With kids in the house and priorities everywhere I decided that this year the only way that I would be able to get weight workouts in would be to keep them short and increase the intensity. Here were my thoughts on the perfect workout for me.

I am not 20 anymore so I knew that I had to be realistic about my goals

I need a quick workout

I wanted to do my whole body in one day

I wanted to be able to recover from weight workouts but still be able to do cardio on a lot of the exercise days of the week

I ended up coming up with a quick 25 minute workout that would be as hard as I could and feel a little wiped for an hour or so but still have my evenings free to spend with my wife and kids. So here is what I came up with: Circuit training with weights in about 20 minutes.

Warmup, 5 minutes of cardio, eighter a bike with some light weights or the elliptical machine

1. Warmup set of really light bench press, shoulder press, and one armed bent over rows across my bench.

2. A long set of the following

10 reps Bench press
10 reps each of alternating front laterals (front of shoulders), side laterals (side of shoulders) and bent over rear laterals (back of shoulders)
10 reps one armed bent over row across bench for each arm
10 bicep curls
10 tricep extensions
10 squats
25 each of crunches and leg lifts

This is one long set that takes about 7 or 8 minutes and each exercise is done to exhaustion. I am really winded at the end and it took a bit to figure out how much weight each exercise should use so that I was done at 10 reps or so

3. repeat step two

4. stretch a bit, and I am done

This workout has worked really well for me, it is quick and hits every muscle group, actually each muscle group is really hit hard and I a, pretty shaky by the end of the workout. I do this workout three times a week on alternating days and it does not really cut into my schedule much. Of course this is only one kind of workout, you would want to change things up exercise and rep-wise and probably change to a longer workout at times during the year to really shock the muscles on a regular basis.

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As we all know it is difficult to do exercises at our computers and stay in shape. Most of the time you are probably sitting just like me right now, hunched over the keyboard, body frozen in a position to type and slightly tightening the shoulders (that will not feel so good later today).

The best way to stop yourself from getting those aches and pains at your desk is to take quick breaks occasionally during the day to stretch, and here are a bunch of stretches that I found courtesy of Dr Rick Morris.

First remove your shoes and loosen restrictive clothing. Be sure that your area is free from hazards.

The Bird Grand your right ankles with your right hand with your right knee bent. Hold on to your desk with your left hand (standing on the right side of your desk); now bend over at your hip (not your waist) keeping your back straight. You should feel a nice stretch in the back of your left thigh and the front of your right thigh. Hold this position for one minute and repeat on the opposite leg. Read the rest of this entry »

A split schedule is a way to change up your workout so that instead of working your body all in one day you work your body over two or three days. There are a few rules that people tend to use to do these workouts and I will try to list the muscle groups that you will work on which days. The real advantage to doing a split schedule is that you get a chance to really push the muscles, do more exercises and hopefully rest them more in between workouts.

When you first start working out you probably work your whole body on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The idea of a split schedule is that you will work your whole body once or twice in a week. On a two day split you will work your whole body on Monday and Tuesday and again on Thursday and Friday.

Here are the major muscle groups:
Quadriceps, hamstrings, chest, back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps

Here is a list of the minor muscle groups
Abdominals, calves, forearms, lower back and traps. Usually you only do specific exercises for you calves and abdominals until you become an advanced weightlifter or bodybuilder.

First the rules
You don’t want to work a muscle group directly on consecutive days as you do not want to overtrain it.
You want to only do one or two big muscle group in a workout
Read the rest of this entry »