15 Minute High-Intensity Workout — No Excuses

I don’t care how busy you are. You have 15 minutes. You do. Don’t lie to yourself. So if you don’t have time for your own full workout, try this one. Only 15 minutes. Extremely simple. All you need is a timer. You could use your phone if it has one too. You can get some of your family to do it with you–it will make it more fun (and entertaining) this way. Most everyone can do it, unless you have a significant injury. Just try it! It gets you working, your heart rate up, hopefully sweating, and your core/legs strong. So here it is…

1 minute mountain climbers

1 minute russian twists

1 minute lunges

Meaning, you perform 1 minute of mountain climbers, 1 minute of russian twists, then 1 minute of lunges. And REPEAT FIVE TIMES. Take as little rest as possible. If you do so, you will have completed a very efficient, high-intensity, muscle-burning workout.

With the mountain climbers, I want you to go as quickly as possible. Keeping the pace up is one thing, but you also need to try to get those feet as close to the hands as possible to complete a good exercise.

With the russian twists, make sure you are doing complete rotations. This means that it’s not just your hands moving side to side, but also your shoulders. You’re doing a complete twist from either side. Once you’ve mastered that rotation, try to get a solid speed going.

With the lunges, if you have enough room you can do moving lunges. Otherwise, place your hands on your hips, lunge forward with the right, bring it back to center, then lunge forward with the left. This way, you stay in the same spot, but still get the full extension of the exercise.

Good luck, work hard, and sweat often!

Oct162012

Give Your Body [SPECIFIC] Love

Weird title, right? For me, love has a lot to do with health, especially when it comes to one’s body. And it’s very important to love your body. And a way I do that is giving it great workouts. Why do I say specific love? Let me tell you.

A lot of people who aren’t really into fitness or go to the gym as a chore, typically do total-body workouts. Meaning that they will try to work each part of their body (from back to chest to legs, etc.) in one workout. And if you do that workout properly and hard enough, each and every muscle group will be sore.

So I have a question. What are you going to workout the next day if all body parts are sore?

Which is why I say SPECIFIC! You don’t have to be a meat head, a fitness buff, or even in shape to split workouts up properly. You’ll be amazed at how much more effective each workout will be. Usually spend 45 minutes on a total body? Imagine 45 minutes spent just on your legs. Now there’s some defined calves.

And specific doesn’t necessarily mean one muscle group each workout, it could mean two or even more. Usually, we split our workouts into two muscle groups each. For example, yesterday we did back and biceps. Another day we would do chest and triceps. Another day? Shoulders and forearms. Legs we usually keep by itself because there are several large muscles to work (calves, quads, hamstrings, glutes, etc.) And so on and so forth. I think you’re getting it. If you want, you can even split it into upper body and lower body workout days. But that will only work if you’re only working out 3 or so days of the week.

By the next day, you’re going to be sore in whatever you worked out. And by the second day after, you should be even more sore. But soreness to me equals happiness, because I know that muscle group is getting stronger. I’ll keep using us as an example. So we worked our back and biceps last night (great workout by the way), which are going to be sore today and tomorrow. Thus, tonight we will most likely work out chest and triceps, core, or something else.

There are so many pros to this way of working out and a very slim amount of cons. The specific muscle groups will get stronger by isolating them, they will develop more quickly, gain endurance, and toning. You will not have all body parts feeling sore and tired thus preventing a good workout.

You have the ability to isolate your workouts. Do it! I hope you can now understand how much better it is. AND it also makes it easier to plan out your workouts, thus making it easier for you to actually workout. I find it’s always easier to follow a workout plan (even if I’m feeling meh that day), because it’s written down what I’m going to do. Trust me, just try it.

Tell us which muscle group is your favorite to workout!

Sep242012

Imitating a Table: How to do the Perfect Plank

I hate nothing more than bad form when people plank. Okay, that previous sentence is ridiculous, I hate many things more, for example, olives (maybe). People do this in all sorts of exercises, rush to try to get the “best pump” or the “longest duration” and completely compromise their form. I don’t know how many times I will tell you this, but this will not be the last.

(taken from this blog)

Form is more important than any other part of the exercise or workout.

You screw up form, you screw up your body. It’s very simple. Yet big meatheads or beginners too will push past that to either try to get heavier weight or have no clue what they’re doing. So this will not be a long post. I just want you to perform a plank (one of the best core exercises, reaching the entire core from the upper thighs to the upper abs and everywhere in between.

1. Don’t wear socks. Just don’t do it, there’s no reason, even if your feet are smelly. Take them off or plunk on some shoes.

2. Put your forearms down flat on the floor, in a comfortable position, lining up with your shoulders

3. Ease your legs back, ‘standing’ on your toes

4. Lower your torso and upper legs, so you’re not making a ‘bridge’ with your body, but a nice flat terrain, hmm, somewhat like a plank a pirate would force you off.

5. Hold for as long as possible. Beginners, 30 seconds. Then move to 1 minute, then 2 minutes, then 3, etc. etc. You get the point.

Other tips:

Don’t stick your butt up
Don’t lower your hips
Don’t lower or raise your head
Keep tight

There are variations, too, like side-plank, watch-dogs, and twists. But remember GOOD FORM IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE!

Sep192012

Core vs. Abs: the Smackdown

Many people are obsessed with doing abs. What they don’t know is that they should be obsessed with doing core instead. So what’s the difference?!

“Abs” refer to a part on your torso. The rectus abdominus and the obliques are what are targeted when people say “abs.” Sometimes, it doesn’t even include the obliques.

