25 Bodyweight Exercises You Can Count in Reps (Ideas for a Daily Number)

The “reps a day” method — pick a number, do it every day, count it — works for anything you can count. Push-ups are the famous one, but they get boring, they only work half the body, and some people’s wrists hate them. Here are 25 exercises that need no equipment (a bar or a chair at most), grouped by what they train, each with a starting daily number and how to make it harder. Pick one from two or three groups and you have a complete daily routine.

Push

1. Push-ups — start 20/day in sets of 5–10; progress via the challenge; harder: decline, diamond, archer.
2. Incline push-ups (hands on counter/bench) — 30/day; lower the incline over weeks until it’s the floor.
3. Pike push-ups (hips high, head toward floor) — 15/day; shoulders; harder: feet on a chair.
4. Dips on a chair (bench dips) — 20/day; triceps; harder: feet elevated, slower.
5. Diamond push-ups — 15/day; triceps; count toward push-up total.

Pull

6. Pull-ups — see the 0 to 10 progression; count singles.
7. Chin-ups — easier than pull-ups; 5–10/day in singles or doubles.
8. Bodyweight rows (under a sturdy table or low bar) — 30/day in sets of 10; the best pull for people with no bar.
9. Dead hangs — count seconds; 90 s/day in 3 hangs; grip and shoulders.
10. Negatives — 10/day of 5-second lowers; the bridge to your first pull-up.

Legs

11. Squats — 50/day; 30-day challenge; harder: tempo, jump squats.
12. Lunges — 30/day (15 each leg); harder: walking lunges, rear-foot elevated.
13. Glute bridges — 40/day; low back and hips love these; harder: single-leg.
14. Calf raises — 50/day, on a step; slow; harder: single-leg.
15. Step-ups (on a chair or stair) — 30/day each leg; harder: higher step.
16. Wall sit — count seconds; 90 s/day.
17. Split squats — 20/day each leg; harder: Bulgarian (rear foot on chair).

Core

18. Plank — count seconds; 30-day plank challenge.
19. Side plank — 30 s each side/day; harder: top leg lifted.
20. Sit-ups or crunches — 30/day; how many sit-ups a day.
21. Leg raises (lying) — 20/day; slow; harder: hanging.
22. Hollow-body hold — count seconds; 60 s/day in 3 holds.
23. Bird-dogs — 20/day (10 each side); low back friendly.

Cardio-ish (count reps or minutes)

24. Burpees — 10/day; brutal; harder: add a push-up, add a jump. Count in reps.
25. Jumping jacks / mountain climbers / jump rope — count reps (50–100/day) or minutes (5/day). Jump rope in minutes is one of the best daily counts there is.

How to combine them

Don’t do all 25. Pick one push, one pull or leg, one core and give each a daily number:

That’s ten minutes spread across a day. Change one exercise every 4–8 weeks (swap push-ups for pike push-ups, squats for lunges) and the numbers stay interesting for years.

Counting things that aren’t reps

Half this list is counted in seconds (plank, hangs, wall sit) or minutes (jump rope, stretching), and some things are best counted as sessions (a stretching routine = 1). Whatever you use to track should handle all three — reps, minutes, sessions — or you end up with three systems. Paper handles all three fine. RepTrend tracks any exercise in reps, minutes, or sessions with a goal and streak on each, and a timer for the timed ones, which is why I use it for the mixed list above.

Picking a starting number

For any exercise here: do one good set to form-failure, take half of that, and do it 3–4 times through the day. That’s your daily total. Add a rep per set each week. The full reasoning is in how many push-ups a day; it applies to every rep-counted exercise on this list.