When it comes to exercise, you’ll often hear trainers, well-wishers and those nice government information films tell you that doing anything is better than doing nothing. In the strictest sense of semantics that’s true: going on an elliptical for ten, five or two minutes will burn more calories than watching How I Met Your Mother for the same length of time. Going for a brisk walk is slightly better than not going for a brisk walk, and curling with pink dumbbells will make you fractionally stronger than lying completely motionless on the sofa.

The trouble, obviously, is that these minimal changes aren’t enough. Curling with tiny dumbbells gives you less of a workout than carrying your shopping or a baby around, jogging is much worse than most people think for fat loss, and brisk walks are only good if you don’t use them as an excuse to eat more Custard Creams. The result? The person who’s doing them doesn’t lose fat, or tone up, or whatever else they’re trying to do, so after two or three weeks they go back to sitting on the sofa, except that now they’re convinced that exercise somehow ‘doesn’t work’ on them, and so they’re actually worse off than before. And all the time, the problem is actually that they’re doing something that isn’t real training. Training is distinct from exercise, in that it has a point.

Famed quantum physicist and hobbyist safecracker Richard P. Feynman told this anecdote at Caltech in 1974:

‘In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas–he’s the controller–and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land.’

Of course we’re all cleverer than the Cargo Cults – except that plenty who ‘exercise’ are doing, or encouraging, exactly the same thing. Three sets of ten curls with a 2kg dumbbell, or doing triceps kickbacks with a tin of tomato soup during ad breaks, or running so slowly that you can talk about last night’s X-Factor, or just repeating the same chest workout with the same sets, reps and rests you’ve been doing forever, isn’t going to show any more results than making a traffic controller’s tower out of bamboo. To the casual observer, it looks right. It seems like exercise. But it isn’t. Not really.

There are lots of ways to escape the trap of Cargo Cult Fitness, but here’s just one: progression. Have three or four indicator exercises that you’re aiming to improve on: good examples might be the back squat, your max chinups, or your 5k time. Whatever else you do in your programme, aim to improve them. If they get better, you’re getting fitter, and the body composition results you’re looking for are likely to come. If they stay the same, then look at what you’re doing, and make sure you’re not the one wearing the coconut headphones.

HOMEWORK: Pick one exercise that you’d like to improve at – preferably a nice full-body one like pressups, squats or lunges. Find a reputable programme for getting better at them – there are loads. Improve.

‘I am so full of endorphins right now.’

There are many reasons to give your workout a name: some good, some terrible. Crossfitters, for example, give their signature workouts girls’ names so that they can make endless stupid jokes about ‘meeting’, ‘doing’ or ‘hating’ Fran, Linda, Elizabeth, Grace and so on. Gym Jones seem to relish giving their workouts names that complement the mental anguish that’s a hallmark of their training style – Tailpipe, for instance, is so called because it’s supposed to mimic the sensation of sucking on a car exhaust. Rob Shaul of Mountain Athlete seems to name workouts after whatever he’s thought of that morning (Fool Me Once? What?), and Go Primal Fitness simply pick a phrase out of their Big Thesaurus Of Things That Are Supposed To Sound Cool (Kill Or Be Killed, Smash). C- for effort.

Personally, I’m a fan of having a selection of ‘named’ workouts in the bag for two reasons:

a) It motivates me by giving me a benchmark to beat, whether that’s improved time, reps, weight or whatever. To be fair, this is the actual point of Fran and Elizabeth too, but the names still do nothing for me, because…

b) It helps me mentally gear up to train when I otherwise can’t be bothered.

For that reason, I like my workout names to act as sort of mental triggers that immediately inspire a sense of heroic badassery in me, without any additional face-slapping, chalk-eating or other nonsensical pump-up rituals. That’s why my workouts tend to be named after memorable quotes from manly films. Consider:

I can’t feel my legs, Keyser
24 lunges, 24 squats, 12 jumping lunges, 12 jump squats. If that doesn’t ruin you, rest for a minute and do another two rounds. I’ve actually stolen this one from JC Santana, but he calls it Super Legs, and it doesn’t make my legs feel very super. Renamed because it’s guaranteed to leave you slumped on the floor in the style of Keaton from The Usual Suspects when he finally encounters faceless monster Keyser Soze.

See you at the party, Richter
Pick up a couple of dumb-bells that, ideally, total roughly your bodyweight (so I’m 40kg in each hand), then walk with them for a respectable distance (I like 800m) and time it. So called because it feels like it might pull your arms off.

There is no tomorrow
A bunch of 400m sprints – I’d suggest four or five – with 90 seconds of rest in between them. Go for a total time. Named, as if you don’t know, after the most motivational quote of all time, delivered by Carl Weathers in Rocky III. Better if you can wear a vest and gallop through the California surf, but around the block is fine.

There you go: just typing those out makes me want to go and do pull-ups, but I doubt it’s the same for you. So pick your own, and go train.

HOMEWORK: Choose a quote from your favourite badass film, assign it a workout, post it in the comments, and then go do it. Record your score so you can come back to it. And no girls’ names.

How Easy They Are To Do In Everyday Life x How Good They Are = Worthiness Of Inclusion

So have at it. And if you already know all this, bear with me: there’s a new post about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mozart coming up later in the week.

