Monday, October 13, 2008

Four minute fat loss circuit part deux

The Day 2 circuit focuses on the pulling muscles--back, hams, glutes--and consists of the following four exercises:

deadlifts from the floor (Vince does these sumo-style with an ez bar, which I've never seen before. Interesting, and I may try it.)
alternate arm dumbbell bent-over rows (Vince demos both elbows-out and elbows-in, so pick your poison here)
box jumps
assisted pullups (Vince does these on a machine, but if you haven't got access to one you could use a band or your feet, or you could do negatives or body rows.)

Again, perform each exercise for a minute without resting between exercises. After completing the circuit rest 1-2 minutes, then repeat for a total of 4-5 circuits. Follow up with 20 minutes of high intensity cardio if desired.

Without having done the workout (yet) my thoughts are as follows: Why the box jumps again? Nothing wrong with them, but I don't care for doing the same exercise in two consecutive workouts. I think power step-ups would work better here. Alternatively, one could keep Day 2 as is, and substitute any number of jump squat variations for the Day 1 box jumps.

For cardio the plan is to do another Turbulence Training bodyweight circuit workout. This is the Crazy Eight"300" workout, so called because there are eight exercises and the total number of reps/seconds adds up to 300:

60 jumping jacks
16 spiderman pushups (8 per side)
40 walking lunges (20 per side)
24 spiderman climbs (12 per side)
wall squat hold 45 sec.
plank hold 60 sec.
5 burpees
50 high knees (25 per side)

Rest 1 minute, then repeat twice more.

I'll update later to let you know how it went.

The update: It was awful, as expected. I began with a bar loaded at 50 pounds for the deadlifts, but lowered my weight to 45 lbs for sets 2-4. For the bentover rows I began with 12 lbs and moved up to 15 for sets 2-4. The box jumps were what they were. Again, I did them onto a 10 inch box. If 12 inches had been an option I think that would've been better, but since I was working out at home I was limited to the equipment I had on hand, and my only options were 10 inches and 14 inches, which I think would've been too much for this particular routine. For the pullups, I managed to do band-assisted pullups for an entire minute the first round (I think I got 18), but had to go to leg-assisted about halfway through rounds 2-4. Whatever. If I were doing this in the gym I would probably just do body rows for a minute, because that's more in line with what I'm physically capable of. Another option would be to get a more heavy-duty band to assist with the pullups :)

The bodyweight cardio circuit wasn't so bad. Yes, I sweated bullets and my spiderman pushups weren't low enough to satisfy a purist, but I got through 3 rounds in slightly over 20 minutes and it was fine. No pullups were involved, so it was fine.