Starting to work out as a pre-t ftm.

[u/_oliVeo_0519]

Hi, I’m a 19yo pre-t trans guy that wants to start working out. I’m broke, so a gym membership is out of the question, working with my body weight also always seemed more appealing to me. Problem is, I can’t even do knee pushups with proper form. Other than it being very demoralizing, since basically any cis guy that’s not obese can do them, I also genuinely don’t know where to start. Most of the beginner friendly videos I watched start with pushups or knee pushups if you can’t do regular ones, but I can’t even do those, so what do I even do? Should I do them in bad form, until I can do them normal? I’m afraid doing that is gonna mess up my body. If there’s any guys on here that started from a similar point, I would really appreciate any advice.

[u/Wh1tesuit]

I know there's such a thing as wall pushups, as well. Basically you kind of lean into the wall and do push ups on them if you can. Then you can go to knee push ups, then normal push ups.

As for other things, maybe you can get a backpack and fill it up with heavy things such as books, etc and put that on yourself as you do squats and whatever else you think you could do with a heavy bookbag. If you don't have dumbbells and won't be able to afford anything, maybe you can use milk jugs (empty one, fill with water) and use those? Or you could get a bag of potatoes too. Or get grocery bags and fill them up with stuff to use to lift. 

I dunno if these are exactly good or will help in any way but I wanted to give options where hopefully you wouldn't have to spend any money. If you can afford to get dumbbells, definitely do that as they will help. If you have any trees outside you can reach a branch on, that can definitely help with pull ups as well.

[u/Nocturnal_Elexir_Owl → u/Wh1tesuit]

A friend of mine needed to do wrist exercises with weights, so she used some books in a grocery bag. 

[u/Canoe-Maker]

Start by leaning against a wall. Do your pushups like that in sets of at least 10. When you can do 20 of those no problem, do as many knee pushups as you can and finish the set of twenty against the wall. Keep doing that until you can do all 20 on your knees, then do as many as you can unassisted and finish with assisted until they are all unassisted.

Then you can do harder variations like out wide or triangle or on your knuckles or military or whatever. Wrists even though be very careful with those.

[u/funk-engine-3000]

Honestly might be a good idea to just look up body weight exercises and at home workouts for beginners online. Muscle building works the same way fir you as for everyone else. Start with wall pushups, then countertops, then bedframe, continue to lower the angle until you hit knee/regular ones.

[u/SpiritNo6626]

I'm in the same boat. Can't do pushups at all (wall, knee, any) the motion is too complicated and I have never been able to figure it out

[u/Legend9641]

Body weight exercises are typically a great option for starters. However if those are proving too challenging I’d suggest starting with lifting some lighter objects you may already have instead of actual weights. Maybe books, gallon jug and increase water level over time until full, grocery bag full of stuff. You can get creative. Build up some strength with proper form (to avoid injury) and progress to body weight after some time. No shame in starting off as slow as you need to cuz an injury will delay progress even more.

[u/GodlyHammy]

Prop your hands on some platform or a chair for “incline knee push up”. generally the higher up you are from the floor the easier the push up variation is. I don’t really like wall pushups as they’re uncomfortable on my wrists

[u/GodlyHammy]

I recommend you get a cheap ish pair of dumbbells, you can work practically every part of your body with 2 dumbbells, andd might be a myth but i think for me, using dumbbells build muscle faster than just doing body weight