Working Hard on Working Out... Tuesday, July 16

I’ve definitely gone astray from my days of traditional weight training so now you’ll never see me doing simple bicep curls, hammer heads or regular squats.  Instead, my exercises are all compound exercises, like incorporating an upright row into my squats and ditching the regular dumbbells for kettlebells or weighted medicine balls.  I’ve also have fallen in love with circuit training, in particular timed circuit training.  It’s funny how telling my members “it’s only 8 minutes” can easily act as a hook, line and sinker for getting them to weight train with me.  My circuits are quite short – I wasn’t lying when I said it’s only 8 minutes, it’s actually 7.5 minutes – but they also require full bursts of power so they’re very intense. 

Most of my circuits consist of 7 exercises, focus on a particular group of muscles like abs or lower body and, for the most part, they use bodyweight to train with and nothing else.  For the average member, I have them do each exercise 30 seconds each with a 30 second to 1 minute break in between sets and then do the set a second time.  A couple of my members really appreciate a good challenge so I’ve upped their time to 40 seconds and/or have them do three sets of the circuit. 

Today’s circuits I actively participated did with my members:

Thundra Thighs (lower body circuit)

2x at 2 sets of 30 seconds = 7 minutes & 30 seconds

1x at 2 sets of 40 seconds = 9 minutes & 20 seconds

TOTAL WITH THIS CIRCUIT = 16 minutes & 50 seconds

This is a lower body circuit that starts off with burpees so you just know it’s going to be hardcore and with the Bulgarian split squats in the middle, woozers, you’re left with shaking legs!  Definitely makes it hard to go and skip afterwards… or do anything with your legs for that matter.

Thundra Tight & Toned 
(full body circuit)

3x at 2 sets = 22 minutes & 30 seconds

1x at 2 sets plus heavier weights = 7 minutes & 30 seconds

1x at 1 set of 40 seconds = 4 minutes & 40 seconds

TOTAL WITH THIS CIRCUIT = 34 minutes & 40 seconds

I created this circuit last Friday and it’s been quite popular with my members because it’s a crossfit rotation circuit that uses kettlebells, a transport truck tire and two sandbags.  I really like this circuit too because I can max out the participants by having up to 7 members doing the circuit.  Unlike my other circuits that use only bodyweight, this one uses kettlebells so you can easily up the intensity of it by using a heavier kettlebell.

She Hulk Hulked-Out Abs 
(ab circuit)

1x at 1 set, advanced level = 17 minutes

2x at 2 sets = 15 minutes

TOTAL WITH THIS CIRCUIT = 32 minutes

My Boxercise Advanced class continually steps up to the challenges I pose them and they’re constantly trying to push themselves – definitely motivating to me. I did this circuit with one of them on Sunday and ended up ripping a four inche strip of skin off my back – if that doesn’t say hardcore than I don’t know what does!!!  I’m still sporting bandages down my backbone from Sunday but today we wanted to do the circuit again with the other member of our Boxercise Advanced class so that’s exactly what we did and unlike most members who do this circuit in 30 second intervals, these ladies and I do them at 1 minute intervals – holy intense!!!After them, I then was asked to do the circuit two more times with two other individual boxers who wanted me to train with them.

TOTAL CIRCUIT TRAINING TIME TODAY = 1 hour, 23 minutes & 30 seconds

Today one of my members asked me, “Why aren’t you training today?”  She knew my off-training days are usually Wednesday and Saturday but today was Tuesday and she’s used to seeing me start my training around 10:30pm.  Tonight I didn’t do my own boxing training because I was exhausted from training all my members.  I had to giggle in response to her question, knowing full well that I had over trained myself today as a result of doing so many circuits with so many members.  For the most part my foreign members all know my circuits and a simple explanation of revisions is all they need.  I just have to tell them when to switch exercises and what exercise to switch into.  My Korean members however, many of them need me to explain more in detail so I usually just end up doing one or two sets with them. 

I had my weigh-in today and doing all these circuits with my members is definitely doing wonders for my body but sometimes it’s a struggle to keep up with my eating so that I stay fully fueled and ready for action.  I used to try to eat whenever we hit a break in the crowd but now days I find that break isn’t as often as I’d like or need – I eat 6 times a day, every 2.5-3hrs.  I’ve resorted to flat out telling members that they’ll have to wait or to start an exercise without me so that I can eat after all I’m no good to them if I’m not eating properly.  I have to be one step ahead of them and all that more intense but that requires me to eat like a beast and stay fully hydrated.  This past week I’ve really been paying attention to my clean eating, making sure I get in my six solid meals, and the results have been amazing.  In just one week I’ve packed on a full kilogram of muscle so I’m very happy with my dedicated focus to eating clean.  Six-pack abs here I come!!!