There’s an easy-to-miss problem with using machines like rowers, SkiErgs and air bikes as an all-out fitness test: being bigger gives you a fairly sizeable advantage. More mass means more potential to throw some serious watts at the monitor.
Coach Wade Farmer thinks he has a solution. In a recent Instagram post, Farmer shared ‘Milo’s Triangle’ – his twist on ‘Mikko’s Triangle’, a notoriously nasty engine test. The test is designed to give smaller athletes a little more skin in the game.
Whether you’re shopping for a ‘fairer engine test’ or not, what Farmer has created is a simple, scalable and absolutely savage workout challenge.
What Is Mikko’s Triangle?
Milo’s Triangle is Farmer’s answer to ‘Mikko’s Triangle’, a conditioning test consisting of:
Minute 1: 20-calorie row*
Minute 2: 20-calorie SkiErg*
Minute 3: 20-calorie Echo Bike*
Minute 4: Rest
*or scaled calorie target of your choice
Repeat for 10 rounds/40 minutes, or until you can no longer hit the prescribed calories inside each minute.
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‘The problem with Mikko’s Triangle,’ Farmer writes, ‘is that heavier athletes typically excel on ergs but their power-to-weight ratio isn’t called into question.’
His solution? Remove one machine and throw your own bodyweight into the equation.
Farmer named the test after Milo of Croton, the ancient Greek wrestler who, according to legend, built his strength by carrying a growing calf every day until he could eventually shoulder a fully grown bull. ‘This is progressive overload,’ Farmer writes.
The Milo’s Triangle Workout
Farmer’s version looks like this:
Minute 1: 20-calorie bike
Minute 2: 20 burpees
Minute 3: 20-calorie row
Minute 4: Rest
Continue cycling through those four minutes until you fail to complete the prescribed work inside the minute.
It’s a smart tweak. The machines still reward athletes who can produce big wattage, but the burpees immediately ask you to move your own bodyweight through space, favouring lighter athletes.
Farmer says the introduction of the burpee station ‘puts an athlete’s power-to-weight ratio on display and levels the playing field’.
Of course, no test can perfectly neutralise every physiological advantage – limb length, movement economy, training history and machine proficiency are all still going to matter. But as a gut-check of your all-round conditioning – and how ‘functional’ your mass is – Milo’s Triangle is certainly comprehensive.
And horrible – we should mention that.
Scale the Challenge
You don’t necessarily need to dive straight into the full 20/20/20 version.
Farmer suggests first testing your maximum burpees in one minute, cutting that number in half, then using the result as your target.
So, if you can smash out 30 burpees in 60 seconds, you’ll begin with 15 each round.
For the machines, Farmer gives three suggested starting points:
Rookie: 16-calorie bike / 16-calorie row
Intermediate: 18-calorie bike / 18-calorie row
Elite: 20-calorie bike / 20-calorie row
The important part here isn’t arbitrarily chasing a target just so you can call yourself ‘elite’. Pick numbers you can repeatedly hit with enough seconds left to transition and prepare for the next station.
Then see how long you can hold on...
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With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
