I have tried to be reasonably concise here so as not to drown you in intimidating details and caveats, please let me know if anything is unclear and I can expand on it or try to say it another way. I included common names for some of the more unusual exercises, to aid you in Googling, but am happy to try to explain anything that is not obvious to you.
I hope this helps, but please let me know either way, as it will help me give better and more relevant advice in the future. Especially anything that doesn’t work for you.
I am near-certain I do not currently have the strength necessary to do anything you have listed. The working up to it must also meet the criteria, but do tell.
Basically the idea is to do exercises that are less intense versions, and to do negative reps. Try doing the hardest exercise you can do. If at some point in the day you can’t do it anymore then move one notch down. Once you can do 5 sets of 5 repetitions each in a day, try the next level up (no reason you shouldn’t be ambitious and try it earlier if you feel like it).
Less intense versions of the 1-armed pushups
Regular pushups
Regular pushups with 1 leg off the ground
Ab pushups, sometimes called Supermans (like a pushup, but instead of having your hands under your shoulders or chest, put them above your head, keeping your arms mostly straight). Then most of the work of is done by your abs rather than your arms. I found it much easier to work my way up to 1-armed pushups this way, and core strength is important for its own sake too.
Fingertip pushups (push with your fingertips rather than your palms)
If you work your way up to 1-arm pushups and want to challenge yourself a little more, you can always try 1-arm, 1-leg pushups.
You can increase the load on any given pushup by wearing a backpack with heavy stuff in it.
You can also vary the load of a pushup by doing it on an incline. (Hand(s) below feet is harder, hand(s) above feet is easier. Leaning with your hands against a wall is much easier.)
Another way to make it easier is to use your knees instead of your feet.
Another way to add challenge is to elevate your hands (e.g. pushup between two boxes or crates, or even just two books), with your hands on the boxes/crates/books. This would give you a larger range of motion and give your stabilizing muscles more work.
Less intense versions of the one-legged squat (sometimes called the pistol) include:
2-legged squat
Partial 1-legged squat, where you start with your leg only partially bent—walking up stairs is very close to this, as is stepping up onto something like a box or platform. If you can progressively raise the height of the thing you’re stepping onto, eventually you will be going through the whole range of motion.
You can also wear a backpack while doing a partial (or full) squat to increase the load.
Pull-Ups/Chin-Ups
The bean-can curls that pthalo suggested would be a good intermediate exercise for pull-ups. Since the point is to do only a few repetitions to maximize the ratio of muscle use to chance of sweating/overheating, you will want to use the heaviest weight you can lift five times. Once bean cans become too easy (maybe they already are), you can try heavy books, and eventually just putting heavy stuff into a bag and holding it by the handle.
Negative Reps
Negative reps are just doing the motion in reverse. So for the pushups, start with your arm extended, and lower your body slowly to the floor. For the squats, start standing on one leg, squat down slowly. For chin-ups, start in the “up” position (a standing stool would help for this) and slowly lower yourself. If you can’t do some of the intermediate exercises you can do negative reps of those as well.
Some notes on technique
For pushups, try not to arch your back backwards. You get the most out of each repetition if you put your hands next to your chest rather than your shoulders (with the obvious exception of the Supermans).
For pistols, try not to let the bending knee get far in front of your foot. To balance, extend your free leg forward or to the side, and tilt your torso a little forward. Do whatever you want with your hands. Keep your back straight.
For pull-ups, if you are using a proper bar, try varying between palms facing away from you (rock climbing style) and palms facing toward you. I find that when I am not able to do any more of one, I can often still do some of the other.
For curls, make sure your wrist doesn’t bend backwards, or you can get wrist pain like I did.
Note on Sweating
If the sets are as short as you describe and can be broken up into arbitrarily small pieces, I would expect to be able to work around this, though.
I can do sets of 5 at work, feel I’ve got some decent exercise in, and don’t sweat enough to notice. I dislike sweating and being sweaty too, but not as much as it sounds like you seem to do, so I can’t tell you whether it will be under your threshold. As I mentioned earlier, you could always try doing slow pushups in the bath if ordinary ones make you sweat noticeably. Or doing fewer reps in a set.
Other Stuff
If you do 5 sets of 5 repetitions per day (vary between the arm and leg stuff), you should be able to make a lot of progress. You can get away with doing quite a bit less, though my gut feeling is that you will only be making material progress if you do at least 3 sets of 3 repetitions each, a few days per week. Spacing them out is totally okay, you will still get stronger, it just won’t help your endurance as much (but it will still help a little!). In fact I would recommend spacing them out a lot at first, in order to minimize the probability of sweating. You don’t want to start out with bad associations!
