Coulee Region Bootcamps

I spent the weekend at my parents house to attend the wedding of a good friend. It’s great to get back home be back on the farm (even though it’s just an acreage now, no animals besides cats and a dog). 

They also happen to live over 25 miles from the nearest commercial gym or “fitness center”. 

So what do you do when you want to get a good workout in?  Not just going for a run, but something that will elevate your metabolism, get you stronger and get that fat burning!

I was not going to make the 40 minute drive.  There was just too much stuff going on to justify the time commitment. My wife was in the wedding and doing “wedding stuff” all day.  I have to help watch our two kids and help my parents with anything they want help with around the place.

Have you been in a similar situation? Do you give up and plan to “make it up” next week? 

I decided nothing will stop me and if this happens to you; you have lots of choices.

1. Do a bodyweight only workout. Pick out a number, say 100, and perform that many reps of pushups, squats, lunges, and jumping jacks.  Break them up any way you like them and don’t stop until you are all done.  Simple and effective.

2. If you are planning ahead you can bring some bands along to incorporate into your bodyweight workout.  This allows you to incorporate some pulling exercises to get a balanced workout for your whole body.  Check out the best bands you can possibly get from the Band Man Dave Schmitz.

3. Odd object lifting.  Find something reasonably heavy (large stones, logs, small children, tires, etc) and lift it any way you can imagine.  You can even pick it up and carry it for distance.  This will get you a great workout and hit all those “inbetween” muscles you forgot you had!

Lucky for me my dad unknowingly came to the rescue.  The barn roof in the process of being reshingled to fix some holes.  There were 25 bundles of shingles (70lbs each) that needed to be carried up the ladder to the top of the roof. 

So I threw the bags on my shoulder (1 at a time) and carried them up the ladder and dropped them on the roof.  I did this as quickly as possible to really push myself and also to avoid the angry wasps that had a few nest under the hole in the roof and didn’t like me slamming the shingles onto the roof their home was attached to.  My dad found some wasps spray and stood on the roof “riding shotgun.”

So 15 minutes, 2 stings and 50+ dead wasps later I was done.  I felt great to get in such a demanding workout in the fresh air. 

For completeness sake I went into the garage and did a few sets pullups on the steel beam in the roof.  I also climbed from one end of the beam to the other with my knees tucked to my chest to avoid the cars.  After that I did some pushups.

That was it.  I got a great workout incorprating total body moves, some upper body pulling, core and grip all while helping my dad out. 

So there are no barriers to good workouts, just excuses.  Get creative and get fit!

In last weeks post I explained why crunches should not be the primary exercise for your abs or core or whatever else you want to call it.  In fact if you never did a single crunch again I think you would be much better off. 

So how do we train our abs and get a flat tummy or six pack abs?

For one, abs exercises will not give you a six pack.  Only having low body fat accomplishes that, but we’ll save that for another blog post.

Ok, so what ab exercises should be do?

That’s why were here. Hold on to your seats.  Some of these exercises may not be new to many, but are you actually doing them?

First we have to realize the primary function of the abdominals is to prevent movement, not create movement. 

Go ahead and read that sentence again and think about it for a second. Seriously, do it. I’ll wait.  Ready?  OK.

Now we need to train the core in a way that will support its primary function. 

We accomplish that with pillars (aka planks).

Pillars incorporate your core, arms, shoulders, glutes and thighs in one exercise.  The human body love to incorporate many different body parts to accomplish a task.  Your body does not think if terms of body parts, it only knows movements. 

So know you are doing an exercise that that strengthens your core and uses more muscle groups which means more calories burned.   Score!

See the pictures below on how to do a front pillar and a side pillar. It’s pretty self explantory.  Just think straight line from head to toe.  You want to squeeze your abs and your glutes to maintain that straight line.

Front Pillar

Side Pillar

Incorporate these into your workouts and your core will thank you.

Ok, so maybe hamstring stretching is not all that bad.   Don’t stop completely, but please stretch more than just your hamstring.

But when my hamstring feels tight I need to stretch it out  so it lengthens and feels better…. right?

WRONG!

Your hamstring feels tight because its over stretched already!

Most people spend way too much time sitting.  They sit to eat, to drive to work, they sit at their job almost all day, they sit to drive home, they sit to eat again, they sit to watch TV for hours at night.  They even  sit  when they go through the Cybex circuit at the gym or ride the recumbent bike. 

What does all this sitting to do us? 

