Note: This is the third installation in a 3-part series. If you haven’t read the first two parts, read them here and here before continuing.
We brought together 12 fitness experts from a broad range of backgrounds–with bodies of experience ranging from weightlifting to track and field to mixed martial arts, and over two centuries of collective coaching experience–to ask them all the same question:
If you could only perform five exercise movements for the rest of your life, which five would you do? (Assuming your goals are general health, fitness and longevity, and not a specialized sport)*.
*If your goal is to be a high-level competitive exerciser, your goal is not health, fitness and longevity – it’s sport-specific performance. That’s okay, but don’t be confused. Keith Norris does a nice piece on health vs performance, if you’re interested.
We’ve spent some time analyzing the responses, and we’re going to share some of our observations and thoughts on this collection of opinions. Note that we’re using the word “opinions,” not “truth,” or “fact,” or any other hubris-soaked descriptor. There is no “right” way to answer our question. Each person has their own experience to draw from, and that experience will impact their selections. That being said, we think there is much to be learned from collective experience, and Smart People take notes when veteran coaches share insights like this.
Let’s take a peek at some of the things we noticed about this list of exercises.
Five Movements, Summarized
- All of the exercises selected are multi-joint (compound) exercises. As in 100%. No single-joint exercise belongs on a list like this. If you’re doing lots of curls or lateral raises or leg extensions or tricep press-downs, your training currency would be better spent elsewhere.
- The vast majority of the exercises are ground-based, either with feet flat on the ground, or with some sort of transition between body-on-the-ground and standing positions (i.e. Turkish getup). There are no contrived, machine-based movements. The real world happens with objects in unrestricted planes of motion, and so should your training. The only “resistance” you need is your body and something heavy to pick up or carry.
- There is a significant emphasis on movements that are “big, strong” movements. Whether explosive (fast) or “grind” (slow) movements, there’s a lot of weight moving – even if that weight is “just” your bodyweight. Ever done multiple sets of unweighted squats or strict pullups to failure? A training effect is still present, despite the fact that there is no external load applied. For long-term health, building and maintaining strength must be a central feature of your program. Clif Harski lays out an excellent sample week of programming using these movements here.
- Locomotion was a common response. We are bipedal creatures, and training the reciprocal patterns of walking, running, lunging, stepping, and crawling, strongly echoes the three-dimensional ways that we move in the “real world”. Stabilizing our trunk while shifting and supporting weight is not only beneficial, it’s fundamentally human. We learn it as infants, but far too many of us lose that ability in adulthood. Get it back. Side note: Our experience with the Airdyne, which uses an arm-and-leg reciprocal pattern, suggests that trunk stability has a major impact on power output. Trunk strength matters, especially if you’ve got a pair (or two) of appendages flailing about at high velocity.
- Squatting is not the end-all-be-all. Sure, we have to squat to be able to stand from a chair, but little else occurs where our feet are symmetrical and neatly spaced outside of hip width. Gardening, all field and court sports, moving furniture, and wrestling all share the staggered stance position where stabilizing the body’s mass on top of a narrow or unilateral base of support is critical. Every coach we polled who chose squatting at one of their five movements also chose a movement with a unilateral stance component (lunging, step-ups, Turkish getup, etc.). If you’re squatting all the time but under-utilizing single-leg or staggered-stance movements, you’re making a mistake. (Clif comments on this in his post about our 5 Movements series.)
- We found it fascinating that an Olympic weightlifting coach (Greg Everett) did not include a single explosive movement in his list. If that doesn’t illustrate the priority of building full-body strength with basic movements, we don’t know what does.
- Almost everyone included putting weight overhead: press, clean & jerk, overhead squat, etc. If you aren’t putting heavy things overhead on a regular basis, your program should change. If you don’t know how to press with proper technique, find a good coach and learn. (We don’t want any cranial fractures.) Mark Rippetoe’s classic volume, Starting Strength, is a good option if you don’t have access to a local coach. You don’t have to go to a fancy gym to do this; at home, you can use water jugs, bricks, kettlebells, or inexpensive dumbbells.
