101 Best Workouts Of All Time is the ultimate answer to the question "What workout should I do?" No matter what equipment you have available, from a fully-stocked supergym to a pair of mismatched dumbbells in your garage, or nothing but your body weight alone, you can build muscle, lose fat, and sculpt the physique you've always wanted.
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If you’ve ever wondered how guys who work out exclusively on monkey bars in the park get so ripped, this workout is the answer. We hope you’ll take it outside on a summer day, but it can work just as well in a bare-bones garage gym. Not only will you burn fat and build muscle with just three exercises—you’ll learn one of the secrets street gymnasts use to bang out dozens of reps of pullups and dips at a clip: the 10 to 1 method.
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HOW IT WORKS
The circuit we’ve designed here doesn’t let up. When you train any squat variation, plus the pullup and the dip, you work nearly every muscle in your body, and your heart will race to supply them with blood and oxygen. Performing a decreasing number of reps—10 to 1—helps you keep the workout going despite being fatigued and builds the endurance that ultimately leads to being able to rattle off a high number of reps in one shot. In addition to getting you leaner, feel free to use this workout to win bar bets about how many pullups you can do.
THE WORKOUT [PAGE 2]
DIRECTIONS
Perform the exercises as a circuit, completing a set of each in turn and resting as little as possible between sets. Repeat for 10 circuits (until you’re doing only one rep per exercise).
1. JUMP SQUAT
Reps: 10 to 1 Rest: 0 sec.
Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and squat down about halfway. Jump as high as you can. Land with soft knees and begin the next rep. Perform 10 reps. Each time you repeat the circuit, perform one less rep. So the next round you’ll do 9 reps, then 8, and so on down to 1 rep.
2. PULLUP
Reps: 10 to 1 Rest: 0 sec.
Hang from a pullup bar, jungle gym, or tree limb and pull yourself up until your chin is higher than your hands. Perform 10 reps down to 1 as described at left.
3. Dip
Reps: 10 to 1 Rest: 0 sec.
Suspend yourself over parallel bars and then lower your body until your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Perform 10 reps down to 1.
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OPTION B
A lack of training equipment doesn’t necessarily doom you to a workout consisting only of pullups and pushups. With a little creativity, you can still train like an animal (you’ll get the reference below) while targeting your entire body—not just the upper. This workout is outside the box—so much so, in fact, that you’ll have to go outdoors to do it.
HOW IT WORKS
This routine requires a park or playground area with monkey bars and plenty of open space. You’ll use classic, though under-prescribed, body-weight exercises like the bear crawl and crab walk, which you probably haven’t tried since your days in summer camp. As you’ll come to remember, they’re not easy— especially for a grown man well north of 100 pounds. They require a lot of work from your heart, lungs, and core. Later, the parallel bar hand walk will blow up your grip and forearms; the sprints will fry your legs.
DIRECTIONS
Perform the exercise pairs (marked “A” and “B”) as supersets, so you’ll complete one set of A and then one set of B before resting. Repeat until all sets are complete. Note that the parallel bar hand walk is done as straight sets— do a set, rest, and repeat. This workout combines well with Body-Weight option A, so if you want to integrate them both into a training week, perform A first, rest a day, and then perform B. (You can also add in option C, coming up next.)
1A. BEAR CRAWL
Sets: 3 Reps: Crawl for 50 feet Rest: 0 sec.
Bend down and plant your hands on the ground. Try to keep your back flat as you walk on all fours as fast as you can. Your legs should be fairly straight as you step your feet outside where your hands land.
1B. CRAB WALK
Sets: 3 Reps: Walk for 50 feet Rest: As needed
Sit on the ground and bridge up with your hips so you look like a tabletop. Walk forward on your hands and feet as fast as you can.
2. PARALLEL BAR HAND WALK
Sets: 5 Reps: Walk to the end and back Rest: As needed
Hang from a jungle gym or length of parallel bars. Walk to the end of the row and back with your hands.
