Four weeks of bodyweight work organized by movement pattern, with three declared levels and the criteria for knowing when to move up.
- The program covers six movement patterns (push, horizontal pull, hip hinge, squat, core bracing, locomotion) rather than muscle groups: in a few square feet, that’s the only criterion that guarantees full coverage.
- Every pattern has three levels, from the scaled version to the single-limb one.
- Four sessions a week, 25 minutes each — two for the upper body and core, two for the lower body.
- You move up a level when your execution meets three specific criteria, not when the calendar says it’s time.
Move the coffee table, unroll the mat and measure the space: if you can lie down with your arms overhead, you have everything you need for the next four weeks. Lists of bodyweight exercises run into the thousands. What’s almost always missing is the criterion for deciding what to change in week two, and how to tell you’re ready for the harder version.
Why Organize by Pattern Instead of Muscle Group
In a gym, splitting by muscle group works because the machines isolate: there’s one that asks the chest to do the work and another that asks the hamstrings, and you can program the week the way you stock a warehouse, one shelf at a time. In a living room that logic falls apart. Every bodyweight movement puts several joints in play at once, and the load is your own weight, distributed according to the leverage you choose.
The thing that matters at that point is the task itself. Lifting a box off the floor, pushing a piece of furniture against a wall, standing on one leg while the other feels for the step with the groceries in your hand: none of these has a name you’d find on a workout sheet, and the body performs them whole. Movement patterns are the map of those tasks, and six categories are enough to train everything a body does against gravity.
The advantage is coverage. If all six show up over the course of a week, no area is left out, even without knowing the name of the muscle doing the work at any given moment. Muscle-group splits transplanted into a home almost always produce the same result: three push-up variations, a couple of ab exercises and zero pulling. A month later your shoulders sit more rounded than when you started, and that’s the most common flaw of do-it-yourself home training.
The Six Patterns and Their Bodyweight Versions
For each one you’ll find three levels, in ascending order of difficulty. Everyone starts at level 1, including anyone who finds it easy: the first week is for building execution rather than proving anything.
Push. Driving a weight away from your chest. Level 1, push-ups with your hands on a stable raised surface (kitchen counter, windowsill, the back of a couch pushed against a wall): body in a line from head to heels, elbows flaring roughly 45 degrees from your torso, chest toward the edge and back up without locking out. The higher the surface, the less load your torso carries. Level 2, full push-ups on the floor, three-second controlled descent, chest a fist’s height off the ground. Level 3, archer push-ups: hands one and a half shoulder-widths apart, lower by shifting your weight onto one arm while the other extends out to the side, then press back up with the bent arm alone.
Horizontal pull. Drawing something toward your chest, horizontally. Level 1, standing towel row: loop a towel around both handles of a closed door, grip the ends, walk your feet toward the base of the door and lean back with your body rigid, then pull yourself toward your hands, drawing your shoulder blades together. The farther your feet are from the door, the easier it gets. Level 2, inverted row under a solid table: lying face up, hands on the edge, knees bent and feet on the floor, pull your chest toward the edge. Level 3, the same movement with your legs straight and heels on the floor, plus a two-second pause with your chest at the edge.
Hip hinge. Folding forward at the hip with your back rigid. Level 1, glute bridge: lie on your back, knees bent, drive your heels into the floor and lift your hips until knees, hips and shoulders line up, without arching your lower back at the top. Level 2, standing hinge with soft knees: hands crossed over your chest, send your hips back and let your torso descend halfway to the floor, with your spine holding a single line from start to finish. Level 3, the same thing on one leg, with the free leg extending behind you as a counterweight.
Squat. Lowering and rising by bending hips and knees together. Level 1, chair squat: sit down until you graze the seat, then stand straight back up without dropping into it. Level 2, the full bodyweight squat, heels on the floor, three-second descent until your thighs reach parallel or just below. Level 3, Bulgarian split squat: rear foot resting on a chair behind you, drop straight down with your front knee over your foot and your torso tilted slightly forward.
Core bracing. Holding your torso still while the load tries to bend it. Level 1, forearm plank with knees on the floor: elbows under shoulders, pelvis slightly tucked, lower back flat. Level 2, full plank on your toes, 20 to 40 seconds, with the sense of pushing the floor away from your elbows. Level 3, plank with alternating foot lifts of an inch or two: if your hips rotate, the level is still too high.
