A 35-minute full-body strength workout for May

Ahhh, happy May! I’m so glad it’s full-on spring. (I can’t say the same for my sinuses, but we won’t talk about them.) I finished planting my balcony garden last week, and everything is looking so beautiful.

Since it’s the first Sunday of the month, it’s time for a new strength-training cycle. If you’re still working on the April workout, you’re very welcome to stick with it — 4 weeks is kind of a good minimum for a strength cycle IMO, but if you’d like to keep going for 6 or 8 weeks, feel free.

And if you aren’t ready for or interested in trying a progressive overload approach to your workouts, don’t worry! You can do this workout as a one-off. And if you’re confused about all of this stuff, also don’t worry! Feel free to leave a comment, ask in the chat, or reach out directly, and I’ll help you sort it all out. I swear it’s less complicated than it seems.

A few reminders if you’re taking the repeated approach and using progressive overload (AKA adding weight as you get more comfortable with the movements):

• For your first workout or two, take it a little easy. Don’t immediately jump to the heaviest weight you can stand to move. Ease your way in to hopefully avoid destroying yourself with soreness and feeling the need to take a super-long break before you go back for another workout (or even feeling discouraged entirely). THEN start to push. Nudge just slightly out of your comfort zone each time. Grunting, cursing, and heavy breathing all very welcome.

• Record the weights you used, if you’re comfortable (if recording body-related numbers is not good for you, skip this part). You should be trying to use a weight that gets you very fatigued and almost close to failure (i.e. you can’t do another rep) by the end of the minute-long set.

• Repeat the workout at least once or twice more within the week if possible.

• Do this for four-ish weeks (or more!), adding weight to the extent possible for each exercise that uses weight. Keep recording your weights (again, if this feels like a wise move for you) so you can see your progress! You can also mark progress on things like number of reps, longer working time (if you started off needing to take a break before the end of the set, etc.), or positioning (moving toward a more advanced version of the exercise), if applicable.

• You can do the other WOWs that come through over the next couple of weeks as a way to mix things up and supplement your training, if you have time.

• Then you’ll get another strength-training–focused workout next month, and the cycle begins anew. (You’re welcome to stick with this one for longer, but because it’s a relatively short workout we aren’t hitting a quite-complete range of movement patterns, so I’d suggest switching things up when the time comes.)

• I’m typically a big fan of offering up the option to skip the warmup or cooldown, or one or two rounds of the circuit. However, if you’re doing this in a progressive overload setup, I’d like to encourage you to keep the warmup and cooldown to make sure you’re taking good care of your body. If you can only do one or two circuits the first week, see if you’re able to add a second or third circuit in subsequent weeks.

• A note on weights: If you’re going to go for true strength training, you need some heavy weights. This can be hard for home exercisers! I hate sending you out to buy weights — they’re expensive, heavy (heh), and hard to store. But you may get to a point where you just have to go for it, or find a gym facility you can use that has heavier dumbbell options. Apologies that there isn’t a perfect, easy, super-accessible answer to this. If you have tips or suggestions, please leave them in the comments. (The dumbbell brand I use is Power Systems, but not saying they’re necessarily the best — I do like them, though.)

• One more thing: I’d love for this to be a barbell-focused program, but I worry that will leave out too many people who simply don’t have access or are hoping to get this done quickly at home. If you’re interested in slamming bars (I love this for you), I’d suggest checking out Casey Johnston’s program LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell.

Again, if you aren’t interested in progressive overload–focused strength training (or not yet), you are very welcome to just follow this video like a regular one-off workout! And you can do the whole thing, or if you have less time or energy than that, you can trim things down by:

• Skipping the warmup

• Skipping the cooldown

• Skipping one or two of the three rounds of the resistance-training circuit

Make it work for you. If you’d like to repeat this workout a time or two throughout the week, great.

Let’s go!