Tom Ford’s Body-Weight Session
Designed by Bearmore
Inspired by Tom FordSometimes getting to the gym is the obstacle.
Hit your sessions before your other commitments kick in. This Burst uses sessions of cardio, strength work and stretching. No gym needed. Close it out with the long relaxing hot bath Ford swears by.
The runsheet
Treadmill cardio or your own choice
Cardio trainingThe cardio half of Ford's home workout: thirty to forty-five minutes on a treadmill, most days of the week. Any steady aerobic effort works, so swap in a run, row or ride if you have no treadmill.
35 min activityBearmore’s thoughts on doing cardio training before stretching
This is an excellent pairing because warm muscles lengthen easily, so stretching now improves range and may help lessen tomorrow's stiffness.
Stretch while you're still warm
StretchingFord folds stretching into the same session as his floor work. Done now, while you're warm from the cardio, your muscles lengthen more easily, ten minutes is plenty.
10 min activityBearmore’s thoughts on doing stretching before resistance training
This works well because flexibility and body awareness can help you move with better form and range of motion in strength training.
Body-weight sets
Resistance trainingFord builds strength with body weight only, push-ups, sit-ups and crunches, and deliberately avoids weights because he says he bulks up too fast. No kit needed, just your floor and a set of exercises.
25 min activityBearmore’s thoughts on doing resistance training before hot bathing
These go especially well together because warm water draws blood into worked muscles and shifts you into recovery mode after heavy lifting.
A recovery soak
Hot bathingFord's signature recovery: after a workout he sinks into a long hot bath with a coffee and loses half an hour to it, calling the bath meditative. Run the water hot, drop the lights, and give your muscles a rest.
20 min activityTime well spent.
2h 32m spent doing something good for yourself.
The breakdown
Burst evaluation
Wellbeing focus
About this Burst
Tom Ford is an American fashion designer and film director, born in Texas in 1961. He trained at Parsons, joined Gucci in 1990 and became creative director in 1994, steering the house back from near collapse before launching his own label, Tom Ford, in 2005. He also wrote and directed two acclaimed films, A Single Man (2009) and Nocturnal Animals (2016), and chaired the Council of Fashion Designers of America from 2019 to 2022.