Fit Protocol

Fit Protocol Small steps. Big results. 💚
Bodyweight training for busy men. One chair. 20 minutes. No gym. New protocol every day — start with the pinned posts 👇

03/09/2026

Stand behind two men with roughly the same size chest and you can usually tell within a second which
one trains. It isn't the chest that gives it away. It's whether the shoulder looks round from behind
or flat.

That roundness comes from one small muscle sitting on the back corner of the shoulder — the rear
deltoid. And almost nothing most men do touches it. Push-ups don't. Dips don't. Planks don't. Every
pressing movement sends your arm forward, and this muscle only works when your arm travels backward,
which is a direction that essentially never comes up in a normal day or a normal home workout.

Both of these are done lying face down on the floor and need nothing at all.

1. T-RAISES — 15 reps. Lie face down with your legs together and your forehead resting on the floor.
Stretch both arms straight out to the sides so your body forms a T, with your palms facing down
toward the floor. Lift both arms as high as you can, squeezing the back of your shoulders, hold for a
second, then lower slowly without letting your hands rest on the ground.

One honest note on that: palms down is the harder version on the shoulder joint. If it pinches at the
top, turn your thumbs up toward the ceiling instead. Same exercise, friendlier angle, and there's
nothing wrong with using it.

2. Y-RAISES — 12 reps. Same position, but take your arms out wide and angled forward past your head,
so your body makes a Y rather than a T, with your thumbs pointing up. Lift both arms just a few
inches off the floor, hold for two seconds, then lower under control.

Two things decide this one. Keep the lift SMALL — a few inches is correct, and if you're getting a
big dramatic lift then your lower back has taken over the job from your shoulder blades. And start
the movement by pulling your shoulder blades down and back, away from your ears, rather than by
throwing your hands upward. If you feel it in your upper traps or your lower back rather than the
back of your shoulders, lower the height until you don't.

Between the two you're covering both the shape of the shoulder and the muscle that stops it drifting
forward again.

Fifteen and twelve, every other day.

Follow Fit Protocol — short, honest protocols for busy men.

02/09/2026

Stretching a sore lower back feels good for about ten minutes. Then it comes back, and you stretch it again, and the cycle carries on for years.

Here's what's usually going on. The two long columns of muscle running either side of your spine are not strength muscles in the way your chest or your legs are. They're endurance muscles. Their job is holding your torso upright for sixteen hours a day, every day, and when they cause you trouble it's almost always because they've got TIRED rather than because they're too weak to lift something heavy.

That distinction matters, because a stretch changes how a muscle feels for a little while. It does nothing at all to how long that muscle can keep working. Which is exactly why the relief never lasts.

What does change it is time spent under tension. Both of these are done face down on the floor, and neither needs anything.

1. BACK EXTENSIONS - 15 reps. Lie face down with your legs together and your hands resting lightly at the sides of your head, elbows open wide. Lift your chest and shoulders just a few centimetres clear of the floor, hold for a second, then lower slowly.

Small is the whole point here. This is not a backbend, and if you're arching up dramatically you've moved the load off the muscle and onto the joints of your lower back - which is precisely the thing you're trying to avoid. Keep your hips and legs pressed down and your neck in line with your spine. A few centimetres, held properly, is considerably harder than it sounds by rep ten.

2. SUPERMANS - 12 reps. Lie face down with both arms stretched out straight in front of you. Lift both arms and both legs together a few centimetres off the floor, hold for a second, and lower under control. Arms and legs move at the same time on every rep, not alternating.

Adding the legs roughly doubles the length of the load those muscles have to support, which is how you make the same small movement significantly harder without adding anything.

Fifteen and twelve, every other day. Give it three weeks before you decide whether it's working.

Follow Fit Protocol - short, honest protocols for busy men.

01/09/2026

If your shoulders ache after push-ups and your chest never seems to change, the problem is almost never how many you're doing. It's where your elbows are pointing.

Watch most men do a push-up and their elbows flare straight out to the sides, so that seen from above the body forms a T shape. Two things happen in that position. The shoulder joint gets jammed at the angle where it's least happy carrying load, which is where the ache comes from. And the chest ends up working from a mechanically poor position, which is why the reps never seem to add up to anything.

