Bodyweight/low equipment routines for the time-strapped? (hexbear.net)

submitted 7 months ago by Doubledee@hexbear.net to c/fitness@hexbear.net

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Hey comrades. I'm not trying to build a crazy body or get jacked or anything, but I'm getting older and want to ensure I'm not neglecting my body so it keeps up as I go. I've been doing pushups 3x a week (got from being unable to do them on level ground to doing a set of 30, 25, 20 with 5 minute gaps, nothing too crazy) but that's all I'm currently doing. I got dip bars to try and add inverted rows to my routine, so here's my questions:

is there a reason I shouldn't just do rows as part of the same 3x a week pushup thing I do?
will it be bad if I alternate, assuming I can't do them both the same day, in terms of maintaining a baseline level of fitness?
are there very easy/no equipment exercises that do not take much time you would include/add for someone in my situation? My partner and I work alternating shifts, and we have children, so it's not really realistic for me to plan to have even an hour where I can do intense exercise away from the kids/go to the gym, part of why I've been doing basically just pushups is that I can drop and do them while I'm in the same room as the kids without leaving them unmonitored.

I know if I was really committed to building muscle mass I would be doing a bunch of other stuff but I can't devote that kind of time, I'm basically asking for the bare minimum "reasonably healthy" routine.

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[-] CarbonConscious@hexbear.net 5 points 7 months ago

Some good advice in here so I'll give an interesting off-the-wall suggestion that may or may not help with your situation:

I've seen some interesting work lately that suggests you can get 90%+ of the cardio benefits of a regular 5x/wk gym routine, with one 90 second workout a week, provided it's intense enough. Now the stuff I saw said that they used special equipment to achieve this, and you basically can't recreate it on a regular treadmill, but that you can actually get pretty close with some decently steep hill sprints.

So, if you can spare 10 minutes out of the house to go out on a big hill and bust your [individually-defined bustable parts] for a few minutes straight, you could knock out your cardio for the week in almost no time at all.

I'll try to dig up my source for that later, if there's interest, but just something interesting that's been rattling around in my gaping-lack-of-theory-space lately.

[-] Doubledee@hexbear.net 2 points 7 months ago

In the long term, assuming we get the space, I was thinking a stationary bike or something would help with cardio, although honestly the kids keep me running a lot when we go out places, and my job is decently physical so I'm not SUPER worried about cardio, I feel like I'm decently fit for continuous activity. But it's good to keep in mind, definitely something I've not been paying enough attention to.

this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025

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