Workout of the Week

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Check out Chris doing the workout of the week. All you need for this drill is a set of 10 – 20 pound free weights. The goal is to complete 3 sets of these exercises within 20 minutes. Can you do it?

Workout

20 squats

20 jumping jacks

20 pushups

20 jumping jacks

20 lateral lunges

20 jumping jacks

5 man makers

20 jumping jacks

1 minute plank

20 jumping jacks

This is obviously for those of you who love jumping jacks. Enjoy!

link

Epic

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Do you ever use this word to describe something? Have you ever said something like, “man, that was an epic workout” or “that movie was epic” Well I think I have something that helps to define’epic.’

Epic.

In case you hadn’t heard this was a tennis match to end all tennis matches. This was the EPIC of tennis matches. Somewhere close to 150 games were played to decide the outcome of this one match. It took approximately 11 hours to finish. 11 hours. Ironman triathletes do 11 hour races. You could fly from NY to England and drive to Wimbledon and still have about 3 hours to spare. Drive from NC to NY City and you’d still be able to take an hour off to catch an off-broadway play.

The endurace of these athletes (not to mention their strength) is phenomenal. Especially when you consider how often they had to serve the ball. How often the volleyed. How often they stared at each other and wished for everything in their being that either this was the last one or the guy across would just give up.

This was pretty amazing and by all rights epic.

You want motivation. The next time you do that 60 minute workout. Think of these guys and see if you can’t push that much energy into the hour you’ve got. Give it everything. Leave nothing on the plate. I guarantee when these guys were finally done they had nothing in their tanks. They were empty, spent, obliterated.

See if you can obliterate yourself, walk away and come back the next time that much stronger. That is what fitness is.

Mike Babbitt, M.F.A, M.A., CSCS, ACSM-HFI

USA Triathlon Level 1 Coach, Master Trainer

Mike is a Master Level trainer at Empower Personal Training. He has a unique approach to fitness that combines his scientific foundation of research and applied exercise physiology with his artistic experience as a professional stage actor. For more information about Empower Personal Training please call (919) 401-8024

At Your Own Risk

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Torched

Paul and I, though we have differences, in general subscribe to similar fitness philosophies. our differences allow us to test each other and stretch our view points and therefore make us better.

Today’s workout was one of those times.

This workout, with a little modification, came from the folks over at gymjones.com. I like their idea of fitness being an ever changing adapting aspect of training from general conditioning down to the sports specific. I also like the science that they put into their exploration. You can read more at their site if you’re interested but for now, we’re going to focus on today and the results.

The workout was deceptively simple.

6 TGU (Turkish Get Ups) @ 3 on each side (25# KB) followed by 60 sec of FLR (or Front leaning Rest Position – the start of a pushup). 5 rounds total. Then 2 rounds of 1 min All-Out on the AirDyne and rest 1 minute while you’re partner works.

Paul thought this might be too easy. I was cautious as I felt we were both in for a surprise.

Here’s the result.

I can't feel my legs

As you can see from the obliteration both of us felt it was humbling, a good sign of a strong conditioning workout as it demonstrates and reveals weaknesses while at the same time pushing you forward to the next ‘level’. Our legs were dead at the end. They were on fire. We talked about why and believe that the fatigue that the TGU’s and the FLR induced in our arms prevented our arms from being remotely a factor during the AirDyne. The fatigue in the legs from the TGUs was then accelerated by the torching they received during the AirDyne All-Outs. Couple that with the fact that there was only 1 minute rest in the whole training session, our energy systems never had a chance to recover. Lactate far exceeded its ability to be reconverted into fuel and by that very last minute of all-out we were both looking to pass out.

The end result was, unanimously, that this was one of the hardest workouts we’ve ever done.

This is not a prescription. It’s not for the faint of heart. That doesn’t mean that you can’t attempt it, but do so with a clear understanding of your fitness level. Talk to your trainer, have them help you tailor the workout to your current fitness level. That also doesn’t mean it should be part of your current fitness level. This is a step up workout. Something to take you to the next step. Something that can help revel those ever present weaknesses and understand the power and beauty of the human body (both mentally and physically) under high-level stress.

Push it.