I wrote my old workout routine when I was in highschool. Back then, I had a lot of free time and could afford spending two hours a day working out. Now that I’m older, I’m neither as motivated nor have as much free time, and I’ve been struggling with being consistent.

This new workout routine aims to help those who may be in a similar situation to mine. It contains only the bare minimum number of exercises to make your body both look and feel strong and balanced.

Choose one exercise from each progression category. The lower an exercise is listed, the harder it is. Once you can do 3 sets of 8-12 reps, move on to a more challenging variation.

Try to exercise between 3-6 days a week. Groups of exercises aren’t attached to any particular day, just make sure to cycle through them the way they are listed.

GROUP 1:

• Vertical push:

  1. Bench dips
  2. Negative dips
  3. Full dips
  4. Single bar dips
  5. Ring dips

• Horizontal pull:

  1. Vertical rows
  2. Incline rows
  3. Horizontal rows
  4. Wide rows
  5. Archer rows
  6. One arm rows

GROUP 2:

• Vertical pull:

  1. Jackknife pull-ups
  2. Negative pull-ups
  3. Full pull-ups
  4. Narrow pull-ups
  5. One hand pull-ups
  6. Archer pull-ups
  7. One arm pull-ups

• Horizontal push:

  1. Vertical push-ups
  2. Incline push-ups
  3. Knee push-ups
  4. Full push-ups
  5. Diamond push-ups
  6. Pseudo planche push-ups
  7. Uneven push-ups
  8. Archer push-ups
  9. One arm push-ups

GROUP 3:

• Legs:

  1. Assisted squats
  2. Full squats
  3. Narrow squats
  4. Uneven squats
  5. Assisted pistol squats
  6. Full pistol squats

• Core:

  1. Hanging knee raises
  2. Hanging leg raises
  3. Toe to bars

If you feel like it, add lightweight training for any of these calisthenics skills at the beginning of your workouts:

• Front lever
• Planche
• L/V sit
• Bridge
• Twist
• Flag

The main benefit of this routine is that it’s very flexible. It fits into your schedule without the guilt that may come from not being able to follow a stricter routine. I recommend using my habit tracker to visually track trends in your workout frequency. I will update this post in two months with my statistics to see if I managed to stick to this routine.

Update after almost 4 months, I sticked to it!

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