped doing them. I started again recently and its really good, as an adult body. Good calves and shoulders workout, as well as cardio.

All of these things, consistent speed, or if you want to speed reaction time, slow return with quick accelerating reps (of puch ups, sit ups, squat jumps whatever).

Even doing enough arm circles can get you a good shoulder work out, and if youve got light weights like 2.5lbs or 5 lbs use those for added resistance.

Of course if you have dumbbells there is another whole new world you can open up for upper body strength, shoulder, arms and back especially. Remember when doing back exercises to always keep your lower back straight and concave though or you can be easily injured.

Hope that helps. Take these ideas and run with them, be creative and remember you can target almost any area with good form.

My philosophy lately (past few years) has been to concentrate on core/torso strength and cardio and the rest will follow suit. I don't care much about being really big, just strong. And alot of this is just my genetics, but I have not gained much weight in four or five years now at least, but am much stronger/fitter then I was.

Doing anything just sort of listen, and feel it out. You can find the proper and best form for targeting any area just by listening to your body, so only take my descriptions as guidelines because I cannot be there to show you exactly what I mean.

Seriously form is everything.