Happy August Warriors! If you, like me, have kiddos, August is a little bittersweet. It’s the last fun of summer. It is a lot of crazy to dos. But it also signals the return of routine with back to school. Routines can be extremely useful, not just in everyday lives, but in terms of workouts. Let’s chat today about why I think fitness basics are anything but boring.

In my house, three of us are prepping for the classroom since my husband and I are both teachers. That’s a lot of pens and pencils to purchase. Throw in the fact that the hubs and I teach at a university and not in the K-12 system and that is three different schedules we are trying to balance. Let’s just say that there are lots of color-coded systems in place.

So when life gets crazy, and let’s face it, when isn’t life crazy, I like knowing that I have a solid exercise plan. To me a solid exercise plan isn’t the latest fitness craze. (Although, it doesn’t strictly exclude it either.) A solid exercise plan is one that consists of exercises that are tried and true. Push ups, lunges, squats for strength. Walking for cardio. And some simple stretches for flexibility.

It is easy nowadays to jump on the internet or Instagram and see all the fitness influencers doing all sorts of complicated and (sometimes) crazy things. Because we as humans are hardwired to believe that what we see is what is always true (a fallacy to keep in mind with all things social media), we assume that said influencer got the body they have by doing said complicated things.

In most cases, I would be willing to bet that isn’t the whole story. Social media partly exists to entertain us and influencers are trying to post something that gets us to stop scrolling. Hence the complicated and sometimes dangerous. But in order to do said complicated exercise, they had to put in a lot of push ups and squats.

See the tried and true exercises are tried and true for a reason. These are exercises that most likely train one of the foundational motions. These are the six gross motions that our body is pretty much set up to do. Push. Pull. Squat. Lunge. Hinge. Twist. The biggies that you want to be training regardless of your specific goal.

The tried and true exercises are proven to work over time. I can guarantee you that if you add push ups or squats to your strength routine on a regular basis and do them consistently, you will see a return on your workout investment. Much more so than on that weird squat-adjacent bandy kicky thing you saw on Pinterest.

The tried and true exercises are time efficient. You want a great full body strength workout and you only have 30 minutes? Bench press, bent over rows, overhead press, squats, one legged Romainian deadlifts, and wood chops. Done. Each of these exercises train multiple muscle groups and require a lot of active control to ensure proper form. More bang for your workout buck.

The tried and true exercises are natural. This one assumes that you are privileged to have a fully abled body. Walking is something that we learn to do around the age of one. It is one of the most natural movement patterns that our bodies create. Of course, if your body is differently abled, any exercise that fits your movement patterns and creates a stronger body for your day to day life and needs would fit the bill here.

Tried and true exercises are more accessible. If I’ve said it before, I’ve said it a thousand times: you don’t need to spend big bucks on a fancy gym membership. Sneakers and few inexpensive key pieces (like resistance bands) are all you need. The workout I listed above can be fully completed in your home with only resistance bands if you like. Or, heck, old detergent jugs filled with sand.

Basic doesn’t mean bad or boring. Basic is something you need to be comfortable with first before you can add on. Without basic what you really have is all flash and glitter. The body doesn’t actually know what it is being asked to do. It tries to figure it out on its own and the results are usually less than ideal.

Think about it this way: If you wore leather pants and a sequined top with some strappy stilettos and a feathered bag and a statement necklace people would have no idea what part of your outfit to focus on. Each piece might be well constructed and beautiful, but when you put them all together each individual piece lacks impact and just becomes fashion noise. If you wear the leather pants with a simple white shirt, basic heels, a plain clutch and the statement necklace, then the outfit has impact. The pants and the necklace become standouts with the basics supporting the whole thing.

So it goes for exercise, too. Without the basics, you end up with physiological noise that your body has to suss out. Switch out to more basics and the body knows what to focus on and what is fun. Focusing on these basics also has the added benefit of deleting some of the mental load that constant decision making places on us. With a well rounded stable of basic exercises, it just takes a quick mental checklist to create a great workout. And if you need help, check out the exercises in the Wellness Toolbox here on MMW.

Tell us in the comments, what is your favorite basic exercise and why!