Stair Running
Sometimes, when I’m sprinting up the escalator in Angel Islington tube station – the longest in the Western hemisphere, fact fans – I wonder how many of the people standing motionless on the right complain that they don’t have time to go to the gym. Unless you’ve done heavy squats this week, there’s no excuse not to walk/leap up every flight of stairs you need to ascend, especially if there’s a lift nearby. It burns fat, strengthens your legs, works your cardio, won’t make you too sore and gets you where you’re going anyway. Start doing it today.

Bodyweight Almost Anything
If you haven’t got a gym membership, that doesn’t mean you need to do biceps curls with tins of soup or anything equally ridiculous. If all you ever did was circuits of pressups, squats, lunges and planks then you’d be in better shape than, ooh, let’s say 50 percent of everyone.* Throw in a pullup bar – the Powerbar can be put up or down in seconds and will work on almost any doorframe with minimal damage – and you can work your pulling muscles as well. You don’t even need to leave your house. Just starting out? Do Chad Waterbury’s PLP programme – do one pressup, one lunge on each leg, and one pullup. Tomorrow, do two of everything. Carry on for two months until you’re doing 60 of everything, preferably with as few breaks as possible. Congratulations: you’re now stronger than most people who go to the gym.

Loaded Carries
If I somehow ended up in an Orwellian dictatorship that would only let me do one exercise, I’d do these. Carrying something heavy works basically every muscle in your body, definitely including your abs. Farmer’s walks are good and can be done with shopping, but I also like Zercher walks and fireman’s carries, both of which can be practised with a crate of beer, child (preferably your own) or romantic partner. And remember, go heavy: a good goal in the farmer’s walk is your own bodyweight split between two dumbbells for sets of 30m.

Running Quite Fast
I don’t like jogging all that much. Although it requires minimal kit and can be done in most places, it’s not as good for fat loss as most people think, terrible for muscle, and is not much fun if you live in an area where arseholes think that hooting out of cars is an acceptable way to spend an evening. If you’re going to run, at least run fast – assuming you can cover a decent distance, do some intervals where you speed up, or just some sprints. People seem to have a weird aversion to resting during runs, but doing half a dozen 400m sprints with 90 seconds of rest between them did my cardio, body composition and speed more good than any amount of 8-mile plods, back when I cared about running. These days I stick to hill sprints, but only do them if you promise not to hate me afterwards.

Squats and Deadlifts
If you go to the gym and aren’t horribly injured from something else, these should absolutely be the core of your programme – they release growth hormone, strengthen dozens of muscles and will help you lift a fridge or get off the toilet when you’re 80. Everyone in your gym is probably doing them wrong, so get a reliable source to teach you. I’d recommend Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength, although some personal trainers will be able to give you the hands-on version. Protip: look for someone who can squats at least 1.5x their own bodyweight – until the crease their hip makes goes below the line of their knee – and deadlifts double their bodyweight. These are pretty easy standards for most professionals to hit, so anyone else hasn’t practised it enough. If you don’t go to the gym but have a dumbbell, do Dan John’s Goblet squat, which is excellent and will teach you the movement better than most trainers as a bonus.

Everything Else
If you’re already doing most of the above, feel free to start doing concentration curls, Klokov presses, or whatever else you like. Until then, stick to the basics.

HOMEWORK: Add one of the above to your weekly regime. And help someone with a pram.

*This stat is made up.

Please note, I’m not using the Hollywood-shorthand version of badass – shades, leather jacket, doesn’t say please to waitresses – I’m talking about being a badass in terms of having a double-bodyweight deadlift, being able to run a six-minute mile and sprint up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath. These are useful abilities to have, and these things will help you to be nicer.

Here’s an example. At the tube (Americans, that’s a subway) near my house, there is no escalator, just stairs. Because it’s a residential area, there are always people with prams, or pushchairs, or massive bags, many of whom are incapable of carrying their stuff themselves. Because Londoners are often in a rush and sometimes just dreadful people, you’ll often see huge crowds pushing past these people, without an offer of help in sight.

I always help these people. Not because I’m much nicer than the average Londoner (I definitely am), but because carrying a pram or a gigantic bag isn’t a hassle for me, and it makes me feel like Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. And that’s the key. When you’re in decent shape from lifting heavy stuff, things that are an imposition to other people are…nothing. Significant other’s tired? Do the big shop yourself, it’s not like you can’t carry six bags of veg on your own. Someone needs help moving house or trimming their hedges? Get it done and count it as a training session. Someone needs directions but you’re already late for something else? Give them the directions, then sprint wherever you need to go. Let’s hope you never have to get involved in a more unpleasant or threatening situation, but if you do, then being able to run 400m in under 1:20 and power-clean the average mugger (apparently they’re usually in the 70-75kg range) really won’t hurt.

Bottom line: being strong and quick makes things easier, and that makes it easier to be nicer. And since you’re already a nice person, you owe it to yourself to be a badass as well. Now go to the gym.

HOMEWORK: In one of your workouts this week, do a move that translates to real-life badassery. Loaded carries like the farmer’s walk and zercher carry are good examples – so are 400m sprints. Oh, and if you see someone in need of help, help them. But let’s be honest, you should be doing that every week.