Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Week 2

Ok, you lived through the first week. Congrats! This week’s a little harder. 2 1/2 Supersets and 1 more minute of running plus we’re adding a 6th day endurance showdown.

Strength

Superset Beg. Int. Adv.
1 Pushups 20 modified 20 25
Lunges 10 15 20
2 Bicycle Crunches 30 sec. 45 sec. 60 sec.
Bounces 30 sec. 45 sec. 60 sec.

Endurance

Down Ladder

More interval running.

Rest:

  • Beg: walk
  • Int: light jog *
  • Adv: light jog

Active:

  • Beg: jog
  • Int: jog/run
  • Adv: run/sprint

The Workout:

  1. 2:00 Rest/Warmup
  2. 2:00 Active
  3. 2:00 Rest
  4. 1:40 Active
  5. 2:00 Rest
  6. 1:20 Active
  7. 2:00 Rest
  8. 1:00 Active
  9. 2:00 Rest
  10. 0:40 Active
  11. 2:00 Rest
  12. 0:20 Active
  13. 2:00 Rest

Total Time: 21min

Endurance Day:(Day 6) 1 mile for time or 13 min jog

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Guidelines for our cardio workouts

There's plenty of opportunities during a cardio workout to make it a lot easier than it should be. Here's a few tips that you can use to ensure that you're getting the most out of your workouts.

Hard vs Easy

Many of our workouts have a mix of easy and hard segments. When you're doing these it's important to keep the difference in mind. The hard sections are meant to be just that, hard. Obviously, the goal is to complete the workout, but almost as important is the idea of really pushing the hard segments. Regardless if the workout says jog or sprint for the hard segments you should be tired. If the hard segments are the part that wears you out the easy sections should build you back up. The easy sections are designed to be rest so that by the end you're ready to dive into the next hard segment.

Keep Moving

The cardio workouts we've designed include lots of easy, or rest segments. This doesn't mean that the time is spent stationary. There are many reasons why staying moving is beneficial even during rest periods. You'll be less likely to cramp or experience injury if you keep moving, you'll continue burning calories and building endurance, heck if it's cold you'll stay warm. So take your time to recover, but please keep moving.

Endurance Days

Starting with week two, we introduce the concept of endurance days. Endurance days are designed to fill the gap in the other workouts and increase your overall level of endurance. On these days the goal is to maintain an increased level of exertion for a longer period of time, building as we go. Your goal when doing these workouts should be to maintain as consistent a pace as possible through out the whole workout, pushing your self to the limit by the end of the exercise. Endurance days will also provide a great way to keep track of your progress since many of our other cardio sets don't lend them selves to direct comparison.

Finding Space

If there's a school track near your house head on over there. If you don't have a track you can get a pedometer or even the nifty iPod addon Apple Nike to help you track your runs. You can also use Google Maps to plot a route. Right click on the map and place a "from" and "to" location then look on the left column to see how far the route is.

Cardio exercise provides all the balance to our workouts. Simply focusing on the strength exercises will get you good results, but you'll get a lot better results if you follow the cardio plan as well. Again working out in a group can provide great incentive to keep to the plan, and push yourself every stride. These workouts are a great opportunity for a little friendly competition.

Guidelines for our strength workouts.

Getting the most out of our workouts is about doing more than just the exercises listed. To that end here are a few tips on how to get the best results.

Supersets

Lets start off by tackling the idea of super sets. A super set is composed of 2 or more exercises that are done in quick alternations with rest only at the end of each "set". For example in week 1 we do a super set consisting of push ups and squats. To do this set correctly you do the push ups, then transition immediately into the squats. Once both exercises are done you rest before starting the set over.

Form

Just like every personal trainer, gym teacher and IRS auditor says, your form matters, especially for strength exercises (and W-2's). Poor form can result in uneven strength gains, minimal gains, and even injury. So please when you're doing your strength exercises go slow and focus on your form.

Exhaustion

Ideally as you're going through your strength exercises you should find your self getting tired. When you get tired two very bad things can happen. You might decide to stop your sets early, and if you don't you might get injured. To avoid this if you're tired to the point that finishing the exercise is difficult, step down. Step down in weight, step down in quantity, step down in time. Whatever it is the goal should be to finish the set even at reduced difficulty.

I'm not gonna lie, following the guidelines will take your workouts to a whole new level of difficult. Is it worth it? Absolutely. If you keep these tips in mind as you go through the strength workouts you'll get as much as possible out of your time.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Week 1

Ok, here we go with our first steps to losing weight, getting stronger, feeling good.

Strength

Beginner Intermediate Advanced
Superset 1 Pushups 15 reg/mod 15 regular 25 regular
Bodyweight Squats 10 15 25
Superset 2 Crunches 20 30 40
Calf Raises 15 25 40

Endurance

Beginner Intermediate Advanced
Easy 3 min walk 3 min jog 3 min jog
Hard 1 min jog 1 min run 1 min sprint
Sets 5+ 6+ 6+

Diet

This week try to give up one empty calorie habit. Don't replace it with another. Like instead of getting that soda at lunch, get water or avoid eating candy during the day. It doesn't have to be a big sacrafice but make it conscious and stick to it.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Welcome to the workout from home blog

Hello and welcome to the workout from home blog. What you're reading is a workout program designed with the idea of making working out convenient and doable at home. The workouts we present are what we've actually done, and all of the results are real. So if you're interested in getting in shape here's what we did.

Who are we?

First let me say that we're not fitness professionals of any type. We are a group of 6 people living in Northern California who are interested in improving our level of fitness. For some of us this means getting into shape, and for some of us this means getting back into shape. We're a pretty diverse group, a mix of men and women each with their own fitness level and time constraints. But all of us have made a commitment to getting in shape, and we're trying to do this together.

What's our plan?

The workouts we've got planned run 5 or 6 days a week and should take less than an hour, counting warm up and warm down. We focus on alternating days of strength and cardio training. We've tried to design workouts that build as you do but always pack the maximum benefit into the minimum time.

I'm interested what do I need?

The last thing anyone wants is a house full of unused exercise equipment, so we're trying to keep equipment costs down. There's no equipment requirements for the first few weeks and after that we're trying to get the most out of everything we buy. With a little improvisation and intelligent equipment purchases anyone should be able to get in shape for less than the cost of a few months at the gym.

Final thoughts and tips.

We focused on working out as a group. This makes working out easier and provides us with motivation to keep going. We highly encourage people to do this too, it's motivational, it's social and it's just more fun. We kept that goal in mind so all of our workouts are designed for groups, so find a friend and get moving.