The correction is one adjustment: point your elbows back toward your feet at roughly forty-five degrees, so your body forms an arrow shape rather than a T.

1. 45-DEGREE PUSH-UPS - 10 reps. Set your hands just slightly wider than your shoulders, not way out to the sides. As you lower, let your elbows travel back toward your feet at about 45 degrees, keeping them tucked in closer than feels natural at first. Lower until your chest is about an inch off the floor, then press back up. Body in one straight line from head to heels, hips level throughout.

Ten of these done properly is worth considerably more than twenty done with flared elbows, and your shoulders will notice the difference within a week.

2. ARCHER PUSH-UPS - 6 reps each side. This is where you go once ten of the first exercise feels comfortable. Set your hands wide apart. Lower yourself toward one hand, bending that elbow while the other arm stretches out long and completely straight along the floor. Press back up to the middle, then lower toward the other side.

Most of your bodyweight now goes through one arm rather than being shared between two, which is how you make push-ups harder without adding a single rep.

Ten, then six each side, twice a week.

Elbows back, not out. That one change is worth more than doubling the reps.

Follow Fit Protocol - short, honest protocols for busy men.

31/08/2026

You don't have a calf muscle. You have two of them, and almost certainly only one of them has ever been trained.

The one everybody knows is the gastrocnemius - the big diamond-shaped bulge sitting just below the back of the knee. It crosses the knee joint, which means it only works properly when your leg is straight. Underneath and below it sits the soleus: a flatter, deeper muscle running down the lower half of the calf toward the heel. It doesn't cross the knee, so when your knee bends, the big one goes slack and the soleus takes over the entire job.

Here's why that matters. Every calf raise anyone has ever demonstrated is done standing with straight legs. So the soleus - which is a large muscle, does most of the work when you're on your feet all day, and accounts for a lot of what makes a calf look thick from the side - never gets asked to do anything at all.

The fix is a chair.

1. SEATED CALF RAISES - 20 reps. Sit on the front edge of a chair with your feet flat on the floor directly under your knees and your hands resting on your knees. Press up onto the balls of your feet, lifting your heels as high as you can. Hold for a second at the top, then lower slowly until your heels touch the floor again.

Your knees stay bent at a right angle throughout, and that bend is the entire point of the exercise. It's what takes the big muscle out of the movement.

2. BENT-KNEE STANDING RAISES - 15 reps. Stand up with your hands on your hips, then soften your knees to about twenty degrees and keep them soft for every rep. Same rise onto the toes, same slow lowering. You're now carrying your whole bodyweight rather than just the weight of your lower legs, which makes fifteen plenty.

Twenty and fifteen, every other day.

The rule is worth more than the routine: straight leg trains the top one, bent knee trains the one underneath. Apply it to any calf work you already do.

Follow Fit Protocol - short, honest protocols for busy men.

30/08/2026

⚠️ CORRECTION: the thumbs are the wrong way round in the clip. Palms face DOWN, thumbs pointing OUT to the sides. Your hands never go behind your back the arms stay out in a Y and lift only a few inches off the floor. My error in the render, sorry.
Corrected version posting soon.

The rest holds: chest and forehead stay DOWN on the floor. If your chest is lifting, your lower back has taken over and the exercise has stopped working. The range is small on both — that's correct, the shoulder blade doesn't travel far. 12 each, every other day.

Corrected version coming as its own post. Follow Fit Protocol. 👊

Have a quick count of the things in your week that pull your shoulders forward. Push-ups. Driving. Sitting at a desk. Looking at your phone. Carrying shopping. Now count the things that pull them back.

That's the whole problem in one sentence.

There's a small muscle on the back corner of each shoulder - the rear deltoid - whose job is pulling your arm backwards and helping hold your shoulder where it should sit. Almost nothing in a normal week asks it to work. Push-ups don't. Planks don't. Even most rowing movements let the bigger back muscles take over. So it stays weak, your shoulders settle forward, and standing up straight becomes something you have to keep remembering rather than something your body does on its own.

You can't fix a strength problem with willpower. Both of these are done lying face down on the floor, and they need nothing at all.

