This last week I was part of a Spring Cleaning activity with a friend I Train with for a group of women. It was really fun, there was a clean eating/nutrition section, a gardening section, and I was in charge of the fitness section. I put together a little Fitness fun facts and quick tips seminar for the ladies and gave them an at home work out that they can do with any sort of step or chair. It was fun to teach a variety of women who were all at different levels of fitness.
The four main topics I covered were:
1) How to be more efficient with your workouts (burning more calories in less time)
2) Why lifting weights won't make you huge or manly
3) The importance of core strength and better ways to work the whole core
4) The benefits of HIIT training vs steady cardio
1. How to get more bang for your buck at the gym: The more muscles your contracting at once, the more calories you'll burn. It makes sense that contracting muscles is what burns calories, so wouldn't it make sense that the more muscles working at one time, the more calories you're burning? Thats why I love compound exercises, or movements that utilize multiple muscles at one time, rather than just isolating one muscle at a time. Some examples of this are doing a lunge with a bicep curl, or a wall sit while doing shoulder raises with weights. This way you're activating both your legs and arm muscles.
2. Myth buster: lifting heavy weights will turn you into a man= FALSE. Let me explain. Men have a lot more testosterone than women which is the main reason they can get huge muscles. We couldn't get like that even if we tried. Weights don't make us huge, poor eating habits can make us huge. Lifting weights will strengthen your muscles which naturally burn body fat. Its a fact that muscles burn more calories at rest than fat does, and who doesn't want to burn more calories at rest? I'm the leanest I've ever been because I've started lifting heavier, rather than doing more cardio, so I can attest to this first hand! Weight lifting (along with eating healthy) will tone and tighten your body and you will love the results. You want to stick to around 12-20 challenging reps of an exercise. Doing 50 reps with 5 pound weights is not going to do much for you, trust me!
3. Your Core is the center of everything! Especially for women and there rolls as mothers, having children, and all the extra stuff we lug around from day to day (car seats, groceries, breasts...) When I talk about core i'm not just talking about those 6 pack ab muscles. Your core includes all the muscles under your shoulders to the pelvic region. Most women after having a baby want to go do a hundred crunches to get rid of the baby pooch, but all that will do is build those muscles outward, and never fully bringing them back together. We want to work those muscles that wrap around your whole core to tighten that whole area which will lead to a flatter stomach. The best way to do this is with exercises like Planks, side planks, rotations, stability ball work, etc.
4. What is HIIT, and why do I love it? Well let me fill you in on my favorite way to train. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. This is when you do short bursts of max effort intervals, spiking your heart rate, while engaging muscles. By doing this you rev up your metabolism during and after your workout. Your shocking your body, while getting muscle work and cardio at the same time. You can do this in simple ways such as going for a walk, and adding 20 second sprint/jogs along the way, or more intensely by doing 15 seconds of high knee tuck jumps incorporated into your squat routine. I like to add cardio bursts into my weight training to get a more intense calorie burn while I'm strengthening muscle.
At Home Workout:
upper body-->lower body-->cardio
*do each exercise for 1 minute, 3X through for a 30 minute workout
*you will need a chair/bench/step, whatever you have, no excuses!
1) Incline push up (advanced=decline PU)
2) right leg step ups on chair (adv=add weights, add hop)
3) left leg step ups on chair
4) high knee toe taps to chair
5) dips (adv=legs elevated out straight)
6) split lunge - back leg up on chair (adv=add weights)
7) burpees (adv=single leg burpees)
8) pike push up (adv=one leg lifted in air)
9) booty lift - lay on the ground, heels up on bench, lift hips to ceiling (adv=single leg)
10) jumpin jack w/floor tap - tap the floor with hands when your feet jump out to squat
