The 4 Exercises I Will Never Stop Doing in My Life

Highly functional joint-healthy athletic ones that require almost no equipment

Never in the 5 years since I started working out did the thought of quitting come to my mind.

But yesterday, the idea of my 60-year-old self grinding out bicep-curls with a pair of headphones blasting hard metal in a bustling commercial gym seemed ludicrous.

The pandemic wrought the end of my gym rat days. But I am still pretty passionate about working out to build muscle, strength, and overall athleticism.

But despite the certainty that this passion’s going to fade with age, there are a few exercises I don’t think I will ever quit doing — as no matter how old I am, if not muscular, I want to be lithe and athletic.

Even at 70, I want to kick ass in everyday activities, not laboriously lumber about with creaky joints.

And these 4 exercises that need little to no equipment and can be performed pretty much anywhere are perfect for just that.

Pullups

It was the lockdown that made me fall in love with pullups. Earlier, dumb me had been content with lat pull-downs.

But pull-ups are much more than lat pull-downs. As a closed kinetic chain exercise, it’s highly functional, easy on the joints, trains your core, and improves your sense of proprioception.

If performed with perfect form, pull-ups train pretty much every single muscle in your back.

And to perform them, all you need is something to hang from. Did I mention how they drastically improve your posture?

And if weakened by age, I can’t perform them, I can always perform assisted ones or negatives. If even those prove hard, hanging scapular retractions or just active hanging are there for the rescue.

There’s literally no excuse to ever stop performing this incredibly versatile, effective, and useful exercise.

Pushups

If pull-ups are one side of the coin, pushups are the other.

While pull-ups train your back and biceps, pushups train the rest of your upper body—mainly the chest, shoulders, and triceps. And as a fellow closed-kinetic chain exercise, the functionality and other benefits follow suit.

This exercise is the king of versatility — irrespective of your age, training experience, flexibility, and underlying strength, there’s a variation for you.

And even better than pullups, the only “equipment” you need is solid ground. Wherever you can lie down, you can do pushups — inside a coffin is probably the only exception.

But I’m sure the dead have better things to do than pushups. But until then, I’ll do pushups. You probably should as well.

Walking Lunges

With the upper body taken care of, the lower body is what’s left. And just this one exercise can get the job done.

Lunging is one of the most natural movements—walking itself is a mild form of lunging. So is running. Again, the equipment you ask? Nothing except the ground.

Even if you want to perform weighted lunges, anything from loaded polythene bags to water buckets can achieve the job. A humble school bag also works.

And with just minor tweaks to the torso and stride angles, you can easily selectively choose the muscles to fry — the quads, glutes, or hamstrings. Did I mention how just a few humble sets can get you puffing like a steam engine?

Endurance + entire lower body strength and muscle + stamina + versatility + accessibility = No Brainer.

Farmer’s Carries

I saved the best for last — if walking lunges take the silver medal in functionality, the farmer’s carry bags the gold.

Be it carrying shopping bags, relocating a table, or lugging travel baggage, moving things from point A to point B is part and parcel of daily life. And this exercise trains just that.

Unlike the other three movements, this builds full-body strength and endurance — mainly in the forearms and traps. And like the other three, this is again a closed kinetic chain movement.

Coming to the variations, there are so many that calling this an exercise would be unfair. “A class of exercises” would be accurate — overhead carries, front-loaded carries, back-loaded carries, and hand-loaded carries, to name a few.

As long as you can walk, you can also farmer’s walk.

Final Words

Now, you might ask me why I chose only closed-chain exercises. The reason is simple — open-chain exercises such as bicep curls and chest presses are unnatural.

More importantly, closed-chain exercises are safer for your tendons, joints, and ligaments — and joint health is unarguably a crucial factor for sustainable long-term wellness.

Now, all that’s left is coming back to this article when I am 70 years old and seeing whether I stayed true to my claim. Until then, see you and happy exercising!

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