The overwhelming amount of information out there today have made fitness routines look and seem so damn complicated that it turns many away who are doing what they can to better themselves. Very few people even teach and preach the simplicity of exercise anymore. Even when it comes to calisthenics, they often show the more advanced exercises that aren't sustainable for realistic health and strength. It really is a pain in the ass.
Why make exercise so damn hard to understand? Mostly due to marketing and catering to a specific audience that is gullible enough to buy into the crap that many try to pan off as the ultimate program and you'd be a fool to not get your hands on it. The truth is, many "influencers" today don't have a fucking clue what real simplistic training is, hell I can guarantee that more than 95% of people who "teach" fitness today care more about how their ass, arms and abs look in comparison to knowing and understanding the training principles of past strongmen and women. For men, look to guys like Brooks Kubik, Arthur Saxon, Otto Arco, Maxick, Bill Pearl, Reg Park and a few others. For Women, the list might be a bit less but if I had to pick one woman of the old timers that represented strength, femineity, power and grace it be someone like Peggy Stockton. In today's world of women's fitness, less than a handful really have the ability to showcase realistic strength and the three I can think of are Kirsten Tullock, Melody Schoenfeld and Tera Scott.
Now, when it comes to simplicity and a good routine, a favorite of mine is doing Supersets or doing exercises back to back and continuing that for a period of time instead of just sets and reps schemes. It's a different dynamic to formulate a workout that doesn't take a ton of thinking but it does take a certain mentality and the ability to harness a good level of conditioning that's foundational. In this case, it takes inspiration from one of the greatest pro wrestlers and that's Bob Backlund. I've written about him a time or two so I'm sure you can find those. This routine is based on his foundational exercises; the Step Up & the Ab Wheel. He would do hundreds of these exercises a day sometimes more than an hour each in the same session and it made him one tough son of a bitch and one of the most underrated conditioned men of his time.
You can do different formats of training with these exercises but some of my workouts lately have been just doing a few reps of each back to back but I keep going for an extended period of time. This is by doing 10 Step Ups per leg and immediately do 5 reps of the ab wheel. Sounds too damn easy right? After all that's really a pathetic looking superset meant for beginners but I can assure you, it's anything but. It's one thing to do a few sets, it's way different when you continually do it without taking a break for up to 20 minutes straight or longer. When you're going that long, the reps not only add up but you're testing your strength and conditioning as well. They become more than just a few reps each, they become a brutal aspect of a session you wouldn't expect to be hard to do. Give it a go, try for ten minutes and see what's possible. The objective is to keep going without a break or even with as little rest, for this case, if you need a rest, you only have 10-20 seconds per set. Work at a pace that isn't Speedy Gonzales but enough to get the heart rate up and keep going. Speed will come naturally but the longer you go, tougher it can become.
There you have it, no complications, no need to think too much on what to do, you just do it and see what you're capable of. You can do more reps of each per set if you wish but also keep your form as smooth as possible so you don't hurt yourself. The faster you do these exercises, the greater risk to becoming sloppy, it's not a sprint. Again, let the speed come naturally, form doesn't have to perfect but it does make a difference in how you apply the tension and the awareness of the exercises themselves. If you really want to take it to another level, take a deck of cards (Black Cards for Step Ups, Red For Ab Wheel Rollouts) and do these until the deck is done. Try to do a total of 500 Step Ups & 250 Rollouts, that's really going to test you.
Have fun and keep being amazingly awesome.
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