This repository tracks the evolution of my fitness routine, which I've been developing and dogfooding for a number of years.
I am not a qualified professional and I share this program solely for informative purposes. Make sure to read the license and liability sections below before continuing and always check in with your medical and fitness professionals before making changes to your fitness regime.
The routine lives as a printer-friendly, evolving HTML document. Interested in the source? Here!
[...] fitness is about performing well at any and every task imaginable.
- Daily: this routine is designed for people that, like me, have an easier time committing to smaller daily efforts rather than greater weekly ones.
- Generalist: this routine is designed to develop general fitness levels. It does not optimize for strength, power, speed, endurance or hypertrophy but aims to strike a functional compromise between each of these that can easily transfer to the trainee's daily life.
- Sustainable: this routine is designed to minimize daily volume while maximizing weekly variety to lessen its impact on joints, ligaments and allow for shorter recovery times.
- Portable: this routine is designed to be relatively portable, minimizing the amount of required equipment and optimizing for equipment easy to carry around and/or DIY.
- Safe: this routine is designed around weight types with greater stabilization requirements, limiting the amount of weight that the trainee will be able to move. This routine is also designed to minimize the risk of injury and/or damage inherent in handling heavy weights, selecting movement variations that can be easily aborted.
At minimum, this routine requires the following pieces of equipment:
- Sandbags. Specifically, boulder-style sandbags, big and small. Instead of sand, consider filling with pea gravel. Additionally and optionally, log-style sandbags with handles.
- A pull-up bar. Prefer freestanding or wall-mounted/ceiling-mounted bars to doorway bars. Preferably high enough to strap rings on it. Alternatively, a sturdy branch can suffice. Alternatively, rings can suffice.
- A dip station or any other kind of dipping setup. If nothing else is available, a set of high-back chairs can suffice. Alternatively, rings can suffice.
- A set of dumbbells and plates (like these) accompanied by a couple of kettlebell handles (like these).
Needless to say, most things will break when impacted by a kettlebell unintentionally propelled into the air due to grip failure. Be careful!
A set of gymnastic rings can be an invaluable tool, both as a gateway to (much) harder movements and variations but also as an incredibly portable, all-in-one alternative to both the pull-up bar and the dip station. Get good straps with good buckles! You do not want to fall head-first into the ground while inverted.
Beware of using rings too soon!. Particularly when it comes to pushing exercises (push-up, dip), rings can lead you to inadvertent poor shoulder placement and scapular movement, greatly increasing the risk of injury. Being able to support yourself on rings is not an indicator that you have the strength to perform dynamic movements on them.
Other pieces of equipment I highly suggest:
- A rowing machine. A very nice and versatile piece of equipment, ideal for warming up and slow days in which I do not feel like working out.
- A jump rope. Good for warming up and HIIT/metcon workouts.
This work © 2024 - 2025 by Jacopo Scazzosi is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
As stated in section 5. of the legal code of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, I take no responsibility for any outcome arising from or in connection with the use of this routine.