Ignore the body shape on the bottom, I know he’s scary.

So…then, what is core?

I’ll leave it to Chris to rant now.

So basically, we can look at this conceptually, as what we’ll refer to as our “abs” and then our “core.” For abs, I am referring strictly to the upper abs, lower abs, and we’ll say side abs, or–more fittingly–obliques. Then we have our core, which is much more important, and we’re going to include everything in our “mid-section” that acts as important stabilizers for strength and balance in either strength-training sessions or fully-interactive sporting sessions. So let’s break down the abs first.

Basically, as we already mentioned, we will look at and focus our workouts to our upper and lower abs and our obliques. Now, there are two major ways to workout abs when we focus a workout on them. First, is what I would think as the more common method, doing as many repetitions of as many abs exercises as we can find in magazines and online. Let’s do 3000 reps, 30 reps of 10 different exercises ten times over in an hour. I hear that one a lot, and I’ve done it a lot. 9000 reps on serious days. Will this work and will you feel it the next day? Sure, you probably will. But you could also feel some serious pain in your lower back or have a bruised tailbone if you don’t make sure that you are spot on with form and focus for thousands of reps, which is not an easy task. While you don’t need weight to train and break down those muscle fibers, it does help in its own ways. And while this is a great endurance workout that can really get your heart rate jumping, there is another way of working out those abs.

The alternative I speak of is strength training your abs. Abs are a muscle group, just like biceps, quads, lats, etc… so of course you can train them with a little extra resistance. I am not offering workouts here, just stating how I feel on this matter, but I would still keep rep ranges relatively high, over that 15-18 rep mark, going still towards 25-30 reps per set. So please, don’t take this as a suggestion to max out on an ab exercises. If I had to choose one exercise for each of our three ab groups, to do 25-30 reps while increasing my weight each set for three total sets, it would be: a kneeling cable crunch for upper abs, a weighted reverse crunch with our legs in a declined position for our lower abs, and an inverted weighted twist for our obliques.

Don’t yell at me if you do these wrong and they don’t work because I’m not putting my actual workout up for another few weeks when I’m a little more back in shape. (FYI, your obliques are a muscle group that tapers from the side of your body towards your hip area, and if you were to “bulk” these up through strength training there is a great chance that your waist size would increase, making you look thicker, just a side note) But I wouldn’t leave it as this, because I personally don’t ever do abs… EVER… I always do core, and this is why:

As a former athlete that works out not to feel good, or for appearance, but for performance, I know the importance of maintaining a strong core. I consider my core anywhere under my chest down through the upper leg. So to be in more detail, muscle groups that I hit when I do a core workout include: upper abs, lower abs, obliques, lower back, hip adductors, hip abductors, and even upper glutes. While I will isolate these muscle groups with free weights, and unfortunately on some machines (mainly for hips) , I always try to incorporate them on some heavier and more complex exercises.

For instance, when I do firemen carries with friends, it is a leg workout picking them up waking with their weight, and it is a shoulder workout holding them in place, but it is also a GREAT core workout trying to keep all those muscles in your abs and lower back tight to stabilize your body throughout the workout and prevent any injuries and accidents. Deadlifts, romanian deadlifts, and squats really require you keep that core tight and that form precise in order to target your muscles properly. Most hanging core exercises require that you do not swing so that your core finds that stable position, making you constantly work harder.

Stronger core means stronger everything else.

Someone could have a massive set of legs, but when they put that loaded bar on their back and try to squat 600 lbs, their lower back might want to snap causing them to lean to far forward and not only fail to complete a rep, but also potentially and likely hurt themselves. Watch the crossfit fails video on YouTube and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Crossfit will be a serious rant post, and total immersion swimming, but back on track.

And remember, my favorite way to work out core is integrate it into something FUN, like sports. Rock climbing, swimming, soccer, frisbee, football, baseball… really any sport at any competitive (meaning people are actually trying) level is an amazing core workout, and you don’t even have to count reps, because it’s so integrated in what you’re doing. One of the recommended doctors that contributes to Men’s Health in some issue over the past few years said his favorite lower back workout was pickup soccer (we’re in the US :/). Strengthen that core!!! Abs will come naturally if you do.

And finally, since this is all over the place, and I think I hit most the points I wanted to… if you’re trying to go from not having any visual abs in a pack to a certain goal like a six-pack you need to consider everything. In no particular order…

Build the muscles through strength training so that they are there and defined, wanting to be seen.
Cut the fat covering those nicely defined muscles through PROPER NUTRITION (SO IMPORTANT!) and fat burning exercises (CARDIO TO THE NEXT LEVEL) so that you can see those nicely defined muscles that you built through strength training.

a. Proper nutrition means stop eating garbage. I’m not asking you do some silly diet like cut carbs completely. Just eat healthy, and if you don’t know what that means, then ask.
b. Fat burning exercises doesn’t just mean putting on three sweaters and hitting the elliptical. Sweat all you want, a lot will just be water weight. Seriously, get a trainer or join a class where someone can observe you if you have any health concerns and go to a point where you want to throw up. But do not be reckless, always stay in control. It’s all about confidence.

Do what you need to do in order to strengthen that core and look and feel how you want.

Sep152012

Cardio X: Worth it or Ditch it?

So, a few days ago, I was feeling in the mood to get my heart pumping, but not necessarily go for a run or go to the gym (time constraints + weather + lack of gym membership AT THE CURRENT TIME). Hmmm…oh right! I bought the P90X set for $4 at a garage sale! Didn’t it have some cardio thing in it? Yes, boys and girls, it did.