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Comment by nomilk | Hacker News Reader

About 5 times per week for 6 months.

The exact workout is from 19m28s - 37:22 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WOTplwNlw&t=19m28s (I do the whole thing twice, then 3km run then stretch)

Imbalance is something that worries me. I figure it's better to do a workout that's imbalanced than to come up with a theoretically perfect workout that requires a gym that I hate going to or, worse, doing no structured exercise (which is what I did for periods in the past). If you have suggestions to better balance the workout, I'd love to hear them and will integrate changes immediately.

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Pulling movements in general are pretty hard to do with just calisthenics. Anywhere in that big park, is there a nice sturdy pole or post? If so, you can get an elastic band set, usually very inexpensive and portable, and use that to do rows (and face pulls, if you want).

I would also try to incorporate pull-ups (some parks have pull up bars, or you can install one at home) to work your lats. This might be tricky if you’re not at the point where you can do a body weight pull-up yet. If that’s the case, you can probably figure out how to do a lat pull down with elastic bands and the right kind of rigid surface.

You can use your feet to stabilize the bands to do curls (biceps, some forearms) and shrugs (traps) to round out most “pulling” movements. Also you can isolate your triceps and side delts with bands. And do “harder” ab exercises than just sit-ups. They’re very versatile, like a much less expensive cable system.

Superb feedback.

I'll incorporate pull ups as of today on every day except where the bar is taken, as that would negate one of the joys of this particular workout: that it can be done absolutely any time without planning/thinking/waiting.

Will research bands and band exercises (on youtube?) and almost certainly buy some and incorporate a few. Very much like the idea of some sort of 'row' as well as shrugs for traps. Forearms seems to already get smashed during pushups (especially the 'fingers out' and 'narrow grip' push ups [1]).

Will check out banded ab exercises too.

Thanks for the advice.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WOTplwNlw&t=28m44s

Where I live, they have outdoors gyms at almost every park. I thought that would be common everywhere??!

Not in the US unfortunately.

What country?

I'm in Sweden but seen the gyms in many other parts of Europe and in Australia.

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