- Almost everyone included a pulling movement (a pull-up or row variation), and no one mentioned kipping. We’d be shocked if any of these coaches recommended kipping pullups as their primary pulling movement. (We’ll republish Melissa’s post on prioritizing dead-hang, strict pull-ups soon.) Build true strength through appropriate scaling, not by manipulating physics to “clear the bar.” If you can do weighted pull-ups, doing them fast if the real-world demands it would be no problem. And don’t give us that foolishness about kipping over a fence or up into a tree.
- Note that one of our experts selected both swimming and walking. That would be Eva T, a legendary athlete and coach – as well as a recent inductee into the US Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame. We believe the training and therapeutic value of both of those movements is under-rated. They might not sound very bad-ass, but Eva knows a thing or two about creating and maintaining excellent health and longevity. Perpetually chasing performance is not the same as creating excellent health. Don’t be afraid to slow down, especially if you’re All Banged Up.
- One of Greg Everett’s comments struck us as poignant: “With a foundation built on excellent execution of these movements, an individual would be capable of performing nearly any other movement imaginable with little instruction or practice.” Did you get that? Learn these movements, and train them often–and you will be able to readily transfer the physical capacity you have built to most other applications.
Those are some of the things that we gleaned from these experts’ responses. What struck you about the experts’ choices? What, if anything, will you change about your own training program based on their perspectives? Comments, questions and observations are always welcome.
I loved the series guys. It was quick and easy to read and I sent it around the horn to my crew and clients. I’ve always told my strong lifters(and everyone else) if you can’t properly TGU/pistol squat/bear crawl, you are broken. Showing them them the list was great support of my statement. Also a kick in the pants for myself, whose single leg stuff may be a bit rusty.
Thanks for putting this together.
Awesome series!! I was looking forward to each post. It’s just nice to have some great ideas from great people to mix into my normal workout. This week has been all about TGU’s. For me, I sometimes forget all the different, but awesome moves out there.
Thanks. I’ve passed this series on to so many people. Very cool!
xoxo
J.Spice
http://cliftonharski.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/tguohs/ Discusses the TGU and OHS
John,
While what you say is true, we’re not encouraging people to dig into the (historical) drama. (Why does everyone love to propagate the drama so much?!) The key point here is that while many of the contributing coaches have (at some point) been associated with CF, that specific training protocol is not a focal point of the article(s). This article is about optimal long-term health, and whichever protocol or individual path that each of these coaches use to develop that in their clients is up to them. They might have been influenced by the RKC approach, or a particular weightlifting protocol, or whatever, but this article isn’t about specific protocols – it’s simple about 5 exercises that make people healthy long-term. Thanks for your comment.
Hi Melissa & Dallas,
Thanks for accumulating all of this info, this is great! I really look forward to your thoughtful articles and look forward to your New England visit in the fall.
Thank you,
Mark
Mark,
So great to hear from you! Are you going to be able to make our Boston workshop?
Best,
Melissa
Interesting, as an avid coolaid drunk crossfitter I didn’t find the articles upsetting at all. I actually enjoyed them and found them insightful. I was steered to reading them by friends complaining about them. I think people missing the point. Five movements that everyone should/can do for life long fitness. Mine would be:
1: Burpee
2: OHS-Completely agree with Maximus
3: Muscle-Up-Yes I know, too excusive, but it’s my list, and if you can do them they hit everything
4: Ground to OH-reverse the Muscle Up
5: Deadlift
Enjoyed your seminar with Lu Crenshaw years ago, hope to catch another in the future. Good luck with business, future, and independence.
I enjoyed this series. I both agreed and disagreed with some of the movements suggested by the experts. TGU, for example, can be rough on anyone with weak shoulders and need specific coaching to avoid injury. They do not present as fundamental to human experience and movement. That being said, I appreciate the attempt to get us away from using machines or overly complicated movements to stay healthy and fit. Unfortunately the minefield of crossfit is wide and dangerous. You tip-toed into it with a comment on kipping pullups and reaped the consequences. I think the series was complete without that small section and I thought it seemed out of place when I read it. While I agree with the inherent dangers of kipping pullups, I don’t think this was a wise place to initiate that debate.
