Monday: Chest – 5 sets x 3 exercise / Back – 5 sets x 2 exercises (Rest Pauses, forced reps, bottom/top half work and negatives are good here – 45 minute workout not including warm up)
Tuesday: Legs – 10 sets 3 exercise (Rest Pauses, forced reps, bottom/top half work and negatives are good here – 45 minute workout not including warm up)
Wednesday: Swim – 500 meters/Yoga/Stretch/Cardio
Thursday: Chest – 5 sets x 3 exercise / Back – 5 sets x 2 exercises (Burnout, drop sets, & static holds are good here – 45 minute workout not including warm up)
Friday: Legs – 10 sets x 3 exercise (Super/Giant Sets, Drop Sets, Burnout, Widowmakers, and static holds. are good here – 45 minute workout not including warm up)
1. First thing in the morning on an empty stomach:
Interval training 2 days a week 20 minutes max 30 sec and 1-minute bursts.
Incline walk, elliptical, stair master, bike, swim 45 – 60 minutes 65 to 80 of max heart rate.
2. Immediately after weight resistance on an empty stomach:
Incline walk, elliptical, stair master, bike, swim 15 to 30 minutes 65 to 80 of max heart rate.
3. 2+ hours after dinner on an empty stomach:
Walk, elliptical, bike, 30 to 60 minutes 55 to 70 of max heart rate. (Do not eat anything afterwards. Aminoes are recommended such BCAA and L-Glutimine)
Sounds too good to be true, right? A recent study showed that the amount of exercise is what matters not the frequency. The study involved over 2,000 participants who were asked to wear accelerometers to track their physical activity. The findings indicated participants who exercised for a total of 150 minutes over a day or two versus participants who spread their 150 minutes out over a week’s time received the same health benefits of the workouts.
This is good food for thought. New “evidence” is constantly surfacing about the latest in health and nutrition. Its hard to know whats accurate. Six out of seven days of the week, you’ll find me up at 5:30 am getting ready for my workouts which last 45-60 minutes. How is it even possible to cram that much exercise into a day or two? And even if it was possible, it doesn’t seem realistic it would produce the same health benefits. Surely, I would collapse from exhaustion before I was even halfway through; that doesn’t sound very healthy. I may not ever find out the answer to that, but I have a couple guesses. When reading studies like these, you’ve got to take into consideration what isn’t being said as much as what is being said. For instance, the author defines “health benefits” as a decrease in risk factors such as diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. A health benefit to me is those things plus a leaner body with less fat and more muscle. However, the study doesn’t mention taking it to that level. In that case, a participant who didn’t exercise at all and then started exercising 150 a minutes a week within the time frame of a couple of days, of course, would receive those health benefits.
Common sense is our friend. I love staying up to date on current health and nutrition news, but I take it all with a grain of pink himalayan salt. I have to consider the source, the context, and most importantly, what works for me. Working out six days a week works for me. I’m a nicer person when I work out, I feel more prepared for chasing around two small children, and I like having that time at the beginning of the day all to myself while the rest of the world sleeps peacefully. All in all, I don’t think I’ll be testing out this theory anytime soon. What about you?
Learning a new exercise doesn’t begin with how heavy of a weight I can use or with how fast I can get it done; it begins with practicing the proper form. That’s one thing I love about personal training-I’ve been doing certain exercises a certain way for years thinking I’m killing it and then I learn the proper form and I’m like, “Ohhhh, so that’s what its supposed to feel like”.
Today I practiced my uni low cable rows (that’s a one arm, one leg row using a low pulley). This video of me is great not only because I lose my balance (that happens a lot when I work out), but also because I want you all to see how I struggle to keep my chest out and my shoulders down. The reason I do that is because my body wants to pull with my arms, but your lats should be doing the work in this exercise, not your arms.
I worked out for an hour at the gym this morning and it took me a good portion of that time to get this exercise right. So, when you get out to the gym today to show off your perfect uni low cable rows, concentrate on those lats and you’ll have a, “ohhhh, so that’s what its supposed to feel like” moment too! Enjoy, and to your health!
It isn’t everyday that you come across something that can change the way you approach your life, especially when it comes to the deep seated habits we typically have when it comes to our health and fitness activity. However there is something I came across recently that amazed me with the simplicity in which it delivers such a broad range of benefits. This something, was called SoloStrength.
By now, most of us have heard about the shift in interest from weight or plate loaded resistance training, to more traditional and natural forms of movement and body weight based exercise. There are the standard tests of strength and base exercises in push ups, pull ups and rowing type movements, but there has also been a great deal of innovation and advancement in the tools we can use to expand the exercises. SoloStrength, offers all the standard body weight exercises on this simple to use system, but by sheer simplicity, makes it very easy to adapt the support it offers, to all levels of users and greatly increase the range of variety of exercises that can be done. They have a lot of demonstration videos on their website store, to help you understand how you can use their system for not only the strength training exercises, but cardio functional training and circuits and a range of stretching programs to keep your body flexible and release stress.
The SoloStrength is quite amazing not just for the simplicity and speed which you can navigate through your exercises, but the design lends itself for use as an anchor support for other popular body weight based exercise systems including Suspension training (such as TRX) and also adjustable points for different exercises with variable resistance bands and other accessories. This is one very fun and versatile system to play with. Not only is it efficient for exercising with, it’s a beautiful design piece which looks good in any environment, and if you have kids, they will entertain themselves for hours a day on it playing as a gym bar set. Now that’s a killer idea for home exercise all wrapped up in one tidy little system. Let me know what you think!
I’d suggest this for anyone looking to start or expand their home gym setup, or personal trainers looking to make excellent use of their training spaces and limiting their equipment requirements (these units are commercial quality).
It’s great to see the expanding options we have for safe and simple training methods that keep us all much more open to consistent and convenient training in our homes, and further supporting our family members on their journey’s of fitness and health. I’m looking forward to working with my system and will share more with you in coming months. You can check out more info on this system here.
