Today’s Back Workout!

The “home gym”. Teddy bear in a basket is optional 🙂

A lot of times I find that after I get home from a long day at work it literally would take the voice of God (or Charlton Heston) to compel me to leave my house again – especially in the frigid Ohio winter. Unfortunately I have to leave the house to get to the gym (totally going to remedy this when I buy my first house). Enter – my “home gym.” This basically consists of a crate full of resistance bands, 10lb and 15lb dumbbells, ankle weights, an ab roller, yoga mats, a medicine ball and a stability ball that I keep in a crate in the corner of my living room. I call it my “home gym” and even though it might seem a little bootleg and even my own mother has laughed out loud at me about it, I am so thankful that it’s here. That list of fitness equipment above and a working body are all anyone needs to get fit and those items are not that expensive. As a matter of fact, most of them I’ve collected over the years as Christmas presents or as the result of new years resolutioning (and I know you have these things around too). There really is no excuse!

My favorite thing to do with my home gym equipment – especially when I’ve skipped out on my cardio for the day (like a Lazy McLazerson) is create a circuit. In a circuit, you will basically move from exercise to exercise with little rest in between to build up some cardiovascular intensity in addition to strength training. Since today was “back day” I decided to design a killer back circuit. I finished it up with P90x ab ripper X and my daily stretching routine. (In case you’re wondering. No I didn’t buy the P90X program. I found it online via some simple google sleuthing and this is the only part of p90X that I do…it’s a great ab workout.)

 

 

Jan-Feb Workout Schedule

I’ve been literally pulling myself through my workweek workout by workout. Since my workouts are so important to my productivity in other areas of my life I thought I’d start filling the blogosphere in on what kinds of workouts I’m doing every week.

For the month of January and February my schedule looks like this:

Monday: AM cardio/HIIT strength circuit + AB ripper X

Tuesday: AM cardio/Legs + Shoulders

Wednesday: AM cardio/HIIT strength circuit + AB ripper X

Thursday: AM cardio/Back + Biceps + Glutes

Friday: AM cardio/HIIT strength circuit + Ab ripper X

Saturday: AM cardio/Chest + Triceps

Sunday: Rest day (maybe yoga)

I also will be doing daily deep stretching for 30 minutes. Check for daily updates with my “Today’s Run” posts and check out my “Strength Circuit” posts for interesting or particularly brutal strength circuits.

Progressive circuits- fat burning resistance training

Whenever I’m in a rut, or pressed for time, or confined to my meager “home gym” I turn to this workout. Today, America’s birthday, I’m confined to my home gym –  a few dumbbells, a medicine ball, a stability ball and a few resistance bands. So here we go.

I love circuit training in general. I usually do my regular strength training routines [in a proper gym] in supersets. It makes the workout go faster an makes me sweat more (which could mean I’m working harder, i.e. burning more calories).

I call this workout a progressive circuit because you basically pick 8 exercises and progress through 8 sets of 10-20 reps, adding 1 exercise in each set.

For example today I picked these 8 movements:

1- DB squat – 15 reps

2- DB swing – 10 reps each arm

3- pushups – 10 reps

4- DB row – 15 reps (both arms)

5- DB chest press – 15 reps on stability ball

6- Medicine ball side squat lung – 10 reps each side

7- DB fly – 15 reps on stability ball

8- In and outs on the floor – 20 reps

You start set 1 with the first exercise and then set 2 is exercise 1+ exercise 2. Basically this looks like this:

Set 1: exercise 1

Set 2: exercises 1+2

set 3: exercises 1+2+3

set 4: exercises 1+2+3+4

set 5: exercises 1+2+3+4+5

set 6: exercises 1+2+3+4+5+6

set 7: exercises 1+2+3+4+5+6+7

set 8: exercises 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8

There is no rest between sets. So basically you end up doing a crap ton of reps of the first few exercises. For this reason, I like to make those exercises movements that combine a lot of big muscle groups (squats, lunges) or compound exercises (squat press). You sweat a bit more that way. [In an air conditioned room, I sweat just as much as I do in the first 20 minutes of bikram yoga]

It’s best to choose weights that are challenging but do-able (this is not the time to max out on your chest press or your squat). The fact the whole circuit is unrested will already make the routine challenging so compensate by moving down slighty in weight. The entire circuit takes about 30 unrested minutes to complete. I typically will perform it once in the forward direction (exercises 1-8) and once in reverse (exercises 8-1).

Try it and see how awesome you feel.