Training Plans
Don’t like the gym? No problem. Whatever your aim, we’ve assembled a go-anywhere training plan to build the body you want
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Bodyweight exercises
So: you’re economising in an attempt to reduce the personal impact of the post-Brexit financial meltdown. Or maybe you’ve got a lovely park near you and spend most of your time at a desk so you wouldn’t mind getting an occasional glimpse of that big ball of fire in the sky. Or you’re allergic to mirrors. All entirely valid reasons to shift your workout away from the gym – but if that isn’t enough, consider that one recent investigation saw 800 people report reduced levels of stress and anger from training outside, while another study linked it with increased energy.
And apart from fresh air and oxygen prompting the release of feelgood hormone serotonin, there are other benefits. Five to 30 minutes of sun exposure at least twice a week will improve your body’s vitamin D levels, helping you build stronger bones and a more robust immune system.
Of course, dumbbells and squat racks can be hard to find outdoors, but that’s no obstacle. “With a bit of improvisation, you can mimic any workout you’d do in the gym outside,” says trainer David Jackson of the School of Calisthenics. “So if you don’t like the gym, there’s really no excuse.”
Even if you do like the gym, it’s still worth popping your shades on and your shirt off and hitting the grass for a workout now and then. See you in the park.
RECOMMENDED: Outdoor Fitness Classes in London
Mobility Training
Mobility training: it’s the new stretching. And the good news is using a select handful of dynamic movements won’t just improve your range of motion – it’ll get your circulation going and challenge your co-ordination. Forget doing an hour of yoga, just borrow a variation on the classic sun salutation. “Think of this as a slow-motion burpee,” says trainer Rannoch Donald. “It engages almost every muscle while providing a fantastic stretch.”
RECOMMENDED: Mobility Training Home Workout
The Aim A full-body warm-up that increases flexibility, sharpens mental focus and sets you up for a successful training session.
Why “Do this three or four times a week, and you’ll see your hip, ankle and knee range of motion improve,” says Donald. “Even if you don’t want to squat or do Olympic lifts, that’s certain to improve your quality of life.”
How
Start with your feet just wider than shoulder-width apart, toes pointing forwards.
Squat down by bending at the knees and hips and place your hands between your feet.
Move your left foot backwards so you’re in a lunge position.
Move your right foot back to assume a press-up position with your body in a straight line.
From here, drop your hips to the floor while keeping your arms straight. This position is the traditional yoga “cobra”.
Hold the cobra position for a second, then raise your hips, do one press-up, and reverse the whole move until you’re standing up.
Do one rep, take one breath, then repeat for two, three and four reps and breaths. Rest for a minute, then repeat. You’re ready to start your workout.
Calisthenics
Fancy hitting the jungle gym, but worried that everyone else there will be doing shirtless human flags? Don’t be. “Everyone’s talking about calisthenics at the moment, but a lot of the conversation is directed at advanced movements,” says Tim Stevenson of the School of Calisthenics. “Everything is built on the basics. Week-to-week calisthenics programmes largely focus on building strength, muscle and skill by using variations of a few staple exercises – ideal for those who want to start but feel intimidated by the perceived ‘impossibility’ of some of the harder exercises.” Do these workouts once a week each for a month, and you’ll be ready to graduate to the hard stuff.
RECOMMENDED: An Introduction to Calisthenics Training
Pulling Power
The Aim Build back strength and improve posture with just a pull-up bar.
How Do the active hangs to warm up your shoulders, then do three to five sets of each pulling exercise, with 90 seconds of rest in between. As you improve, you can add an extra rep to each session, or reduce the amount of time you rest by ten seconds.
Why “Most people do some vertical pulling in their workout, but horizontal pulls are important for hitting the muscles from other angles, and are slightly less high-intensity,” says Stevenson. “This workout improves the strength and stability of the muscles that retract and depress the shoulder blade. All that means healthier, more robust shoulders.”
RECOMMENDED: Master the Pull-Up
Active hang
“Hanging is pretty simple but the real key is knowing the difference between a ‘dead’ hang and an ‘active’ hang,” says Stevenson. “In the dead hang you would be holding the bar but not creating any tension – you’re basically hanging on slack muscle and connective tissue. The active hang occurs when you pull the shoulder blades down and together as if you were squeezing a coin between them.” Do three sets of eight.
Rock climber pull-up
Start by hanging from a bar with your hands shoulder-width apart, palms facing away. Pull up, but pull slightly harder with one hand, so that your chin ends up close to one hand. “This is a great progression towards the full ‘typewriter’ pull-up,” says Stevenson.