By the way, if you are never able to work your way up to the 1-arm pushup and 1-legged squat, the intermediate exercises will still be materially better than nothing. And I specified bodyweight exercises because you mentioned you dislike gym-smell and weights are expensive, but if you find a gym that you can stand and has free weights, or have a friend with heavy weights they will let you borrow, that will accomplish most of the same things.
You recommend doing multiple sets per exercise on multiple days a week. This seems to contradict what Tim Ferriss and others have said, but maybe that doesn’t transfer to bodyweight exercises.
Right now, I’ve been doing exercise similar to what you describe (following Convict Conditioning), but only about 3 sets per exercise per week (as the book recommends for beginners). I feel I stagnated somewhat and don’t really transition to full push-up and pull-ups (legs and abs are doing fine). Do you think it would be beneficial to move to, say 3-5 sets on 3 days a week for those exercises? Or do I just have to wait it out, given that I’m fairly skinny and never had any serious strength?
I’m also trying to be more consistent about my protein intake. Constantly forget to eat enough. I aim at ~150g at 85kg/185cm, but often just get 50-100 because I accidentally skip meals.
The linked Tim Ferriss article mentions one-set-to-failure, and if you’re really truly maxing out you probably only need to do it a few times a week. But it’s harder to max out with bodyweight than with weights. I was also trying to suggest sets that would accommodate Alicorn’s desire not to sweat, which requirement would likely be violated by a true high intensity workout.
For workouts that don’t leave you feeling totally spent, which is generally the case with bodyweight exercises, you should take into account the total load in a day as well, and the brain-training effect of greasing the groove, for which there is substantial anecdotal evidence. It’s a non-trivial skill to be able to be able to use your true maximum strength, we’re designed to hold back in normal situations.
There is also a difference between training for muscle volume and training for strength. Obviously the two are strongly correlated, but they are not entirely the same thing. My understanding is that you want fewer, more intense reps at a time if you’re training for strength.
EDIT: Though to be honest, I only do 1-2 sets of high intensity kettlebells and 1 set of the 1-arm pushups in a week. But I’ve decided that it’s worth my time to maintain, but not to materially improve, my level of fitness at this point.
I have tried to be reasonably concise here so as not to drown you in intimidating details and caveats, please let me know if anything is unclear and I can expand on it or try to say it another way. I included common names for some of the more unusual exercises, to aid you in Googling, but am happy to try to explain anything that is not obvious to you.
I hope this helps, but please let me know either way, as it will help me give better and more relevant advice in the future. Especially anything that doesn’t work for you.
Basically the idea is to do exercises that are less intense versions, and to do negative reps. Try doing the hardest exercise you can do. If at some point in the day you can’t do it anymore then move one notch down. Once you can do 5 sets of 5 repetitions each in a day, try the next level up (no reason you shouldn’t be ambitious and try it earlier if you feel like it).
Less intense versions of the 1-armed pushups
Regular pushups
Regular pushups with 1 leg off the ground
Ab pushups, sometimes called Supermans (like a pushup, but instead of having your hands under your shoulders or chest, put them above your head, keeping your arms mostly straight). Then most of the work of is done by your abs rather than your arms. I found it much easier to work my way up to 1-armed pushups this way, and core strength is important for its own sake too.
Fingertip pushups (push with your fingertips rather than your palms)
If you work your way up to 1-arm pushups and want to challenge yourself a little more, you can always try 1-arm, 1-leg pushups.
You can increase the load on any given pushup by wearing a backpack with heavy stuff in it.
You can also vary the load of a pushup by doing it on an incline. (Hand(s) below feet is harder, hand(s) above feet is easier. Leaning with your hands against a wall is much easier.)
Another way to make it easier is to use your knees instead of your feet.
Another way to add challenge is to elevate your hands (e.g. pushup between two boxes or crates, or even just two books), with your hands on the boxes/crates/books. This would give you a larger range of motion and give your stabilizing muscles more work.
Less intense versions of the one-legged squat (sometimes called the pistol) include:
2-legged squat
Partial 1-legged squat, where you start with your leg only partially bent—walking up stairs is very close to this, as is stepping up onto something like a box or platform. If you can progressively raise the height of the thing you’re stepping onto, eventually you will be going through the whole range of motion.
You can also wear a backpack while doing a partial (or full) squat to increase the load.
