I will continue to post beginners’ workouts. This current, specific series we’ll call the Adobe Workouts (First week’s plan), and here is Adobe Workouts, Series 2.

The Adobe workouts are designed around the abilities, needs and constraints of specific trainees. Their only equipment is a few denominations of dumbbells (5, 8, 10, 12, and 25 lbs) (This week! Jump rope & pull-up bar next week!). At the current time, they only want home, indoor workouts, and running is not an option. (These are new specifications after week one.) Clearly, these are tight constraints. If you’re trying to follow these workouts, you should probably contact me. With a greater range of options, I can generate a significantly more robust strategy.

For the Adobe trainees, I am somewhat familiar with their abilities based on discussion and initial measurements from tabata routines. In a real-life training scenario, our first meeting would yield significantly more information for me about a trainee’s strengths, weaknesses, posture and physiognomy, and specific skill levels. A good initial training session to elicit this information is the following workout:

You have 90 seconds on each exercise to perform as many reps as possible (AMRAP):

• Rowing

On a Concept 2 ergometer. The primary metric for this purpose is distance in meters; other noteworthy variables include wattage, calories, stroke pace and average time per 500 meters.

• Sit ups

On a flat mat for padding, knees bent, feet secured or unsecured depending on athlete’s preference, hands & arms wherever the athlete wants them. Form on sit-ups need not be obsessive, and safety concerns are extremely rare.

• Push ups

Neutral arm-hand position, hands ~2 inches wider than shoulders, any angle for hands wrists and radial directon of arms, but Range Of Motion (ROM) is important: chest should touch the deck on the bottom and elbows should be fully locked out at the top. The body should remain as straight and tight as possible, moving as a unit like a stick. Inevitably, the body snakes somewhat (bending at hips or twisting) when the athlete is fatigued. At this point, the athlete should continue anyway to complete AMRAP. Feet can be together (harder) or apart but legs should be straight and no drive should be generated from balls of feet.

• Squats (air squats)

Discussed at length elsewhere, but here I should mention that the most important points we’re looking for are flexibility and pattern of movement. 98% of untrained athletes cannot perform a deep squat, usually lacking the flexibility in the lower leg and also in the hamstrings. This is a critical diagnostic tool and one of the most important exercises we will continue to focus on until the athlete is proficient at squatting.

• Pull-ups

In classic form, hang from a bar; grip optional - “chin up” / “underhand” (supine) or “overhand” / “pull up” grip (prone) are fine. Movement is complete when chin clears the bar. For diagnostic purposes, and to allow the athlete to get the benefit of the workout, if he or she can’t do any pull-ups or can only complete one or two, we’ll use a method of assistance. A Gravitron (assistance machine for pull-ups and/or dips) is ideal because it gives us an exact measurement of how much assistance is provided. For our purposes, two other methods are preferred: 1. jumping pull-ups, beginning from a height where the arms are slightly bent, and 2. trainer-assisted pull-ups, where the athlete’s knees are bent, the trainer holds his or her ankles and provides enough assistance to let the athlete complete the motion.

You have exactly 30 seconds rest between each exercise; we’ll count and keep you aware of the timer. Including rest periods, this is a 10-minute workout. Your goal is to demonstrate your absolute maximum capacity on each exercise, so we’ll also be observing your ability to drive yourself - your mental toughness to push yourself to your limits and your behavior under these conditions.

We can glean heaps of useful information from observing a new trainee perform these exercises, as well as their scores. We can also give them initial training in the performance of these essential movements.