At-Home Beginner Workout Routine Day 1 - Only Bodyweight Exercises
1. Warm-up
Follow along with this 9-minute Yoga-ish Warm-up
My warm-ups are designed not to mimic Yoga moves exactly, but to dynamically hit end ranges of motion across the whole body to 1) Consistently develop full range of motion for all your muscles tissues and joints over time and 2) prepare your body for the exercises upcoming in the WOD. “WOD” stands for Workout of the Day and you’ll see that term thrown around on our site.
2. Movement Lesson
Instead of learning proper form and technique for thousands of exercises, the MovementLink Method teaches us, real simply, how understanding posture, the squat, the push-up, and the jump can combine to create optimal positions in any movement. The video below is #2 of 3 in this series, so if you missed video #1 from the intro post to this At-Home Beginner Workout Routines series, to understand the full context, you should also watch video #1.
3. Workout Prep
We have generally warmed up with the yoga-ish follow along video above, but we still need to warm up specifically for the workout. It’s pretty simple, we are going to do some push-ups (whichever variation you are choosing to do) and some lunges.
5 Push-ups
6 Alternating Lunges
Then, 2 Rounds for Quality
5 Push-ups
6 Jumping Lunges
In workouts, we will always give you scaling variations in case you need to modify any of the movement. Every movement we do will have a variation that will work you towards the full movement. Below, in the Scaling Notes, each scaling option is numbered with the higher numbers being the harder variations. You should use the hardest variation for which you can still perform good technique.
Scaling Notes:
Push-up Scaling (Usually all exercises will have short demo video links like the push-up and alternating lunge links above, but for teaching purposes today, I really want you to watch the foundations videos, so instead of being able to watch a short little 10 second clip like I would usually throw up there, the types of push-ups listed below are covered in the Foundations: Push-up Scaling video above)
Banded Push-ups
Knee Push-ups
Box Push-ups
Jumping Lunge Scaling
Regular Lunges like in the Foundations: Lunge Video above
To dig deeper into the specific exercises you are going to do today, check-out the Foundations Videos below for the push-up and the lunge.
4. Workout (8 Minutes)
8 Rounds
20-seconds of Push-ups
10-seconds of Rest
20-seconds of Jumping Lunges
10-seconds of Reps
In this workout, you will need a timer. For this workout, you will perform as many good looking push-ups as possible in the first 20 seconds and then you will rest for 10 seconds. Then, for the next 20 seconds, you will perform as many jumping lunges with good technique as possible and then rest another 10 seconds. The push-ups, rest, jumping lunges, rest make 1 round. You will repeat that set-up for a total of 8 rounds. This workout will take only 8-minutes!!!
5. Cool-down
5.1
5-minute Walk
We like to start most cool-downs will some slow cardio to help flush the junk from your body. Your lymphatic system is how you remove waste from muscles and tissues. It is an interesting system as it is a one-way track that only pushing things along by muscle contractions. So, if we workout and don’t move around very much afterwards, we never expel all the acid of waste that accumulates as we workout causing more muscle soreness and stiffness, so let’s get moving.
5.2
Calf Smash with your Knee
2-minutes on Each Side
Get on all fours and then place your knee on top of your opposite calf. Doesn’t it hurt?!?!? Healthy, hydrated, non-tacked down tissues don’t hurt when we apply reasonable amounts of pressure to them, but tight tissues do! Our #1 rule is that if it feel wrong, it is likely wrong and you should stop doing it, but a little bit of pain and discomfort due to tightness is OK and will be very beneficial to deal with.
As you perform what we call the calf smash, relax and breath trying to stay out of fight or flight mode. We’ll talk more about mobility exercises and have a ton of additional resources for you on this front.
5.3
2 Rounds for Quality
3 Slow Perfect Push-ups
6 Slow, Perfect Lunges
Let’s end the session with some perfect reps.
5.4
Movement Test
Feet Together Squat
I have a series of self-assessment movement tests that will help you identify where you may be tight and lacking range of motion.
