I’ve found that the choice of what workout to perform can be difficult. There’s so many different workouts out there, each of them claiming to have benefits over every other one. It’s like eating in that fashion; everyone has their opinion of what you should be eating and what you should be avoiding like the plague.

I’ve been researching various workouts to find one that matches my needs. I did a round of a modified P90X routine consisting of the resistance-based P90X routines with my running routine replacing the aerobic portions. I had good success but it was time for a change. The drawbacks of P90X for me personally were:

• The workouts are relatively long. For someone trying to fit a workout in at lunch this is a drawback. The typical day is roughly an hour and 15 minutes including abs.
• Some of the movements are either awkward or of dubious benefit. To me it seems they were stretching a bit to fill in the workouts.
• More personally, my “workout space” at home is a shared space that usually requires clearing out to work out. That’s a pain.

My goals whittled down the competition. It’s obviously quite important to pick a workout that suits your goals. My goals are finding a workout that compliments my running training, that works towards overall body fitness and “leaning up” rather than building mass. The workout should be reasonably brief but at a fairly high intensity. Ideally it should also not require a bunch of specialized equipment and be something I could do at my gym.

Enter the Spartacus Workout

There are lots of what I’ll term “fad workouts” out there. There’s the 300 workout, the Spartacus Workout, and a myriad of others. I don’t mean that as disparagingly as it sounds. The simple fact is all of these health magazines have to earn their money and capitalize on crazes. Hence, tons to choose from. I took a look at a lot of them and the Spartacus Workout resonated most clearly. At its core its simply a circuit training regimen. 3 sets of 10 exercises performed in sequence with continuous reps for 1 minute with 15 seconds of recovery in between exercises, with 2 minutes of recovery between sets. Sounds like a mouthful but read it a couple of times if it’s not clear. Total workout time is around 42 minutes which is right in my wheel house.

The exercises selected are as follows (and illustrated here):

The Original Spartacus Workout

1. Goblet squats
2. Mountain climbers
3. Single-arm dumbbell swings
4. T-pushups
5. Split jumps
6. Dumbbell rows
7. Dumbbell side lunge and touch
8. Pushup-position row
9. Dumbbell lunge and rotation
10. Dumbbell press

That’s a fairly adventurous full-body workout depending on the weight selected and the reps performed. However, to my eye it seems heavy on legs and lower back and a bit light for chest, back, and especially biceps. Here’s my modified version that attempts to add a bit more balance and address these perceived shortcomings.

The Spartacus Workout Evolved

1. Goblet squats
2. Mountain climbers
3. Single-arm dumbbell swings
4. T-pushups
5. Standard grip pullups / Wide grip pullups / Narrow grip chinups
6. Standard pushups / Diamond pushups / Wide pushups / Incline pushups
7. Dumbbell side lunge and touch / Split jumps
8. Pushup-position row
9. Dumbbell lunge and rotation
10. Dumbbell press

The changes hit at station 5. We’re swapping out split jumps for one of my personal favorite back exercises, pullups. You can choose any of the three types listed per set, so mix it up. I’d recommend doing your least favorite in the first set when you’re at your strongest. With this one change we’ve done a world of good with back and biceps. Be sure to work in a set of chinups — palms facing you — in order to activate those biceps.

Station 6 switches from the relatively anemic dumbbell rows to pushups. There’s no reason you can’t mix dumbbell rows in on occasion as they do activate a different part of the back, but we’re already getting rows in station 8. Pushups are just a good exercise. They hit core, they hit triceps, they hit chest. Now we’ve addressed the shortcomings of the workout as I saw them.

Station 7 I’ve given you a choice between the side lunges and the split jumps. Split jumps are awesome so I didn’t want to get rid of them completely, but something had to give and the original routine was slightly leg-heavy.

So that’s it! Do this routine 3 times a week. I’ll be doing this routine 3 times a week interspersed with my running days on 3 other days with one day of rest.

I’ve done this one a few times and it’s a really good, efficient, full-body workout that should work to lean and strengthen and get that heartrate up for a while. If you have similar goals as me give it a shot and let me know what you think.

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