September strength: 30 minutes for stronger legs, shoulders, and core

Happy September! You know I sometimes get annoyed when the first Sunday of the month isn’t until the 7th (just not as clean with my workout schedule here on HTM!), but I actually don’t mind it this time — the end of summer can feel so chaotic, and it’s nice to have a little buffer and a few extra days to kick off this particular month.

It’s never a bad time to start (or restart) strength training, but I particularly love this time of year: Back to school vibes can be so helpful for a refresh to your routine (more on that later!). And we still have some warmth and sunshine to keep us motivated, unlike those January doldrums. So I have a great strength workout for you today that’s meant to be repeated — more on that below — and if you haven’t tried this approach, might I suggest you give it a shot this month?

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. If you don’t already own weights, 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!)

• One more thing: I stick to dumbbells here on How to Move to make the workouts accessible to as many people as possible. But 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.

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.

And last but not least, a reminder that I’m hosting a 30-day fall strength challenge starting on Sunday, Sept. 21! Lots of information here, and if you’re a paid subscriber, you can find a discount code (for $50 off!) in the Substack chat, or after the paywall on this post (so just a couple lines down, if you’re already paying! You’ll unlock the discount, and the rest of this post, if you upgrade your subscription now).

Let’s go!