3A. FORWARD SPRINT
Sets: 5 Reps: Sprint 50 yards Rest: 0 sec.
Run at about 90% of your top speed.
3B. BACKWARD SPRINT
Sets: 5 Reps: Sprint 50 yards Rest: As needed
Run backward as quickly as you can.
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OPTION C
Combining exercises whenever possible helps you work more muscles in the same amount of time. These hybrid moves allow you to get the benefit of six exercises in a workout that actually prescribes only three.
HOW IT WORKS
This workout can be combined with the previous two for a three-day-per week program done in the order shown. Or, combine it with either one of the two previous workouts and alternate them throughout the week.
DIRECTIONS
Perform the exercises as conventional straight sets, completing all sets for one exercise before moving on to the next. If you can’t perform 10 reps for a particular set, do as many as you can without going to failure (end the set with one or two reps in you) and then rest a few moments. Continue when you can to complete the remaining reps.
1. BURPEE TO BROAD JUMP
Sets: 3 Reps: 10 Rest: 90 sec.
Bend down and place your hands on the floor. Now shoot your legs behind you fast so you end up in the top of a pushup position. Perform a pushup and then jump your legs back up to your hands. From there, jump forward as far as you can.
2. DIP TO LEG RAISE
Sets: 3 Reps: 10
Suspend your body over parallel bars and lower yourself until your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Press yourself back up and then raise your legs straight out in front of you.
3. PULLUP TO KNEE RAISE
Sets: 3 Reps: 10
Hang from a pullup bar with hands outside shoulder width and palms facing away from you. Pull yourself up until your chin is over the bar and then raise your knees to your chest in the top position.
OPTION D
OK, we’ll admit it: Sometimes the odds really are against your getting a workout in. You may well find yourself stuck without weights or bands, only to find that you also forgot to pack your suspension trainer. There’s nothing to pull on, so you can’t work your back, and you can’t even improvise with the objects around you. We’re not sure just what kind of place this would be, short of a jail cell (and if that’s where you are, hey, we’re not judging), but we can give you a great workout to do, even there.
HOW IT WORKS
All you need is something to step on, be it a park bench, a large rock, or a chair. But if you have nothing elevated on which to step, you can substitute a lunge for the stepup. To target your back, which is usually unworkable without having at least a bar of some sort to pull on, we’re employing the “blurpee”—as made famous by fitness expert Tim Ferriss, author of The Four- Hour Body. The wider foot placement used in the blurpee requires more work from the lats to pull the hips and legs forward as the body comes back from the
pushup position. (The extra “l” in blurpee stands for “lats.”)
DIRECTIONS
Perform the exercises as conventional straight sets, completing all sets for one exercise before moving on to the next.
1. CLOSE-GRIP PUSHUP
Sets: 3 Reps: 15 Rest: 60–90 sec.
Get into pushup position and place your hands close so that your thumbs touch. Keep your body straight and your core braced. If that’s too easy, elevate your feet on a chair or some other raised surface.
2. STEPUP
Sets: 3 Reps: 20 Rest: 60–90 sec.
Stand in front of a bench or chair and place one foot on it so that your thigh is parallel to the floor. Drive your heel into the surface and squeeze your glutes as you step up onto the bench, but let your trailing foot hang off of it.
3. BLURPEE
Sets: 3 Reps: 20 Rest: 60–90 sec.
Stand with feet outside shoulder width and bend down and place your hands on the floor. Now shoot your legs behind you fast so you end up in the top of a pushup position. Jump your legs back up so they land to the outside of your hands and then jump up quickly.
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Men's Fitness training director Sean Hyson, C.S.C.S., assembled a team of the best trainers in the world to create the best possible, boredom-beating, plateau-busting routines that cover any amount of time you have to exercise and whatever tools you have available to do it.
Pick up what Arnold Schwarzenegger called "a fantastic collection of workouts" at 101bestworkouts.com.