1. T-RAISES - 12 reps. Lie face down with your legs together and your forehead resting on the floor. Stretch both arms straight out to the sides so your body forms a T, and turn your thumbs up toward the ceiling. Now lift both arms as high as you can, squeezing the back of your shoulders together at the top. Hold for a second, then lower slowly without letting your hands rest on the floor.

Keep your chest and your forehead down throughout. If your chest starts lifting, your lower back has taken the job and the exercise has stopped working.

2. W-RAISES - 12 reps. Same position, but bend your elbows so your arms make a W shape beside your head. Pull both elbows back and up, as though you were squeezing a pencil between your shoulder blades. Hold, then lower under control.

One honest note: the range of movement on both is small, and it's supposed to be. Your shoulder blade doesn't travel far. If you're getting a big dramatic lift, it's almost certainly your lower back doing it rather than your shoulders.

Twelve of each, every other day.

Follow Fit Protocol - short, honest protocols for busy men.

29/08/2026

If you can knock out twenty bodyweight squats, then squats stopped training your legs a long time ago. And the answer isn't forty.

This is where most men training at home get stuck. An exercise gets easy, so they add reps. But once you're past about fifteen or twenty, adding more mostly builds endurance for that exact movement rather than strength in the muscle. What you actually need is for the same movement to get harder - and with no weights in the house there's one honest way to do that. Stop sharing the work between two legs.

1. SLOW SQUATS - 10 reps. Feet about shoulder-width with your toes turned slightly out. Take a full three seconds to lower yourself, go all the way down until your thighs are parallel with the floor, and pause for a moment at the bottom before driving up through your heels.

Two things there that most people skip: the depth and the time. A typical home squat stops about a quarter of the way down and takes roughly a second. Slowing it down and going to parallel turns the same exercise into something quite a lot harder without changing anything else.

2. REAR-FOOT-ELEVATED SPLIT SQUATS - 8 reps each side. Stand in front of a chair, rest the top of your back foot on the seat behind you, and step your front foot a long stride forward. Lower until your front thigh is parallel with the floor and your back knee is hovering just above it, then drive back up through your front heel. Keep your torso upright and let your front knee track out over that foot.

Your front leg is now carrying most of your bodyweight rather than half of it. That's why eight of these do what forty of the easy version never did.

Ten, then eight each side, twice a week.

You don't need more reps. You need fewer legs.

Follow Fit Protocol - short, honest protocols for busy men.

28/08/2026

Here's a gap most men training at home have never noticed.

Every pressing exercise you can do without equipment sends your arms forward. Push-ups, dips, planks, press-ups against a worktop - all of them push away from your chest. But your shoulder's biggest and most useful job is pressing overhead: lifting a case into an overhead locker, putting a box on a high shelf, getting something down from the loft. That direction is where shoulder strength quietly disappears in your fifties, and nothing in a standard home routine touches it.

The fix isn't a gym. It's turning a push-up on its end.

1. PIKE PUSH-UPS - 8 reps. Start in a push-up position, then walk your feet in toward your hands and push your hips high into the air so your body makes a sharp upside-down V, hips as the highest point. Bend your elbows and lower the crown of your head toward the floor between your two hands, then press back up until your arms are straight.

The rule that decides it: your hips stay high throughout. The moment they sink and your body straightens into a line, you're doing an ordinary push-up and the press has gone back to travelling forward instead of up.

2. FEET-ELEVATED PIKE PUSH-UPS - 6 reps. The same shape, but with your feet up on a chair seat. That steepens the angle considerably, stacks your hips almost directly over your hands, and sends far more of your bodyweight straight up. Six reps rather than eight, because it's genuinely much harder.

Eight and six. Under five minutes, twice a week.

One honest note: if overhead pressing is new to you, do the first exercise on its own for a few weeks before adding the chair. Shoulders don't respond well to being rushed, and the second version will still be there when you're ready for it.

Follow Fit Protocol - short, honest protocols for busy men.

27/08/2026

Your abs aren't built to bend you. They're built to stop you bending.

That distinction is worth sitting with, because it changes what the training should look like. Think about when your midsection actually works in a normal day: carrying shopping in one hand, lifting a case out of a boot, reaching up to a high shelf. In every one of those moments the job is holding your spine still while your arms and legs do the moving. Not one of them involves curling your ribs toward your hips.

