Fit Without Equipment

About eight minutes a day, no equipment, set to where you start

by Minute Studio · 21 units · Beginner · usually about 9 min

Fitness · Strength · Bodyweight · Habit

You can run a seven-minute bodyweight session at your own level and tell when to make it harder.

Twenty-one days, seven to nine minutes each, with nothing but the floor and a wall. Day 1 is a check: squats in a minute, press-ups from the knees in forty seconds, a plank held. It sets three levels, for your legs, your pushing and your core. Every exercise after it comes in exactly those three levels, drawn side by side, and shows you which one is yours. So the same session is right for somebody who has not trained in years and for somebody who has.

Every day opens with a question about the research behind the training, which you guess before it is explained: why short can be enough, why the body weight is load enough, why balance matters. Every exercise says why it is there. You rate how hard each day was, and that number tells you when to move up a level. On day 14 and day 21 the check comes back, three lines show what moved, and the levels follow your newest counts by themselves.

Between two exercises you rest while you read the next card, about fifteen seconds. The sessions suit most people in good health. If you have a heart condition or high blood pressure, are pregnant, are recovering from an injury or have not exercised for years, ask a GP before day 1. Stop at once if you feel chest pain, dizziness or breathlessness that does not settle.

Materials

No equipment: a stretch of floor as long as you are tall, and a wall. A mat or a towel is kinder to the knees.

The path

  1. Where you start
  2. Short and hard
  3. Getting up from the floor
  4. Load without weights
  5. A back that lasts
  6. A warm-up that moves
  7. Ten seconds on one leg
  8. Nerves first
  9. Close to the end
  10. How hard it feels
  11. Four famous minutes
  12. Minutes in the day
  13. Sore muscles
  14. The second check
  15. How much a week
  16. The hours in between
  17. Seven minutes, honestly
  18. Form before more
  19. Where 21 days comes from
  20. Keeping it
  21. The last check

See every practice