Row
On a low bar, position your hands shoulder-width apart and walk your feet underneath so your body is in a straight line with your heels on the ground, at about 45°. Keeping your elbows close to your body, pull your chest to the bar, then lower under control. To make it easier move your feet backwards to change the body angle in the start position. Do ten reps.
Leg strength
The Aim Lower-body strength
How Do the below circuit two to four times, going for five to ten reps of each move, then finish with the sprints. Can’t manage that? Do one or two reps and work your way up.
Pistol squat
Stand on one leg and start the squat by sitting back and down as if going into a chair. Get stable at the bottom, then drive the foot hard into the ground and try to crack an imaginary walnut between your glutes on the way up.
Shrimp squat
Grab your right foot with your right hand and hold it against your glutes. Put your left arm out in front of you to help with balance and weight distribution. Squat down with your left leg until your right knee touches the ground. Keep your bodyweight forwards over the left foot. Push hard into the ground to stand back up.
Sprint
“Set out markers at ten, 20, 40 and 50 metres or try to train at a sports pitch where lines are marked out already,” says Stevenson. “Sprint to each line, recover by walking back, then sprint again to the next marker.” Do three sets.
Press-Ups
What do you bench, bro? It barely matters. The flat bench press isn’t the chest-builder you’ve been led to believe. The path to improved pecs actually starts with the press-up – and with a handful of bodyweight moves to complement it, you can build T-shirt-filling muscle without ever touching a dumbbell. Do this circuit once or twice a week, but make sure you’re balancing it with an equal amount of pulling work – you don’t want that nine-to-five slouch you’ve been cultivating getting any worse, after all.
The Aim A bigger chest and triceps
How Do two to three sets of the pike press-ups, going to near-failure on each set – try to add more reps each week. Add eight to ten reps of straight bar dips for three sets with a 60-second rest in between, then finish with 50 press-ups in as few sets as possible. Focus on diamond press-ups for your triceps, pec press-ups for chest or handstand press-ups to work your shoulders.
Pike press-up
Start in a press-up position and walk your feet forwards to push your hips up so your body makes a V-shape with the hands on the floor. Keeping your hips high, bend your arms to lower your head straight down, and push back up.
Diamond press-up
From a standard press-up position move your hands together to create a diamond with your thumbs and fingers. Lower your chest to the floor, and press up.
Pec press-up
Think of these like an isometric version of the dumbbell flye: no weight required. Get into a press-up position with your hands directly below your shoulders, do one rep - chest to the floor, please - then, at the top, “pull” your hands towards each other for three or four seconds, with the aim of activating your pecs. Repeat four times.
Handstand press-up
“You can progress these by working through whatever range of movement you can manage,” says Stevenson. “But the end goal is to get your face to the floor.” Get into a handstand with your feet resting on a wall or tree. “Screw” your hands into the floor by twisting your elbows so they point behind you. Keeping your elbows close to your body, lower down as far as you can, then push up.
Straight bar dip
Grip a straight bar with hands shoulder-width apart, and jump up so you’re holding yourself on straight arms, above the bar with your feet off the ground. Try to “bend the bar” by twisting your thumbs forwards – then, with your elbows close to your body, lower yourself as far as possible. Then press back up.
Core Workout
There’s no need for a huge array of moves – just a few well selected core exercises will hit your abs from every angle, in minimal time. “Bolt the below circuit onto one of your existing sessions, or just throw it in while you watch TV,” says Ninja Warrior course tester Aslan Steel. Bonus: you don’t even have to move your head much. Do three circuits twice a week.
Hollow dish hold
The Aim Build gymnast-level core strength
Why The great thing about this is the carry-over it gives you for other moves. “It’s what gymnasts use as a starting point for learning tougher moves – so it’ll make you better at pull-ups and other moves like hanging leg raises,” says Steel. Do the following drill for a few weeks and you’ll not only notice that your midsection is firmer, you’ll feel stronger when you do pull-up bar exercises too.
How Lie flat on your back and squeeze your abdominal muscles tight while pushing your lower back into the ground. Raise your arms, shoulders and legs off the ground, keeping your arms above your head and in line with your body. Aim for a ten-second hold, increasing the time as you improve.
Super-plank
The Aim Cultivate a rock-solid core
Why The plank record is eight hours one minute but you haven’t got time for that. Instead, do this plank progression that alleviates the boredom induced by the conventional static hold while simultaneously developing shoulder stability. “This packs all the benefits of one of the best core moves into minimal time,” says Steel.
How Assume the standard plank position – like a press-up, but with your forearms on the floor – then shift your elbows ahead of your forehead, bring them together, and squeeze your knees, heels and glutes together. Brace your abs as hard as possible. If you can manage it for more than ten seconds, you’re doing it wrong.
