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#The Minimalist Routine

A quick and simple, ‘bare minimum’, balanced exercise routine for people who just want to move more and get the benefits of regular exercise.

You can do this routine every day but if your goals include strength and muscle growth three times per week with gradual progression to harder exercises is better. Consider mobility & flexibility training and/or low-intensity cardio if you’d like to do something on the days you’re not doing this routine.

##The Routine

Complete 2-6 circuits of the following exercises, completing one set of each exercise comprises one circuit. Take little to no rest.

Each set should be 1-2 repetitions short of failure. If you fail your last rep make a note of it and plan to do 1-2 fewer reps than that in future sets of that exercise. If completing a set felt too easy try adding more reps in future sets or, for push-up and rowing sets, progress to a more difficult variation of the exercise.

1. Walking Lunges
2. Push-ups
3. Rows
4. Plank Shoulder Taps

That’s it, that’s the minimalist routine.

The push-ups and rows can be made harder and easier according to your ability. Above I’ve linked to the exercise progression pages from the Recommended Routine to give you a general idea of how you can do that.

For this program you can work in whatever rep range you like (see the Concept Wednesday on Reps and Rep Ranges) but generally should be able to do at least three sets of 8-10 reps before significantly increasing the difficulty of an exercise.

If you’d like to do some optional extras consider:

• Supermans (AKA Arc Hold) or Bird-dogs or similar
• Deadbugs
• A hip hinge exercise.
• Squats
• Calf raises
• Some additional core exercise options from the Recommended Routine
• Walking, hiking, unicycling

FAQs

• This is too easy
• Scale up exercises to make it harder. Examples:
• Pushups can be progressed to diamond pushups, pseudo planche pushups, or other harder pushing exercises.
• Rows can be progressed to pullups or harder pullup variations.

• Lunges can be progressed to squats, cossack squats, single leg squats/pistols, shrimp squats, and so on.

• How many circuits should I do?
• At least one. After all, anything is better than nothing. Generally results will increase with greater volume. If you’re at six circuits and it starts feeling too easy consider working on more difficult progressions even if it requires reducing overall volume.
• How do I avoid injuries?
• Make sure you understand proper form for each exercise. Videos linked from this wiki are a good place to start.
• Pace yourself. It’s not a race.
• Try to keep overall volume of push-ups and rows roughly equal over time. Working too much on one or the other can cause muscular imbalances

• Take breaks. Eventually being too consistent with our exercise can become detrimental to progress. Many people will naturally have life events come up that cause them to take breaks in training but if you don’t it may be worth scheduling breaks every few months. For more read the Concept Wednesday on deloading.

• Where do I do rows?
• Under a table
• Place a broomstick across the seats of two chairs
• Hang towels over a pull-up bar
• Throw a rope over a tree branch or other horizontal support like a swing-set (or just use one of the swings).
• Buy gymnastic rings

• Tie a knot in a bedsheet and close a door on it

• Why isn’t more frequent training better for strength and muscle growth?

• It’s complicated. See the Concept Wednesday on recovery.

• Please feel free to ask any questions or share any comments on this routine in the Daily Discussion thread.

###Attribution This routine is (almost) entirely derived from /u/m092’s Concept Wednesday, reproduced here in a shorter format in order to be more easily readable and editable.

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##Translations

• Spanish – credits to u/Miki
• Türkçe – credits to u/thynic
• Portuguese – credits to u/forsh4w4
• Russian – credits to u/alex_ilin