Pull-Ups/Chin-Ups
The bean-can curls that pthalo suggested would be a good intermediate exercise for pull-ups. Since the point is to do only a few repetitions to maximize the ratio of muscle use to chance of sweating/overheating, you will want to use the heaviest weight you can lift five times. Once bean cans become too easy (maybe they already are), you can try heavy books, and eventually just putting heavy stuff into a bag and holding it by the handle.
Negative Reps
Negative reps are just doing the motion in reverse. So for the pushups, start with your arm extended, and lower your body slowly to the floor. For the squats, start standing on one leg, squat down slowly. For chin-ups, start in the “up” position (a standing stool would help for this) and slowly lower yourself. If you can’t do some of the intermediate exercises you can do negative reps of those as well.
Some notes on technique
For pushups, try not to arch your back backwards. You get the most out of each repetition if you put your hands next to your chest rather than your shoulders (with the obvious exception of the Supermans).
For pistols, try not to let the bending knee get far in front of your foot. To balance, extend your free leg forward or to the side, and tilt your torso a little forward. Do whatever you want with your hands. Keep your back straight.
For pull-ups, if you are using a proper bar, try varying between palms facing away from you (rock climbing style) and palms facing toward you. I find that when I am not able to do any more of one, I can often still do some of the other.
For curls, make sure your wrist doesn’t bend backwards, or you can get wrist pain like I did.
Note on Sweating
I can do sets of 5 at work, feel I’ve got some decent exercise in, and don’t sweat enough to notice. I dislike sweating and being sweaty too, but not as much as it sounds like you seem to do, so I can’t tell you whether it will be under your threshold. As I mentioned earlier, you could always try doing slow pushups in the bath if ordinary ones make you sweat noticeably. Or doing fewer reps in a set.
Other Stuff
If you do 5 sets of 5 repetitions per day (vary between the arm and leg stuff), you should be able to make a lot of progress. You can get away with doing quite a bit less, though my gut feeling is that you will only be making material progress if you do at least 3 sets of 3 repetitions each, a few days per week. Spacing them out is totally okay, you will still get stronger, it just won’t help your endurance as much (but it will still help a little!). In fact I would recommend spacing them out a lot at first, in order to minimize the probability of sweating. You don’t want to start out with bad associations!
By the way, if you are never able to work your way up to the 1-arm pushup and 1-legged squat, the intermediate exercises will still be materially better than nothing. And I specified bodyweight exercises because you mentioned you dislike gym-smell and weights are expensive, but if you find a gym that you can stand and has free weights, or have a friend with heavy weights they will let you borrow, that will accomplish most of the same things.
I wasn’t aware there were so many difficulty-altering parameters to mess with. That alone might stave off boredom for a few sets. Thanks!
I was worried that adding that much detail would be intimidating or confusing; I’m glad it was encouraging instead.
You recommend doing multiple sets per exercise on multiple days a week. This seems to contradict what Tim Ferriss and others have said, but maybe that doesn’t transfer to bodyweight exercises.
Right now, I’ve been doing exercise similar to what you describe (following Convict Conditioning), but only about 3 sets per exercise per week (as the book recommends for beginners). I feel I stagnated somewhat and don’t really transition to full push-up and pull-ups (legs and abs are doing fine). Do you think it would be beneficial to move to, say 3-5 sets on 3 days a week for those exercises? Or do I just have to wait it out, given that I’m fairly skinny and never had any serious strength?
I’m also trying to be more consistent about my protein intake. Constantly forget to eat enough. I aim at ~150g at 85kg/185cm, but often just get 50-100 because I accidentally skip meals.
The linked Tim Ferriss article mentions one-set-to-failure, and if you’re really truly maxing out you probably only need to do it a few times a week. But it’s harder to max out with bodyweight than with weights. I was also trying to suggest sets that would accommodate Alicorn’s desire not to sweat, which requirement would likely be violated by a true high intensity workout.
For workouts that don’t leave you feeling totally spent, which is generally the case with bodyweight exercises, you should take into account the total load in a day as well, and the brain-training effect of greasing the groove, for which there is substantial anecdotal evidence. It’s a non-trivial skill to be able to be able to use your true maximum strength, we’re designed to hold back in normal situations.
There is also a difference between training for muscle volume and training for strength. Obviously the two are strongly correlated, but they are not entirely the same thing. My understanding is that you want fewer, more intense reps at a time if you’re training for strength.
EDIT: Though to be honest, I only do 1-2 sets of high intensity kettlebells and 1 set of the 1-arm pushups in a week. But I’ve decided that it’s worth my time to maintain, but not to materially improve, my level of fitness at this point.