Every Exercise You've Ever Seen Is Basically Just Six Things

I have a friend in jiu-jitsu named Derrek who is just the kind of person you look at and you're like, "What the f — how does this person look like this at 45?" He's like an action figure.

One time after sparring I asked him what he does to stay in such great shape and he said to me, "Honestly, some of it is just a weird fixation that I don't recommend, but the way I think of exercise is very simple and allows me to do it more easily."

He said: "I just make sure to do pushes, pulls, squats, and hip hinges. That's kind of it."

I'm currently in the middle of my Personal Trainer Certification, so I'll keep you posted on updating this, but it turns out almost all human movement comes down to six categories. That's it. Every workout routine, every class, every gym session — it's all some combination of six things.

Pushes — pressing something away from you. Push-ups, bench press, shoulder press. In your actual life this is pushing a door open, shoving a suitcase into an overhead bin, moving furniture.

Pulls — bringing something toward you. Rows, curls, pull-ups. In your life this is grabbing groceries, pulling a door open, picking up your kid.

Squats — getting up and down. Any time you sit in a chair and stand back up, that's a squat. Getting in and out of a car. On and off the toilet. You do this dozens of times a day. (Lunges are also included in this category but could be their own thing if we want to get anal.)

Hip hinges — bending forward at the hips. Deadlifts, kettlebell swings. This is bending over to pick stuff up, tying your shoes, loading the dishwasher. It's also the movement that most people hurt their back doing.

Core stability — your midsection keeping everything else from falling apart. This is running in the background of basically every movement you make.

Cardio — getting your heart rate up so you can tolerate physical exertion. Walking, biking, swimming, playing a sport. The point is just having enough gas in the tank that normal life doesn't wipe you out.

That's the whole thing.

I find that exercise feels kind of overwhelming or discombobulating for a lot of people, and I think it's partly because of how it gets organized. You walk into a gym and everything's sorted by body parts — upper body, lower body, arms, back, legs, abs. Or you follow a video where someone's telling you to do a "Bulgarian split squat superset with lateral raises" and you're either pretending you know what that means or just mimicking them with no idea why.

There are goblet squats, suitcase squats, back squats, front squats, blah blah blah. Of course each of these has some kind of different benefit for different things and works slightly different areas of muscle, etc. — but the question for most of us is really, can you squat down and get up?

Additionally, body parts aren't actually how you move through the world. Nobody wakes up and thinks, "Time to use my upper body." You wake up and pick up your kid and bend over to tie your shoes and push open a door and reach up to grab something from a shelf. Those are the movements. And they all fall into those six categories.

Once you see it this way it kind of clicks. A push-up is a push plus core. A pull-up is a pull plus core. A deadlift is a hip hinge. A burpee is basically all of them at once. Every exercise you see is just a variation of something you already understand.

And the practical piece is simple: across your week, are you doing all six somewhat regularly? If you are, even in a pretty basic way, you're covering the bases. If you notice you're skipping one — maybe you run a lot but never do any pulling — now you know exactly what to add.

There are of course nuances beyond these six that are worth getting into, but having this map makes the whole thing way less confusing when you're just trying to set a foundation or get started in a way that sticks.