The Daily Minimum.

by Tom Furman

Sergey Rachinskiy. Honored Master of Sport

This article is about a daily minimum. Like a vitamin or savings account, it is part of a routine and you just do it. In this case it is physical training. It is a mindset. It’s not as much, “working out”, or a training cycle or a program, but a list of boxes checked. This mindset goes back to earlier days of less options and less variety. 3 TV channels is easy. 100 is hard. The old gyms were boxing gyms. So that generation did boxing stuff. You can see this in the fitter actors of the 1960’s like Robert Conrad, Van Williams, Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. “Training”, meant boxing workouts. Here is what Robert Conrad did -

“….During Wild, Wild, West, he’d wake up at 6am, run 3–5 miles beside his manager driving a golf cart. Then at lunch head go to the CBS Studio Gym. He’d have a sparring partner and do his ropework, bagwork, sparring and bodywork. Then return to shooting, have a light dinner and go to bed.”

During his career as an actor, Charles Bronson, similarly use tools from boxing to maintain his fitness and physique. Here is his routine —

“When he was roommates with actor, Jack Klugman, Jack said Charlie pounded out, “Pushups between milk crates, rope climbing from a rope hung in the alley, sit ups and running.”

My friend, Josh Dunn has a schedule that will kill most men. He still does a daily minimum. Here is a brief resume of his activities.

Husband
Father of a young son
Former EMT/Firefighter on 24/48 schedule
ER EMT on Third Shift
In Nursing School
Member of Air National Guard. One weekend per month + Two Weeks a Year
Practices Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and competes
Practices Kettlebell Sport [Girevoy Sport] and competes
Wood worker and writer

Josh’s daily minimum includes bodyweight calisthenics, kettlebell lifts and running. He’s used, recently, the clean and push push press [as well as the push press alone] as a total body conditioner. It can be increased via time, repetition and weight, over days, weeks, months and years. Your daily minimum becomes unfathomable to mere mortals. Here is a short explanation on how to do it, in Josh’s words.

For those of us short on time and still wanting to get a decent workout in, kettlebell push press is pretty hard to beat. The movement hits triceps, deltoids, upper chest, core, and even works the legs a little. Let’s take a look at how best to approach this lift.
Coming from a kettlebell sport background, where one lifts for 10 minutes at a time, I tend to look at time as a decent metric, but 10 minutes is a bit much for someone not competing in the sport. Still, by focusing on time as well as repetitions, we build a bit of cardio into the lifting as well. Strength and cardio in one go.
For most folks, start with 3–4 sets of 2 minutes switching hands every minute. Goal should be 6-10 reps per minute. Once this can be achieved, progress to 2–3 sets of 4 minutes.
If you are able perform 3 sets of 4 minutes at 10 repetitions per minute. I recommend moving to a heavier kettlebell. That said, if you are wanting a challenge, nothing says you can’t go heavier without hitting that benchmark, just be certain you are maintaining good form. If you aren’t able to perform 6 reps per minute with the bell, then I’d say a lighter bell is in order.

For Josh, Doing 20 minutes with a 36K bell, [80 pounds] non stop, is not unusual.

Here are some general ideas to form a framework of the daily minimum.

1. Do something. It can be aerobic or strength based. But don’t keep jumping around.
2. Cover Your Bases. Doing 200 push ups is not a minimum. It is partiality. More systemic training needs to be done. Not just chest and arms.
3. Get A Life. Train for life, don’t make training your life with constant muscle magazines, backward facing flat billed hats and a heavy dose of “bacne”.
4. Treat Diet and Sleep Like The Recovery Tools They Are. While you may have memorized your percentage of lift, your dose of HRT and how many milligrams of fish oil you took, focus on the big guns first. Adequate protein. sufficient calories per goal, and hours of restful sleep.
5. Do What You Can. As my buddy Jack Reape says, “If you go balls to the wall every day, soon it will be raisins to the wall.” You need to rest and back off.. probably every fourth or sixth week with 50% effort. As well, doing a little, versus doing nothing has merit. It’s practice after all.
6. Run Towards Success, Don’t Flee From Danger. Train with the Daily Minimum to get somewhere. Not because your doctor said you were getting a heart attack or your wife’s friends laughed at you during the pool party when you took your shirt off.
7. Back Offs. As mentioned above, linear improvement of adding, adding, adding, only works for a while. Back off to allow the body to adapt. It will create an environment for improvement.
8. Show Up, Creep Up, Get Comfortable. The more you show up, the more magic happens. As well, push the workout, get comfortable and then push again to get uncomfortable. That is how winning is done.
9. Avoid Program Jumping. Stick with it. Great champions do what they do, for decades. If you keep jumping, you never improve, but you can brag a lot. Best to show up and keep your mouth shut. No one cares if you do Crossfit or embrace vegetarianism.
10. Record. Write it down. You won’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been. Training logs, along with proper food and sleep are the cornerstone of athletic excellence.

What are my suggestions for Daily Minimum? In NO special order and FAR from complete -

1. Easy Strength by Dan John
2. Simple & Sinister by Pavel Tsatsouline
3. Armor of War by Tom Furman
4. 5–3–1 by Jim Wendler
5. Street Workouts by the Kavadlo Brothers
6. Rucking, Rowing, Running + some muscle work.
7. Any GS Program. [Girevoy Sport/Kettlebell Lifting]
8. Herschel Walker’s Basic Training

Good luck and do your Daily Minimum.