Six patterns. Four tiers per pattern. Pick one of each, keep them the same, progress slowly. This is what your training actually looks like once you stop counting exercises & start training patterns.
These are only a handful of exercises per pattern. The truth is there are hundreds. I'm not trying to give you the full library here, I'm giving you a starting map so you can stop scrolling, stop guessing, & actually get going. Once you see the pattern, you'll start spotting it everywhere.
You squat every time you sit down and stand up. Off the couch, off the toilet, down to the floor with a child. Not a gym movement. A life movement. Trains your quads and glutes, the most metabolically active muscles in your body.
The pattern most women find tricky, because modern life has us bending through our lower backs instead of our hips. Hinge is how you lift heavy things from the floor without tweaking your back. Loads the glutes & hamstrings: powerful muscles that are usually just out of practice.
Pushing something away from your body. Off the floor, the pram, the heavy door. Two flavours: horizontal & vertical. Aim for at least one a week, both if you can. Trains chest, shoulders, triceps. More importantly, teaches your upper body how to actually hold you up.
Horizontal push · out in frontThe pattern most women never train enough. Pulling teaches your body to protect your spine, so your lower back doesn't have to grip and compensate all day. It's also the counterbalance to modern life: phones, desks, breastfeeding, babies. Pull muscles are what give you posture.
Horizontal pull · row variationsSingle-leg work. Stairs, stepping out of the car, child on the hip, catching yourself when you trip. Lunges train your legs to work independently instead of always sharing the load. They're also a bilateral movement, which means they train your brain & nervous system, not just your legs. That's why they can feel oddly regulating after.
The pattern that quietly supports all the others. Core isn't crunches. Its job is to resist movement so the rest of your body can move safely. Holding children, carrying groceries, bracing to lift, walking with weight in one hand. The most effective core work looks boring on Instagram & works brilliantly in real life.
Every exercise on this page has a demo video inside the BYO Workout Builder in your MBB app. Here's how to find them so you can see the movement before you load it.
Two extremes I see all the time:
Underloading. You could absolutely lift heavier, but you don't. It feels intimidating, you're scared of bulking, or you don't trust yourself yet.
Overloading. Chasing the number on the dumbbell. Sacrificing form to get the reps up so it looks impressive.
Both stall progress. Form first, always. Wire the movement, feel the muscle working, control it through the range. Then start adding load slowly, week by week.
Once you've landed on your exercises, here's how you make them harder over time. This is the whole game. Most women either change their workouts every week (chaos) or never progress them (plateau). Progressive overload is the middle way.
Pick a rep range. Your MBB program will give you one for every exercise (usually 8-12, 6-10, or 10-15). Then you nudge the dial forward, week by week.
That's it. Rinse & repeat. Add reps until you hit the top of the range, then add weight & reset to the bottom. Stuck between dumbbells? Slow the tempo down for more time under tension, or clean up your form. Those are progressions too.
And here's the thing nobody tells you: I sometimes keep my program the same for 6 months. Same exercises, same patterns. Just progressively overloaded week to week. Quiet, reliable, lifelong progress lives in repeating the basics & getting stronger at them.
If you're not tracking, you're guessing. Use the weight & rep fields in your MBB app every session. You're building a log of your progression that tells you exactly what to do next week. No memory required.
Squat, hinge, push, pull, lunge, core. Hit them all once. You're golden.
The biggest movements drive the most adaptation & the most metabolic benefit. Double up on these if you can.
If your week falls apart & you only hit three patterns, that's still going to create adaptation. Capacity precedes discipline.
Land on your workouts & keep them the same every week. Clarity beats chaos. Consistency beats intensity. When the signal is clear, your body understands the assignment & starts working with you.
That means it's too much too soon. I can take all the thinking off your plate & build the program for you. At home or at the gym. Workouts paired for ease, with smart programming layered in (drop sets, supersets, all the levers) so you accelerate results without burning out.
Book a call with Britt