It is now starting to become warmer, and there are many people who will be returning to their fitness routines. It's that time when everyone wants to look impressive in their "lack" of clothing. While I can't promise you that you'll achieve a fitness model body, I can at least give you some good guidelines and an effective exercise program to implement to assist you with your goals for achieving a leaner and firmer physique.
Listen up! Behavioral changes guarantee your success - not just knowledge alone. You may already have drawn out your road map with your nutritional plan and your workouts and feel you don't need this advice, so either way, take that strategy or that which you will read now and ACT on it. Stay motivated and consistently remind yourself of your fitness goal.
Most injuries that happen when a person works out are caused due to a lack of proper warm-up of the muscles before a workout.
It has been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is definitely the case when you start to workout or do your fitness routine. Sore muscles, sprains, and even broken bones can result from not warming up your body prior to conditioning.
The best medicine for saving yourself the agony of 'the morning after syndrome' DOMS (delayed onset muscle syndrome) or injury is to properly warm up by doing some light cardio before your workout for approximately 10 minutes. As far as stretching before your exercise program, the ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) no longer recommends stretching before exercising as in the past. Current pre-workout stretching research does not show any benefits for preventing injuries and shows that stretching may be detrimental to performance. Since so many people say time to train is a factor in whether they can train or not, you can save some time by eliminating pre-workout stretching. If you find cardio boring, you can use an ipod and listen to music, or take a friend with you for company if needed.
If you are completely new to exercising, I would suggest you read my post "10 Tips for Gym Newbies".
The Basic Program is a full-body workout for those individuals who have never trained, has only been training for a brief period of time up to 2 months prior to implementing this program or hasn't trained within the last four months or longer. Initially you will think that you are not performing enough exercises, but do not be deceived by how few exercises you are performing. If you are one of those who had a month or so of prior training, you can skip to the last two weeks of the basic program after implementing the basic program for two weeks in order to condition yourself once again for a more intense workout. The basic program is performed every 48 hours (every other day) three days a week for adequate muscle recovery between workouts and is in two phases. Phase one is 4 weeks and phase 2 is 2 weeks. After the six week program it will be time to implement the advanced-basic program which I will post at a later date. Yes, it will be posted before you complete the basic program.
Important: There are tips at the end of this article that are vital to your program. Do not implement this program without carefully reading them.
This is week 1-6 of the 16 week program I will be posting. Remember, safety first progress second. You want to remember it's better to be 70 feeling 40 than 40 feeling 70.
Weeks 1 - 4
Warm-up - Use a compound exercise (two joint movement exercise) for each group such as a chest press/bench press for chest, leg press/squat for thighs, seated row/pull-up/chin-up for back.
Basic Program (Full-body workout)
Exercise - Set - Rep Range - Note
Leg Extension 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Leg Press 1 Set 12-18 Reps
Leg Curl 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Pull-over (machine) 1 Set 10-15 Reps (First choice if available)
Stiff-armed Pulldown 1 Set 10-15 Reps (To be used only if Pull-over is not available)
Machine Seated Row 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Barbell Curl 1 Set 10-15 Reps (Shoulder width grip)
Fly machine/Pec Dec 1 Set 10-15 Reps (Machine preferably)
Decline Press/Chest Press 1 Set 10-15 Reps (Decline is really the king of chest exercises)
Triceps Pushdown 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Shoulder Press/Lateral Raise 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Calf Raise 1 Set 12-18 Reps
Crunches 1 Set 12-15 Reps
Weeks 5 & 6 (all exercises are performed with minimal rest of 10-15 seconds between sets except between muscle groups where a 2 minute rest is allowed. There is a line break between groups)
Warm-up - Same as you have been performing.