Thank Dan John that some people are actually talking about the ARTICLES.
Shane, I think you got the point exactly (and your friends complaining about them missed the boat). Thanks for sharing your own insights.
Josh, I’d say the TGU is absolutely fundamental to human experience – if my 90 year old grandmother falls down, how’s she going to get up? Roll to the side, come up into a lunge and then stand. That’s the reasoning for me including that movement on MY list of five – even without a weight, it’s solid. (And many movements, like the squat and the deadlift, require proper coaching and form to be done properly, right?)
The only reason we mentioned kipping is because that’s what so many CF gyms program on a regular basis (they are the “default pull-up,” right?), and our experts think dead hangs (specifically) are far more valuable. That’s all – a different perspective, take it or leave it.
Best
Melissa
I don’t typically think of myself as naive.
Where’s the controversy?
I am really enjoying the series thus far. I don’t wish to add to the drama, but I will say this:
Exercise science is and always has been an evolving being. Having a discussion about the most valuable movements is a great way to continue that evolution; at the same time, having a frank discussion about movements that are no longer valuable, or potentially unsafe, should also be part of that evolution.
I have long been a very vocal critic of the SDHP. Kipping pullups, while I do them for the purpose of competition prep, are most certainly one of the main reason that shoulder injuries seem so incredibly pervasive in the CF world. Why, I wonder, won’t CF evolve and admit that at the very least, SDHP, things like GHD situps for very new athletes, and someone other things need to be retired.
Why can’t we have that conversation? It’s called growth. It’s called evolution. It’s called “tweaking”.
I am a crossfitter, a games competitor, a L1 trainer, but I am also a thinker. I believe we always need to continue the dialogue. Blind allegiance does no one any good. I think it’s OK to sit back and have a frank discussion about kipping pullups. If the majority of the data suggests they are causing injuries, what’s wrong with evolving?
I really appreciated this series! To me, it emphasizes the importance of complex strength moves plus slow movement (walking, farmer walk, swimming) for overall long-term health. It also helps me, as a relative beginner, reaffirm that the goals that I’ve set for myself are good ones- pull-ups, deadlifts, OH squats- and helps me choose future goals to work on- ground to OH moves, for example. I haven’t ventured into clean-and-jerk or snatch territory, and seeing so many recommendations for those moves (or variations on those moves) has motivated me to put them on my list.
Also looking forward to more from you (hopefully) on unilateral moves?
Great series, thanks for the read. What are your thoughts on snatches (any variety whether power, hang etc)? Are they good for longevity and general health or would they be more suited to athletic training? Would you include them in your program? This is of course assuming they were performed with correct technique.
Dan,
The oly lifts are really excellent for overall strength building, when done properly. I work with an Oly coach 2x per week and find that proper technique and incremental strength building is really a fantastic way to continue improving my overall fitness. “Functional”? Maybe not, but still, in my opinion, great. And injury ratios in the Oly lifting arena are quite low. Much lower than CrossFIt in general,
Dan,
Snatches (performed correctly) are a excellent movement for both health and athletic performance, though they’re not at the very, very top of my list. Snatches make my Top 20 list, but not my Top 5. I snatch at least once a week, but that’s because I have specific power goals, not because I think snatches are magical for a generalized prescription. If you’re using snatch variants for GPP, I think power variants are more useful as it allows monster power production without the huge technical requirement of a “full snatch”. A (full) snatch (performed consistently well) has few downsides, though your time might be better invested doing other things if your goal is general health & sustainable fitness. Pat (above) has some excellent comments, too.
Dallas
Powerlifting, O-lifting, running and gymnastics have been around for a long time – and some of us have been putting them together for decades. Anyone who has trained wrestlers (something I’m familiar with) has been doing multi-faceted workouts for some time. I had an olympic freestyle wrestler performing cleans, deadlifts, jumps, caber tosses, hammer throws, putting weights, pulling and dragging. I think the idea of fundamental movement is critical and I applaud Whole 9 for bringing up these ideas.
A fantastic series. I hope you’ll do that post on the stupidest CF exercise. The suspense has been killing me ever since the great post on the sumo deadlift high pull.