Short on time, but want a fairly simple, full-body workout?  Here’s one I used to do at the end of a day at the rock climbing gym to provide exercise to complementary muscle groups.  Since rock climbing is mostly pulling, pushups work great.

First, I want you to focus on good pushup posture.  Keep your low back rounded, never arched.  If you’re not ready to do pushups from your toes, use your knees instead.  Once you can complete the 21 sets from your knees, you’re ready to start from your toes.  Ok, what’s the challenge?

Start by doing one pushup, walk the length of the room, and back to that same position.  Now do two pushups.  Walk the length of the room and back again, now three pushups.  Keep doing these sets, increasing by one pushup each time.  Since you’re only giving your muscles 15-20 seconds rest each time, this gets progressively harder.  My old gymnastics coach used to say if you can do all 21 sets, you’re hardcore!  Haha well once I reached that, I started doing the 21 sets with 5-10lbs in a backpack.  Now that is tough.

What I like about this exercise is that it provides it’s own built-in warmup.  The first few sets are very easy.  It also builds confidence, allows your muscles to warm up, and gets you into the spirit of it before the tougher sets.  It works the triceps, the deltoids (shoulders), abdominals, and hip flexors.
When you’re finished you’ll have completed 231 pushups in about 10 minutes. For extra challenge, as I noted above, add weight, or work your way up to 25 pushups.  If that’s not enough, try doing them all as clap pushups, or even better, one-arm pushups!!

Now of course being the good personal trainer I’m gonna ask that you please stretch your shoulders before doing this exercise.  I know how you all love to stretch right?  I’ll be posting a discussion just about shoulder stretching soon enough.