Tag: SHRED

Wednesday Workout: 10 Stations Circuit

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Well hello! Greetings from Atlanta! It’s so much hotter here than it is back home- yeesh! I’m not complaining, I just wish I could sunbathe poolside with a cute cabana boy bringing me cocktails and treats all day. What? Don’t tell me that doesn’t sound lovely!

Anyway, since I won’t be around to teach tonight, I wanted to share a fun workout that I taught last week in SHRED. I was feeling Monday’s BodyPump & Wednesday’s 3 mile run and UXF Burn workouts, so I wanted to teach something where I could instruct and demo, rather than actually DO all of the workout with the class. This ended up being perfect because I could jump in at the stations I liked and needed that day (core ones, in particular) and avoid the ones for which I was sore or the high cardio ones since I was teaching Kickboxing after.

10 stations circuit

When teaching circuits, I always like to throw in a little HIIT action in between each round to get everyone’s heart rates up and get them pumped for the next round. These are most of my favorite exercises (at the moment- I seem to get new favorites every couple of weeks), so I thought it was a pretty fun workout! If you have any questions, obviously let me know! This can totally be done at home, too. You can do a plank hold on the ground if you don’t have a stability ball and you can do biceps curls balancing on one leg (which still works your core like balancing on a BOSU does) and normal jump squats.

In other workout news, I had a really awesome workout on Monday at the Wellington BSC after work. As I have mentioned, I’ve been really into lifting heavier when I can and since I ran 5 miles on Sunday, I decided to make Monday a light cardio day and focus on heavier lifting. I warmed up with 15 minutes on the elliptical and then did the following, which you’ve seen many times on the blog!

  • 5 stair runs (up and down=1, so repeat 5 times)
  • 25 reps of lower body exercises: squats, lunges (each leg), dead lifts, plié squats. I did 50lbs here, which is about as much as I can do unless I am using a machine and don’t have to lift the weight over my head to get the bar in place!
  • 5 stair runs
  • 25 reps of upper body exercises: isolation curls (25 each arm) while sitting on a BOSU, 1 armed triceps extensions while balancing on 1 leg (25 each side), front & side lat raises (on each side) and reverse flys. (I couldn’t find the weights I needed, so I did 12.5lbs for everything except the lat raises- I used 8lbs as I am still babying my shoulder
  • 5 stair runs
  • 25 core exercises: BOSU plank tilts, weighted side dips balancing on BOSU, Russian Twists, straight armed plank with leg lifts
  • 5 stair runs
  • 25 squat & chest press, 25 curtsy lunges with OH press, 30 second side plank each side, 1 minute plank to finish it off

Fun workout and I was SO sweaty, mostly from lifting!

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(yes, I am that weird/crazy girl taking pics of myself at the gym!)

Questions for you: What are you currently loving at the gym? Do you like stations workouts?

Weekly Workouts

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Happy Monday, friends! How was your weekend? I was in Maine for half of it, which is always a better place than the city to “survive” the heat. I taught too many classes last week, but happily, I survived injury free (my nagging injuries didn’t even pop up when teaching my second double of the week- woohoooo!!!). Now that I have dropped back on the number of classes per week that I teach, I realize that teaching 6 a week, while working a full time job and blogging was just way.too.much.

Last Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I ran 3.1 miles in Maine, while adding in 25 reps of different strength exercises after each mile which was a fun way to change-up a run. I also gardened with my dad all day!

run + strength training

  • Tuesday- I got asked to sub a double at the South Station BSC last minute, so I took it (since it’s a 5 min walk from my office). I taught a Kickboxing class followed by a UXF class and I have to say that I really like teaching those 2 classes (what I do on Thursdays) in that order wayyyyy better than what I do on Thursdays!
  • Wednesday– I got in 25 minutes on the elliptical before teaching UXF Burn. I’ll try to get that workout to you this week!

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(The humid weather+sweat= crazy frizzy hair!)

  • Thursday- I had zero time to make up a workout to teach in SHRED at work (dealt with computer issues all day), so I decided to repeat a UXF Burn class I taught a few weeks ago, but it worked fine! Kickboxing was a blast as always and it’s so nice to see how much that class has grown since I first started teaching it! Another plus of of the double was the amount of energy I had! I have no idea where it came from, and usually by the end of my double I am beat, but last Thursday was awesome!

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(Shirt says “No one has ever drowned in their own sweat”, but I’ll tell ya, I came damn near close on Thursday!)

  • Friday- REST! Besides walking to Dunkin Donuts, haha.
  • Saturday- Taught Kickboxing for the 3rd week in a row at Oak Square before heading up to Maine!
  • Sunday– Rest, again. I woke up really quite sore from Saturday’s kickboxing (which is so weird because it was the 3rd kickboxing class of the week that I taught so you’d think my muscles would be used to it!), so I decided to take it easy again.

This Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I am subbing a UXF Burn/BodyPump class at 5:30 at the Wellington BSC!!! I LOVE this gym and it’s legit 5 mins from my house so I am pumped. BSCers- come join!
  • Tuesday- Maybe a rest, maybe go to a kickboxing class, maybe run on my own. We will see!
  • Wednesday- The usual- cardio and teaching UXF Burn.
  • Thursday- The usual- teaching SHRED and Kickboxing.
  • Friday- Pending on what I do on Tuesday will determine what I do on Friday.
  • Saturday- NOT TEACHING! I may join a Lupus walk with friends, may do something extra in addition to that, who knows!
  • Sunday- I would like to do something different- maybe my own workout, maybe something Athena has posted lately, maybe yoga or Core Fusion?

So, there you have it! After my crazy teaching schedule last week, it’s nice to have an open schedule this week. Any suggestions for what I should do for a workout with my extra time?? Any good ones that you have done recently?

