Squats, chin ups and push ups – what a great selection of body weight exercises that can propel you to great fitness results and that ideal body you desire!
I incorporate a lot of traditional body weight and mobility exercises into my training.
Why? Because they work, are relatively easy to learn and deserve to be included in the foundation of anybody’s fitness regimen if you value real world strength and movement quality which I will always contend promotes a rich quality of life.
Check out this outdoor workout that won’t chew up a lot of your time, but will eat up many calories as it makes you a powerfully capable citizen of planet Earth!
The Workout:
5 Overhead Squats
3 Chin Ups
5 Push Ups
Performing these three exercises in succession is considered a round
Set the clock for 10 minutes and see how many rounds you can get in with good form.
A lot of people I meet and enjoy talking to immediately want to discuss my Kettlebell and Sandbag training which I truly value and have an absolute blast and productive time performing.
And I get where they are coming from because these training tools lend themselves to a powerful and exciting way to train and will indeed transform your life if used properly.
But I will always make sure to advocate the value of body weight and strength mobility exercises as they are incredibly beneficial to practice and stay connected to even though they often get overlooked as “old school exercises” or aren’t as “sexy” as other exercises that are big on flash, but low on substance.
Tips And Guidelines:
Do a proper warmup before attempting this workout
Rest as much as you need between rounds, but keep it challenging
Listen to your body. On those days you feel robustly powerful, go a little harder. And on those days you feel a little drained, back off the accelerator a bit.
As you get better and stronger, try bumping up the session to 15 minutes to see how many quality rounds you can perform.
Give this total body workout a try whether you prefer the outdoors or in the gym. Just make sure you have access to a bar to do your chin ups. If I cannot find a bar, I will often make use of a tree branch to do my chin ups or pull ups.
Regress A Little To Progress A Lot
If you are having a tough time performing this total body workout, then try these regressions to keep you challenged and put you in a position of success:
Do body weight squats – If the overhead squat is too tough, just ditch the stick and do body weight squats without your arms over your head.
If you can’t do a Push up – Do your push ups on a bench or chair or even against a wall so that the angle of elevation will reduce your full body weight being moved and allow you to perform full repetitions. Choose the angle of elevation that challenges you, yet does not compromise sound technique.
If you can’t do a chin up – Use a chair or box to jump up into the top position of the chin up where your chin is above the bar. Slowly lower yourself down making sure to engage your lats. Jump back up and repeat. You are essentially doing a negative chin up. You will still get a great fitness challenge and benefit and it is a great way to progress to a full chin up which is a true milestone you should work toward.
Check out this video demonstration for a negative chin up
So have the courage and self awareness to know when to perform one of these exercise regressions or “back off” exercises. You will still be challenged as you develop the necessary strength, mobility and technique to progress forward to the more difficult variations of these exercises.
Don’t be like some trainees and rush through the more challenging variations of these exercises who are more concerned with racking up a lot of low quality repetitions at the expense of sound technique. This is usually a recipe for disaster as it can lead to reinforcing poor technique and movement patterns which significantly increases your chances of injury.
Rounds Over Reps Training
You will notice that I like to choose a challenging weight or movement and do relatively low repetitions throughout the series of exercises and do multiple rounds.
This is because your body responds extremely well to these types of workouts since the low reps force you to dial in to your technique – paying special attention to every rep without going to complete muscle failure as opposed to using a higher repetition scheme and less rounds. I find this keeps you fresher, less prone to overuse injuries and trainees are less tempted to use bad technique in order to get their reps in.
You will still get an incredible workout and I have found these types of workouts are way more sustainable and lend themselves to delivering outstanding fitness results. Your mind and motivation is more stimulated since you only have to psyche yourself up to get your 3-5 repetitions in then rest briefly before performing your next round.
By programming the workout like this, the rounds, reps and quality work adds up before you know it and you feel awesome while priming your body to reap great results!
Stay Productive And Avoid The Hype
Don’t let anybody tell you that your fitness routine needs to be crazy complicated or turned into some type of marathon competition whereby you destroy the vital energy of your central nervous system at every session in pursuit of great fitness results that never seem to happen.
There are plenty of Hollywood type fitness phonies and disingenuous trainers and gym owners out there who want you to buy into their insane, meaningless movement programs built on nothing but emotion and hype.
Avoid these programs and characters like the plague.
The problem with those types of workouts and trainers is that they tend to have the trainee rush to failure using questionable and unsafe technique seeking pain instead of productive challenge.
This just invites injury within a program that’s just not sustainable to perform to begin with if you gravitate to these questionable fitness workouts high on emotional excitement, yet low on results and sustainability.
Give this challenging workout a try and experience great fitness results when you string together a few timeless body weight exercises in a meaningful manner like the squat, chin up and push up.
While often overlooked, these types of body weight exercises will absolutely drive your fitness to new heights and you can do them almost anywhere with a minimal time investment for maximum results.
Related: Rounds Over Reps Training Keeps Training Fresh
Related: How Strong Is Your Mental Armor?
Related: Do You Agree With These 5 Truths?
Authored by Mark Mellohusky
My training is all about performing the maximum amount of sane, sustainable and results rich exercise in the least amount of time without spending hours haunting gyms doing tedious hours of sappy, ineffective, media endorsed, do-nothing exercises championed by Hollywood type fitness phonies.
I pride myself on being a product of my own advice and the methods I practice enable me to be a powerfully active durable citizen that makes things happen in life instead of just letting life happen to me.
I eat T-Bone steaks, lift various weights and practice training with my body weight!
Seven Stars Fitness