A 23-minute push and squat workout

I loved our first few experiments with split training — this summer’s great upper and lower body workouts (see here, here, here, and here) — and wanted to share yet another way to divvy up your workouts if you’ve been enjoying the split training approach. It’s pretty simple: You pick a couple of basic movement patterns for workout A (think push, pull, squat, hinge, carry), then a couple of complementary basic movement patterns for workout B.

This week, we’ll be focusing on pushing, squatting, and rotating. You’ll need a few weights: a couple moderate, a couple heavy. I highly recommend the dumbbells from Power Systems: I use them; they’re good; feel free to use that link as another way to support my work here, because I’ll get a tiny kickback from your purchase. (But truly, no pressure!)

As usual, you can skip the warmup or cooldown, or just do one or two rounds of the circuit, if you don’t have time or energy for the whole thing. You also don’t have to be moving for the entire minute — ideally, you’re getting a couple of reps away from failure in that time.

Also: Today (actually tomorrow, but calendars are weird) is the one-year anniversary of the very first Workout of the Week! In some respects, I’ve come a long way from that first workout (thank goodness for microphones), but I think it’s kind of cool that the general format and approach has pretty much stuck. That’s the beauty of exercise, honestly — simple and sustainable is good, bells and whistles and overcomplications are generally totally unnecessary. Thanks so much to all of you for your support and enthusiasm for the WOWs, both my OGs who started with workout 1, and those who joined more recently. I can’t wait to see how we keep evolving and getting stronger over the next year!

OK, let’s do this workout.