Dragon flag
The Aim Get Bruce Lee-level show-off credentials
Why You may want to practise this one when there’s no-one around. Then, when you master it, you can bring it out on a busy Saturday when the sun’s shining. “It challenges every muscle in your core, and teaches you to hold tension in your abs – important for everything from throwing a punch to doing a squat,” says Steel.
How Lie on your back, holding on to a pole, sofa, or similarly immovable object just behind your head. Raise your legs and torso into the air, keeping them in line, then lower as slowly as possible. You’ll probably need to keep one leg bent at first, but you can progress to the two-straight-legs version. Aim for three reps.
Sprint Training
Jogging? Off. Increasing the speed and dropping the distance will burn fat, keep your body’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol in check and rev up your metabolism for the rest of the day. “You can fit near-flat-out sprints into a 20-minute window two or three times a week,” says outdoor training specialist Andrew Tracey. “Give it a week, increase the workload slightly each time, and watch your body change.” Mix up these four workouts for high-speed results.
Beach muscle
How Every minute on the minute, run 100m at a near-flat-out sprint – 50m out-and-back is fine if you haven’t got a 100m space. Follow up with five pull-ups and five press-ups, and start your next 100m when the next minute starts. Repeat for 16 minutes, giving you a total of one mile a day.
Why “It’ll strip back the fat and add muscle up top,” says Tracey. For extra man-points, do the pull-ups on a tree.
Speed
How Mark out roughly 50m up a hill. Sprint up at max effort. Walk back down. Repeat this for five efforts. Rest for three minutes and go again, completing three “blocks” of training in total.
Why A decent rest between sets will let you build top-end velocity. “The walk should ideally take four to five times as long as the sprint,” says trainer Tom Eastham. “If you’re using a stopwatch, attempt to keep each effort to a similar time – if you can’t, take longer to do the recovery walk.”
Endurance
How “You’ll need an incline, a decline and a flat section for this one,” says Eastham. “A triangular course would be ideal.” Run up the hill at an effort level similar to your one-mile pace. Descend at a recovery pace then speed up on the flat part. Complete three laps without resting, then rest for the same time as you worked. Repeat for five blocks, trying to keep your pace the same for each block.
Why You’ll build better endurance through the process of accumulated fatigue, where you push hard, recover briefly, then push on again.
Fat loss
How Find a short hill with a steep incline. Run up at max effort, run down at a recovery pace and do ten burpees (chest to floor). Run up and down again, then do nine burpees, then eight, then seven, all the way to one.
Why “It’s a swift kick in the metabolism that’ll also build mental strength,” says Eastham. “After the last set, ask yourself if you could have gone any harder. If the answer is yes, do another sprint and a final set of ten burpees. You’ll do better next time.”
Challenges
Without the hustle and clanging of a well-attended gym, it’s occasionally difficult to get motivated for a “traditional” sets/reps/rest workout. The solution? Pick a short, sharp all-out challenge, get it done as fast as possible and go home. The three here, assembled by strength coach and bodyweight specialist Andy McKenzie, will keep you going even if your only audience is a pensioner and a dog.
Chasing your tail
The aim High-speed fat loss
How Do 20 press-ups and one straight-arm burpee (no need to drop into a press-up for this bit). Next, do 19 press-ups and two burpees. You can see where this is going, right?
Why “This will teach you to keep your arms straight and your core strong on the burpee element,” says McKenzie. So once you’ve stripped off the fat, you’ll have a six-pack to be proud of underneath. If you can’t do 20 press-ups in the first round, or you find that you’re fatigued after just a couple of rounds, start by doing ten or 15 press-ups in the first round. Then add an extra rep each time you do the workout until you get to 20 reps. Try to beat your total time each time you do it.
Nasty 45s
The aim Mental strength
How Do the below in order and repeat for 15 minutes
Squat thrust 15sec
Bear crawl 15sec
Flat-out sprint 15sec
Rest 45sec
Why “Those short rests get harder and harder to stick to,” says McKenzie. “But if you can manage it, you’ll build do-anything resilience that’ll serve you anywhere.” To provide extra motivation, make a mental note of how many reps you complete in each 15-second period and log them in the rest periods. You may be feeling shattered but you’ll get a boost from knowing that you beat your previous best score.
5-4-3-2-1 knock-off
The aim Full-body power endurance
How First, do these moves in order
50 squats
40 alternate jump lunges
30 press-ups
20 squat thrusts
10 burpees
150m run
Then knock off the 50 reps and repeat the rest (40, 30, 20, 10, run), then knock off the 40 reps and continue until you’re done.
Why “You might hit the first round fast, but this one will cook you,” says McKenzie. “It’s a lot of volume, done in quite a sneaky way.”
Joel Snape
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16 Aug 2016