I’m a big fan of simplicity. For many different reasons. First off when someone can put something simply it means they have a deep understanding of the thing. When someone takes pages and pages or hours upon hours to get at the general concept of something it’s generally because they don’t it that well. Sure there are exceptions but there are exceptions to everything. And I think health and fitness is no different.
I’m not a big fan of the gym anymore, and have been becoming less and less a fan of it as time moves on. I think there are better ways to look after your physical health. Don’t get me wrong I love weight lifting I just think modern gyms offer as many problems as they solve in many ways. But anyways I’m a big fan of combat sports like boxing and wrestling, hiking as well as things like gymnastics and dance.
I think they all offer more in the way of physical, mental, and spiritual development than your average gym does. But with that being said sometimes we don’t have access to these places. Maybe we’re stuck at home during a hurricane or a snow storm. Maybe we just can’t leave the house for the day. Maybe we can’t afford a gym membership. Or a million other reasons. I want to offer you an effective workout you can do from just about anywhere with minimal equipment.
The Critical Importance Of Diet
When it comes to body composition diet is the 80% of results and exercise choice is the 20%. Well maybe not exactly but safe to say that diet matters more than exercise when it comes to body composition. Though of course they both have their own unique benefits and therefore you should do both. But anyways I figured I wouldn’t be doing you much good if I didn’t lay out some diet basics at the front. So I’ve done a bunch of different diets in my life and more and more I’ve been focusing on the one that works for me, gets the best results, and is simple.
I’ve ended up on a sort of modified carnivore diet. I’ll still have greens, I’ll have fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, and kombucha as well as raw dairy. At first I thought the low carbs would make it impossible to go hard in exercise but after an adjustment period it wasn’t that bad. One big thing that helped me was salting my water. Especially during long sparring periods and such.
Regardless if you’re not getting enough nutrients then your exercise routine isn’t going to do you a whole lot of good. Make sure you’re getting in good proteins, fats, and carbs. If you want to know more about my particular way of eating check out the Carnivore Diet by Shawn Baker and stuff by Sally Fallon Morrell combined with of course old school bodybuilding like Arnold’s book. But let’s get to the workout.
Equipment Needed
So technically you could do this at a park, though it might be weird or if you have the right sized trees, rocks, and the like can do it there. But let’s say for whatever reason you’re stuck in an abandoned warehouse, what would you need then? There are only three exercises in the workout sprints, dips, and pullups. So what you’d need is a dip bar, a pullup bar, and an area that you can sprint in. And that’s it. I’ve done this with trees and different elevations before but that requires some setup and trees with low hanging branches. But do whatever works.
The Actual Workout
So like I said above you have three exercises sprints, dips, and pullups. To me these are the three best exercises you can do to hit each respective grouping of muscles. Don’t get me wrong squats and deadlifts are great but without weight you have to resort to advanced moves to get the same stimulation, hence sprinting. Here’s what you do and you can adjust as needed.
AMAP = As Many As Possible
Pullups – AMAP
Dips – AMAP
Sprints – 4 x 40 yards
Pullups – AMAP
Dips – AMAP
Sprints – 4×40 yards
Pullups – AMAP
Dips -AMAP
Sprints – 4×40 yards
And that’s it. You can take a short break in between “sets” if you want. It’s a good conditioning drill and exercise. Good for general physical preparedness as they’d call it at Westside.
Keep It Simple
And you’ll more likely to stick to it and get better results. Don’t overcomplicate things, that way lies madness as well as inefficiency. Everyone tried to nerd out on everything anymore and they usually end up missing the big picture. Don’t make things more complicated than they need to be. Keep it simple and reap the rewards. This applies to a lot more than just working out.
If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it.
-Charles Sledge
