Non-technical Complimentary Push/Pull

[Patrick McIntosh]

My favorite PT topic is something along the lines of "if you could only do one (or two) exercises, what would they be?" This is partly because I'm a minimalist and also because I'm on call 24/7 - one minute I'm brushing my teeth, the next I might be packing my gear for a 6 week hitch on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. Any sort of structure beyond A/B isn't really plausible (and depending on the vessel's workout equipment and seas, I'm generally very limited to certain lifts, especially those that call for over-head lifts).

I've searched this forum several times recently to find the old thread to no avail.

You are not an accomplished Olympic lifter (you cannot clean/jerk or snatch because you lack adequate training) though you strive for the functionality/practicality of the skill. You have at most 2 days a month to train in a hypothetically proper gym on land. What lifts do you perform?

The question is not skill/sport specific.

[Patrick McIntosh]

Because my job is physically intensive and requires a lot of pulling, my choice for a singular non-technical lift would be thrusters. But to compliment that unskilled motion I would also throw in DL high pulls.

[Matt Foreman]

There's an old saying that sounds something like this, "If you're stuck on a desert island and there's only one lift you can do, which one would it be?" The answer is always the same...back squats. If I was as limited in my training as you are, I would squat every time I got a chance to lift.

[Blair Lowe]

If you have a barbell, this becomes a moot question since you can squat, deadlift, do barbell rows and presses and jerks besides snatches and cleans.

If you have a DB or KB you can pretty much do all of those.

If you don't have any equipment, then it pretty much gets down to pullups and burpees since you'll most likely be able to hang off something or do rows

[John Alston]

Thrusters are a crap exercise.