Welcome to the first episode of a new weekly feature that gives paying subscribers focused strength, power and flexibility workouts in ~7-minute doses that will often piggyback on top of free #WorkoutWednesday videos—only more intensely and with weighted movements and progressions that allow you to follow along, regardless of where you’re at physically.

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Why I’m starting this 1899 series with foam rolling

Subsequent Move Like It’s 1899 videos will go heavier, with weights and workout-level progressions in multiple planes of motion, and progressions that push past what Workout Wednesday can do. But I started this series with foam rolling for specific reasons, some of them personal, that I think apply to everyone.

Forty-eight years of lifting and seven orthopedic surgeries have taught me that the workout you can’t do with proper form, flexibility and proper warm-up is often the one that hurts you, either immediately or—worse—slowly over time. A lower-back seizure has put me on the floor for hours and days, and after 50 an injury that once cost a week now costs a month. The psychological costs of starting over get harder with age.

So this is the groundwork, literally: what I do on the floor before and after training so the harder episodes are ones I can keep doing. Learn these first. Everything that follows assumes you have and, more importantly, you’ll be glad you did.

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The progressions, and what they’re doing

Three sequences from the video, in the order I do them, with notes on what each one is working. None of this is rolling in the usual sense. The roller is a fulcrum. Gravity does the work that opens your hips, your back, your shoulders and other joints.

Let’s get started.

1. Thoracic spine opener (before a workout)

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