Questions for you: What was the best workout you did last week? Try anything new? How did you escape the heat, but still get a workout in?

Wednesday Workout: Discussion time! Compound vs. Isolation Exercises?

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Hey everyone! I do have a workout for you today, but before I get to that, I want to take a minute to talk about something I’ve been thinking about since my SHRED class last Thursday. Compound Exercises vs. Isolation Exercises. What’s the difference, you might ask? Well, simply put (read: VERY simply), compound exercises or movements work more than one muscle or muscle group at a time and isolation exercises work only one muscle or muscle group at a time. Some of my favorite compound exercises are squats with and overhead press, lunges with biceps curls, deadlifts with a row, whereas isolation exercises would be JUST biceps curls or rows.

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(Compound vs. Isolation)

Since compound exercises generally work both upper and lower body muscles, they burn more calories, which is why I tend to teach those types of exercises in my class; “more bang for the buck,” shall I say. Since I only have an hour to teach, including warm up and cool down, I want my members to get the most out of that hour and keep their heart rates up even when we are not doing cardio.

However, last week I changed things up in my SHRED class and decided to focus on isolation exercises. You may remember this Jump Rope & Strength Circuit Workout” that I did at home about a month ago.

Jump Rope and Strength Circuit

I decided to take the basis of this workout- isolation exercises- and change up the cardio to make it doable in my group ex. class. In order to make this work, I switched the 5 minutes of jump rope to 3 minutes of cardio (3 moves at 60 seconds each), while still keeping the strength portion the same (except I replaced one of the triceps exercises to biceps curls). I encourage my members to go HEAVY on the weights for the strength portion since we were only focusing on one muscle/muscle group rather than spreading our energy throughout our whole body to work more than one muscle group.

Since I have gotten to know a bunch of the members in my classes, I know what they usually lift and it was nice to see them go heavier. As much as I love compound movements, I think that when we do them, we usually have to go a little lighter with the weights, but with isolation movements, we can go heavier since we are only focusing on doing ONE thing. This made me wonder: do we lift BETTER and STRONGER and more EFFICIENTLY when we focus on isolation exercises? What do you think?

Personally, I think I do have a better workout when I only focus on one muscle group. If I am just doing biceps curls, or shoulder presses or lunges, I only have to focus on ONE thing, rather than multiple, so I think I can push through and gain better muscle by doing this. When we are doing timed intervals for compound movements, I think one of the exercises tends to suffer; maybe you don’t squat as low in a squat and OH press, maybe you don’t lunge as deep when you are doing lunges with biceps curls, maybe you’re not lifting as heavy weights when you’re doing squats and overhead presses, etc. Now, I am not saying that compound movements are not wonderful ways to get the best “bang for your buck,” but I think we have to be extra careful to not get “messy”.

I want your opinion, though. What do you think? Do you prefer compound exercises or do you prefer to lift heavier and focus on isolation exercises? Does it differ depending on whether you’re in a class or working out on your own? What’s your favorite exercises for compound and isolation exercises? I’m really interested to see if anyone feels the same way as I do.

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I know I promised you a workout, so here is the running workout I did on Monday when I was in Maine!

run + strength training

I ended up running a 5K (3.1 miles), so I saved the 3rd set of 25 rep exercises for when I finished. And then, to make things even (I like 100 much better than 75!), I did a 4th set of the exercises. I finished with some push-ups into side planks, full burpees and stretching. Stretching with Charlie is not easy…

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So, there you go! Let me know if you try this, and let me know what you think about my recent revolation! Enjoy your day, friends 🙂

Weekly Workouts!

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Hey everyone! Happy Memorial Day! Anyone going to any parades? We usually do, but not this year… bummer! I LOVE parades. Anyway, let’s get to the workouts.

Last Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- Besides walking to and from work from the T and walking home from the T (in all, about 2.5 miles), I rested. I was really sore from workouts over the weekend and wanted to make dinner, so I opted to take the time I gained from not working out and be productive around the apartment!
  • Tuesday- I went to the Wellington BSC and had an awesome workout! I went on the elliptical for 30 minutes, ran for 10 minutes on the treadmill, did lots of ab stuff on the TRX bands and did this:

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I ran these stairs- they were killer.

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  • Thursday- I taught SHRED and Kickboxing. In SHRED, rather than compound movements (like I usually like to do- more bang for the buck), I focused on lifting heavier and only focusing on one exercise (squats, biceps curls, etc.). Fun to switch things up!
  • Friday- I played around for about 30 minutes practicing new kickboxing combinations for Saturday, trying out some new moves I learned from Women’s Health and used my band for upper body work.
  • Saturday- Taught a VERY sweaty kickboxing class. I’d show you a picture of my sports bra (signs of a good workout=sports bra soaked), but that would be gross. Athena came, which is always fun!
  • Sunday- Mostly a rest day, although I spent some time in the morning doing glute and ab work!

This Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I am still home in Maine and will definitely be doing something, just not sure what that is yet. Maybe a jog, maybe Deck of Cards, maybe a strength workout with mom and my sister??
  • Tuesday- I’ll head to the gym after work and probably do something similar to last week: cardio and strength training!
  • Wednesday- Cardio before class and then teaching UXF Burn.
  • Thursday- SHRED and Kickboxing
  • Friday- something low-impact, as I have realized that I need that after teaching (and doing) a double and knowing that I have to teach Kickboxing the next day. I like to use Friday’s to focus on strength training!
  • Saturday- 3rd week in a row of teaching Kickboxing at the YMCA! Woohoo! Such a high energy crowd- I love it.
  • Sunday- Rest 🙂

Questions for you: What was your favorite workout last week? Try anything new? Anything make you really sore? Looking forward to anything this week? Do share!