For one it  shortens our hip flexors.  Hip flexors are the muscles right in front of your hip at the top of your leg.  When they are shortened, they pull the top of the pelvis forward.  This is called anterior pelvic tilt.  When your pelvis tilts forward it pulls on the muscles on the back of the leg which just happen to be your hamstrings.  Tada! 

So what do we do? 

Step 1: Stretch your hip flexors.  Here’s how

Get into a lunge position, lower your self as low as you can.  Try to straighten out your back leg as much as possible.  Then push down through your hips.  You should feel a nice stretch in the front of your hip.  It won’t be comfortable, but it’s beneficial.  To increase the intensity of the stretch raise the hand that on the same side as your back leg and over your head and lean to the side of the leg that is forward. Perform this stretch for 30 seconds per side 2-3 times a day.

Step 2: Strengthen your hamstring

The best  way to do this is to use resistance training.  Start lifting weights.  Focus of exercises that use the hamstrings and glutes to extend the hip.  Lifts like deadlifts, good morning, back extensions, and certain lunge variations. 

Step 3: Minimize sitting time. 

This should be a no brainer.  Every 30 minutes or hour get up from your desk and walk to the drinking fountain.  Stand when you eat, take a walk instead of sitting on the couch watching TV. This will help from always being locked into that shortened hip flexor position.

Step 4: Minimize high heels

This is for the ladies (hopefully).  Wearing high heels puts you into an anterior pelvic tilt.  Plus it shorten your achilles tendon and hyper-extends your lumbar spine.  All these factors can lead to disaster.

The key point is not to treat symptoms as problems.  If something hurts it try to understand why it hurts.  That will be your best bet to finding a real solution and not a temporary band-aid.

Take care,

Anthony

Traditional resistance training workout specify one exercise at a time.  We call this “straight sets”.  Your start with one exercise and perform a certain number of reps and then rest for a certain amount of time depending on your goals. Rest periods are shorter for fat loss and longer for building strength and/or power. Then repeat the process for that exercise and move to another and do the same thing.

You might say “What wrong with that?”  Well, straight sets are simple to understand and have been utilized for many years by some very strong people.  However, they are very inefficient.  If you walk into any commercial gym on Monday (international chest day), you’ll see someone perform three sets of 10 reps on the bench press.  They do their 10 reps, go to the water fountain, check themselves out in the mirror, pretend to watch Sportcenter highlights while trying to get the attention of that cardiobunny on the treadmill, and then finally wander back to do another 10 reps.  This takes 3-5 minutes each time meaning 3 sets might take up to 15 minutes.  This is only one movement.  Performing four movements take an entire hour! 

Using alternating sets would make this workout more effective and efficient.  Perform one exercise, take a short rest, perform a different exercise that is non-competing with the first, rest again and repeat.  By working two different areas of your body, you are allowing for proper rest between sets and increasing your workload.  As a results you get increased training economy and density.  Increasing the training density allows you to perform more work in less time and is crucial to any fat loss program.  Alternating sets can be structures as shown below:

 1.)     Supersets: Alternate between two different non-competing exercises (e.g. upper body and lower body such as pull-up and squats)

 2.)     Trisets: Alternate between three different exercises (e.g. push, pull, and lower body such as push-ups, rows, and lunges)

 3.)     Circuits: Alternate between four or more different exercises

Supersets and trisets are great options, but I believe that circuits are the most effective option every time. To demonstrate, let’s examine one of my favorite circuit training templates using timed set intervals:

The 50-10 Five Exercise Circuit: You will alternate between 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest for all five exercises in the following 5-minute circuit:

Exercise#1- Squats

Exercise#2- Dips

Exercise#3- Single-Leg Hip Extensions

Exercise#4- Pull-ups

Exercise#5- Leg Raises

Perform this circuit up to four times for a 20-minute total body fat burning workout.

So instead of only completing the bench press in 15 minutes, you performed three sets of five exercises!  The intensity stayed high due to getting 4 minutes before repeating an exercise.

The key for fat loss is to create the optimal hormonal environment.  This is done by performing high intensity exercises with minimal rest in order to get as much work done is as little time as possible.  The best way to accomplish this is with circuit training.  It stand alone for gaining lean mass and maximizing fat loss.  Use the following template I use with my boot camps for some killer, yet simple fat loss circuits:

Exercise#1- Double-Leg

Exercise#2- Push

Exercise#3- Single-Leg

Exercise#4- Pull

Exercise#5- Core

I’ll be sharing some great circuit training workouts from my boot camps in the weeks to come

 Anthony