Sit-ups train the opposite. They bend the spine, repeatedly, which is both the thing your core is meant to resist and the movement your lower back least enjoys after fifty. It's why men can do hundreds of them and still feel their back take the strain the moment they pick something up off the floor.

Two exercises that train the real job. In both, your spine stays still and your limbs move.

1. KNEE LOWERS — 10 reps. Start in a high plank with your arms straight, hands under your shoulders and your back flat. Bend both knees and lower them together until they hover about an inch above the floor. Don't let them touch down. Hold for a beat, then press back up into a full plank. Your back stays completely flat throughout — no sagging in the middle, no hips lifting into the air.

2. DEAD BUGS — 10 reps each side. Lie on your back with both arms pointing straight up at the ceiling and both knees bent up over your hips. Lower one arm back behind your head and the opposite leg out long and straight at the same time, stopping just before either touches the floor. Bring them back to the middle and repeat on the other diagonal.

The rule that decides this one: your lower back stays pressed flat against the floor. If it arches up and you could slide a hand underneath, you've reached further than your core can currently hold — shorten the range until you can keep it down. That shorter range is the honest version.

Twice a week.

Follow Fit Protocol — short, honest protocols for busy men.

26/08/2026

The back of your arm is the part that hangs. It's also the part that only does its full job in the last two inches of a push — and that's the bit almost everyone leaves out.

Here's the mechanics. Your triceps has one job: straightening the elbow. It's at its shortest, and working hardest, at the exact moment your arm is completely straight. Watch anyone doing push-ups or dips and you'll see them come up to nearly straight and then drop straight back down. The elbow never fully locks, the muscle never fully shortens, and the last and most important part of the rep simply doesn't happen.

The correction costs nothing and adds no extra reps.

1. LOCKOUT PUSH-UPS — 10 reps. Set your hands close in under your shoulders rather than out wide, and keep your elbows brushing your ribs as you lower — not flared out at right angles. Come all the way up until your arms are completely straight, then squeeze hard for two full seconds before you lower again. Count them out. Two seconds is longer than you think when your arms are shaking.

2. FLOOR DIPS — 12 reps. Sit on the floor with your knees bent and your feet flat. Put your hands flat on the floor just behind your hips with your fingers pointing forward toward your feet. Press your hips up off the floor until your arms lock out straight, squeeze for two seconds, then bend your elbows and lower until your hips almost touch the floor before pressing back up.

The cue that decides this one: your elbows point straight back behind you, never out to the sides. Flared elbows hand the work to your shoulders and chest.

Ten and twelve, twice a week. Same reps you were doing anyway — just with two seconds added where it counts.

Follow Fit Protocol — short, honest protocols for busy men.

25/08/2026

Those finger-like slats running diagonally across the side of your ribs have a name and a very specific job.

The name is the serratus anterior. The job is pushing things away from your body — boxers call it the punching muscle, because it's what drives your shoulder forward at the end of a punch. It's also what holds your shoulder blade flat against your ribcage. When it's weak, the blade lifts away from the back like a small wing, and the shoulder joint loses the stable base it's meant to be working from.

Here's what almost nobody realises about it: it only switches on when your arm travels AWAY from your torso. Overhead, or straight out in front. Everything you do with your arms down by your sides leaves it doing nothing at all — which is the overwhelming majority of both a normal day and a normal home workout.

Two exercises. No equipment, no getting on the floor.

1. OVERHEAD REACH-UPS — 15 reps. Raise both arms straight overhead with your elbows locked and your hands apart. Now push your hands higher toward the ceiling and let your shoulders lift up toward your ears. You should feel your whole ribcage stretch long on both sides. Hold for a beat, let your shoulders settle back down, and repeat. Keep your elbows locked and don't lean backwards to cheat extra height.

2. FORWARD REACHES — 15 reps. Hold both arms straight out in front of you at shoulder height, hands about shoulder-width apart. Push your hands as far away from your body as you can, letting your shoulder blades slide apart around your ribcage and your upper back round very slightly. Then pull them back in. Elbows stay locked, feet stay still.

Both movements are small, and that's correct — the shoulder blade doesn't travel far. Small range, and you'll still know about it by rep twelve.

Fifteen of each, every other day.

Follow Fit Protocol — short, honest protocols for busy men.

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