Locomotion. Moving while keeping control of a body in motion. Level 1, alternating lunges in place: step forward, rear knee grazing the floor, return by pushing off your front heel. Level 2, bear crawl: four points of contact, knees a hand’s width off the floor, moving forward with opposite hand and foot together, hips staying low and steady. Level 3, the same crawl backward and sideways, which asks for coordination without adding load.
How to Find a Pull When There’s No Bar
It’s the pattern everyone skips, because it looks like the only one that needs equipment. Your home is full of options: you need a horizontal anchor that will hold your weight, and a little caution in testing it.
The kitchen table is the best solution if it has four solid legs rather than a central pedestal, which can tip. Test it like this: sit underneath, grip the edge and load it progressively, keeping your feet on the floor, before you lift your hips. If the top creaks or tilts, find something else. A towel around the handles of a closed door is the safer alternative, because the load goes into the frame instead of the door itself, and it lets you adjust the difficulty just by moving your feet. A solid handrail or a balcony railing works the same way. Anyone who does have a bar, or can mount one, has a different and more ambitious road ahead: getting to your first pull-up in four weeks with holds and negatives.
The Program, Week by Week
Four sessions a week, 25 minutes each. Sessions A and C work push, horizontal pull and core bracing; sessions B and D work squat, hip hinge and locomotion. Each pattern comes back twice a week, with at least a day in between. Typical spread: Monday and Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
Within a session, take the patterns one at a time, finishing all the sets of one before moving to the next, with the rest listed between sets. The rest is part of the work: the point is to concentrate the effort in the quality of every single set rather than accumulate fatigue across them.
| Week | Pattern level | Sets per pattern | Reps or hold | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | All at level 1 | 2 | 8-10 reps, 20 seconds on holds | 90 seconds |
| 2 | Level 1, descent slowed to 3 seconds | 3 | 8-10 reps, 30 seconds on holds | 75 seconds |
| 3 | Level 2 on the patterns that meet the three criteria | 3 | 6-8 reps, 30-40 seconds on holds | 75 seconds |
| 4 | Level 2 everywhere, level 3 on one or two patterns | 3 | 5-8 reps per side, 40 seconds on holds | 60-90 seconds |
The first two weeks build control. Week 1 is for finding the positions, measuring your space and discovering which patterns feel foreign. Week 2 looks like a photocopy of the first with one extra set, and it’s the week that produces the most useful work of the month: slowing the descent to three seconds extends the time the muscle spends under tension and makes visible the breakdowns that slipped past at normal speed. If a level 1 feels too easy in week 1, slow it down before you change it.
From week three the single-limb work comes in, and you feel the jump in your hips before your legs: the floor seems to move under you and your pelvis wobbles hunting for balance. That wobble is the part that trains you, rather than a fault to correct in a hurry. It’s also when you find out that one side holds and the other doesn’t, with differences that two-legged work kept hidden: start from the weak side every time and stop the strong side at the same number of reps, which is the principle behind reducing asymmetries by training one side at a time. In week 4, bring in level 3 on one or two patterns at most, choosing the ones that felt most solid, and never on all of them at once.
The Three Criteria for Knowing When to Move Up
The first criterion is resemblance: the last rep of the set looks like the first, same range and same path. If the last two degrade visibly, the level you’re on is still the right one. The second is control of the descent: you can take three seconds to lower without a sudden acceleration in the final stretch, which is the sign of a muscle that has stopped braking. The third concerns the parts that are supposed to stay still: hips, lower back and shoulder blades hold their position for the whole set, with no rotation and no compensatory arching.
Moving up depends on the quality of your last rep rather than the number of reps you can add. The three criteria have to be met together and across two consecutive sessions, rather than on one particularly good day. If even one is missing, you stay where you are for another week: an extra week at the same level costs far less than a month spent performing the hard variation badly.
What to Do the Following Month
The most effective choice is also the least eye-catching: restart the four-week cycle from the levels you reached, rather than from scratch. If you closed the month with push at level 2 and squat at level 3, you start again exactly there, using week 1 as a reduced-volume run-in. That’s the convenience of progressing by pattern: the map stays the same, only the notch moves.
The two valid alternatives are raising the density, cutting fifteen seconds off the rest without touching the levels, or bringing in external load. A backpack loaded with books and cinched tight at the waist is the cheapest way to do it, and it holds up well on squat, hinge and core bracing. If at that point you decide to buy something, a pair of adjustable dumbbells and one kettlebell cover everything else for years: from there the logic is the one behind the monthly dumbbell and kettlebell program, same patterns, external load in place of leverage.
What you don’t need is new exercises. Six patterns cover a whole body, and one movement performed well in month three is worth more than twelve movements tried once.