Program (Full-body workout)
Exercise Set Rep Range Note
Leg Extension 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Leg Press 1 Set 12-18 Reps
Dumbbell Deadlift 1 Set 12-18 Reps
Leg Curl 1 Set 10-15 Reps
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pull-over (machine) 1 Set 10-15 Reps (First choice if available)
Stiff-armed Pulldown 1 Set 10-15 Reps (Used if Pull-over is not available)
Reverse Grip Pulldown 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Row (pronated grip) 1 Set 10-15 Reps (Palm of hands is facing downward)
Barbell Curl 1 Set 10-15 Reps (Shoulder width grip)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fly machine/Pec Dec 1 Set 10-15 Reps (Machine preferably)
Decline Press/Chest Press 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Incline Press (30 degree) 1 Set 10-15 Reps
Triceps Pushdown 1 Set 10-15 Reps
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calf Raise 1 Set 12-18 Reps
Crunch 1 Set 15-20 Reps (Rotate with reverse crunch)
IMPORTANT: Tips for success and safety
Beginner Information first
When first implementing the basic program do not try to immediately lift heavy weights. Choose a weight for each exercise that you can perform about 20 repetitions with but stop at 15. This will not put too much stress upon the muscle initially and avoid the pain most experience within the next day or two called DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). Throughout the years it was thought this pain was an indicator of an effective workout that would give us the best results. Current research tells us that this is not true. That pain means greater destruction to the muscle and a greater recovery period needed before you can train again. The old term is called "No Pain No Gain". So when we could be training we needed to be resting. The end result is this. Current research shows us that the new term "No Pain ALL Gain" reveals that with no pain we can recover quicker and be training earlier implementing another workout leading to better and faster results. This allows us to return to the gym earlier, train less and reduce the chance of injuries. So to avoid the dilemma, with each workout add a little more weight until you get a weight that you can't achieve 15 reps (repetitions). Your goal now is to one day be able to achieve 15 with that weight. When you can achieve 15 reps your strength has increased, so increase the weight slightly at your next workout so you will only get about 10 reps again. Repeat the procedure each workout working your way back to 15 reps then increase once again the weight.
1) Always warm-up performing a low intensity cardio for 5-10 minutes which will increase oxygen and blood to the muscles you will be working. Next, warm-up performing exercises pertaining to the specific major muscle groups being worked with compound (more than one joint involved) exercises for 1 to 2 sets maximum.
2) Train slow and controlled at all times. Use a 2 second count lifting (also known as the concentric or positive phase) the weight, pause for one second between the two phases to maximize the contraction, then lower (also known as the essentric or negative phase) the weight for a 4 second count. To make the counting easier, you could just do a 4 second lift, 1 second pause and 4 second lower but, I guarantee you that the slight change will make the workout much harder.
3) Always breathe, don't hold your breath. Breathe outward on the lifting phase of the exercise which will always be the most difficult phase to perform, and breathe inward when lowering the weight. An example would be when performing the bench press, breathe inward as you lower the barbell toward the chest and outward when pressing the barbell upward away from the chest.
4) Do not change the order of the program. Each level starts off with one or two isolation exercises (pre-exhaustive or single joint) focusing on the primary muscle group being worked. Why, it's usually the small muscles that fatigue first when working the major muscles such as chest. So, you end up doing many sets to fatigue that major group. This usually overtrain's the smaller muscles (such as the triceps) slowly bringing on injuries such as tendinitis. Performing the isolation exercises fatigues the primary (bigger) muscles first then allows the smaller to be fresh and fatigue more closely with the primary group. This also plays a great role in avoiding those tendinitis injuries.
Fitness terms:
Set - A number of repetitions of a movement equals one set, such as a Barbell Curl or a Leg Press. A set may have 8 reps, for example.
Repetitions - Repetitions also known as reps is a single movement, as in doing one Leg Press. It would be as going down and then going back up. That would be one rep.
Breathing - Always breathe even if you have trouble remembering which way is the correct way to breathe. Breathe out when lifting (concentric movement) the weight and in when lowering (essentric movement) the weight. Momentarily holding breath is ok, but don't hold for over 2 seconds to avoid lack of oxygen flow to the brain. That could cause you to get dizzy or faint.
Concentric - Shortening of the muscle and involved in the lifting motion of an exercise.
Essentric - Lengthening of the muscle and involved in the lowering motion of an exercise.
I will post an intermediate circuit exercise program in a few weeks. This program will take you to the next step towards your strengthening, conditioning and fat loss goals.
You can find pictures and instructions on how to perform the exercises for the workouts at my personal training website by clicking here.
So what are you waiting for? Move it move it!!!! Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today. The body you desire is just around the corner so don't waste anymore time and go after it NOW!!!
Interested in receiving my bi-monthly Phil's Get-Fit-R e-Newsletter filled with content rich health & fitness articles, tips and tasty healthy Fat Loss and Muscle Gaining recipes? Click here for more information and also to subscribe.
No comments:
Post a Comment