The 12 best bodyweight exercises for missionaries

By Kristin Wise, certified personal trainer & missionary mom · Updated June 2026

These twelve movements cover everything a missionary needs to stay strong — pushing, pulling, legs, and core — with zero equipment and enough scaling to fit a total beginner or a former athlete. Build any workout from this list.

A good program doesn't need fifty exercises. It needs a handful of high-value movements done well, made progressively harder over time. Every exercise below includes an easier and a harder version so it grows with you across the whole mission.

Push (chest, shoulders, triceps)

1. Push-ups. The cornerstone. Easier: hands on a counter or against a wall. Harder: feet elevated on the bed, or slow 3-second lowers.
2. Pike push-ups. Hips high, head toward the floor — builds shoulders. Harder: feet elevated for a near-vertical press.
3. Chair dips. Hands on a sturdy chair, lower your body, press up. Targets triceps. Easier: bend the knees and keep feet close.

Pull (back, biceps)

Pulling is the hardest to train without a bar, but it's essential for posture and balance. Improvise:

4. Backpack rows. Load a backpack with books or water bottles; bend at the hips and row it to your ribs.
5. Inverted rows. Lie under a sturdy table and pull your chest to the edge. A safe, scalable bodyweight pull.
6. Backpack curls & towel pulls. Curl the loaded pack, or do isometric towel pulls for the biceps.

Legs (quads, glutes, hamstrings)

7. Squats. The king of lower-body moves. Harder: slow tempo, pause at the bottom, or jump squats.
8. Reverse lunges. Easier on the knees than forward lunges and great for balance.
9. Bulgarian split squats. Back foot on a chair — brutal and effective for one-leg strength.
10. Glute bridges. Floor-based, low-impact, perfect for a small space. Harder: single-leg.

Core (abs, lower back, stability)

11. Planks. Whole-body tension in one move. Harder: longer holds, or shoulder taps.
12. Dead bugs & mountain climbers. Dead bugs for control and the lower back; mountain climbers when you want to raise the heart rate.

The catch: variety and progression

This toolkit is enough to start today. But doing the same five movements for two years gets stale fast — and your body adapts, so progress stalls. The missionaries who actually transform their fitness rotate new variations in and make movements progressively harder over time. That's the part that's hard to program for yourself week after week.

Try a week free with the 7-Day Plank & Pray Challenge — one short workout a day, no cost.