… and as always when I do a lot of reading, I’ve learned a lot.

The ultimate goal of my research and the changes I’m making is to try and not only improve my general health and fitness but to build a more resilient body so I can avoid injuries and spend more time doing things I want to do.

I have spent far too much time on the bench (OK, on the sofa) rather than playing my favourite sports because I keep picking up daft injuries that have prevented me from playing. That and a pretty scary surprise health problem (malignant kidney tumour resulting in losing a kidney) which wiped me out for a good while and showed me just how quickly your body and health can deteriorate (e.g. muscle atrophy) if you don’t remain active. Following abdominal surgery even walking to the end of my little lane was a huge challenge.

So, now back to full health I’ve been looking into getting stronger, healthier and more resilient. Here are some of the things I’ve discovered (to avoid this being a long article and getting off-topic, I’ll write separate articles on some of these points):

• Most likely causes of sports injuries
• Why (static) stretching is less effective than you might think
• That if building strength, you need to build strength all over (to avoid creating imbalances and further exposing weak areas)
• The importance of posture in everyday life
• What happens to our bodies as we age
• It’s not just strength and endurance we need to stay fit & healthy, actually it’s 7 things: 1. Strength, 2. Flexibility, 3. Mobility, 4. Stability, 5. Agility, 6. Endurance, 7. Nutrition
• Our major muscle groups are in an alternating sequence up and down our bodies that are designed to complement each other, some are designed for stability and some for mobility
• There are many different ways of adding load to muscles
• Why it is important to stay hydrated (get enough water)

The problem is to work on all the 7 foundations for health & fitness I mention above, quite a lot of work is needed – stretching, agility training, strength/resistance training, endurance training, mobility training… quite a complex programme is needed to successfully work on all 7 things.

Or is it?

Rather than having a time-consuming series of exercises to work all the muscle groups in strength training and then separate exercise for all the rest, the following ‘minimal’ workout hopefully combines most of the foundations covered above in just a few exercises, including covering all main muscle groups to give a full body workout (strength/resistance training, e.g. in a gym usually isolates certain muscles you work on and is quite concentrated on those muscles so you need to perform a lot of exercises to achieve a full body workout).

At least the principle here is that by finding something simple and effective that can be done consistently without setbacks, confusion or any other reason to give up or procrastinate, then that is the best chance of achieving my goal of getting stronger, healthier and more resilient. In other words, consistency beats intensity – I’m trying to develop a healthy and effective workout habit.

Minimalist Full Body Workout

The idea of this workout is to work on basic human movement patterns, each of which are natural movements that the human body is designed to perform. By utilising movement patterns rather than more isolated exercises, this workout challenges the bodies stability and balance as well as strength, endurance, flexibility and mobility. The use of the kettlebell is deliberate because as a versatile and at times slightly ‘awkward’ weight, it makes non-linear demands upon the body and that’s a good thing – it forces the body to adapt in small ways, which is good for us.

The workout is just 5 exercises relating to those basic movement patterns:

• Goblet Squat (Squat)
• Push-up (Horizontal push)
• Kettlebell Swing (Hinge)
• Chin-Up (Pull)
• Kettlebell Press (Vertical Push)

That’s it!

These 5 basic exercises are repeated 5 days a week (weekends off/for recovery) along with lots of walking (which covers a 6th basic movement pattern – the Gait) and complimented by any other exercises which are carried out. Each exercise is done for 1 set of 10 reps 4 days a week and for 5 sets of 10 reps one day of the week when that particular exercise gets more focus.

This means the workout is really simple, easy to remember and alternates a focus between each major muscle group on a daily basis. The weight used for these exercises should be enough to complete the 10 reps of each exercise (with the chin ups and press-ups using body weight as the weight) with the muscles feeling fatigued but not burnt out (such that you wouldn’t be able to go again the next day) at the end of the exercise. Once I can do 10 reps really easily for a given exercise then I will up the weight slightly or change the tempo of the exercise to give the muscles more time under tension.

For the Chin-ups I am starting with assisted chin-ups because at the moment I can’t do a single chin-up unassisted. Even assisted I can only do 3 or 4 at the moment but I am slowly building this up – once I get to 10 I will reduce the level of assistance (I use resistance bands) until eventually I get to be able to do a few chin-ups without assistance.

For press-ups I also can’t do 10 good press-ups at the moment and as I believe it is important to do these exercises with good form, I do as many as I can with good form then stop. At the moment that is only around 6 press-ups! When I get to 10 and back to a state where I can do 10 decent press-ups relatively easily, I will increase the challenge by progressing to harder styles of press-ups.

Saturdays and Sundays I don’t do the workout but still do plenty of walking and other exercise.

Here is what the exercises look like for the week.

The only other thing is that it is represented in a table above just for simplicity but when I actually do the exercises I don’t stick to any particular order, as long as I do the exercises each day – I usually do the focus exercise of the day (the one with 5 sets) last. I also don’t stick strictly to the numbers, I use just as much weight as I need to strain my muscles without going too far and I stop if it feels too much strain. The idea is that I need to preserve enough energy to be able to continue the next day.

Consistency is key.

The above is then supplemented with lots of walking (also a very important basic human movement pattern – the ‘Gait’) and any other activities I am doing – day to day movements and sports (mainly golf, table tennis and more occasionally a few other sports).

I live in Derbyshire and do lots of walking with my dog anyway (I aim to walk more than 7000 steps every day and often do a lot more), if I want to make the walking more intense and more of a workout, I do a more challenging walk with more inclines and often carry a backpack with a few things thrown in it to add a bit of weight).