Dynamic Legs and Core Workout

Today’s workout combines five exercises each from Mark Lauren’s You Are Your Own Gym (YAYOG) and the Accelerated Series Core Workout from Tony Horton Fitness (THF).  With multi-dimensional, full-body moves, it is designed to get all of your joints moving and rock all four sides of the core.  Move from one exercise to the next without rest, and you’ll get an intense cardio workout as well — both aerobic and anaerobic.

Warmup – At 48 years of age, I need a good 8 minutes to warm up before working out in the morning.

1. Dynamic squats – 20 reps (unweighted):  In a sumo squat position, lower until legs are parallel to the floor.  Leap up in the air, bring legs together, land and sink into a squat position again.  Leap up from that position and spread legs apart to land back in the sumo position.  (YAYOG)
2. Scissor ball – 10-12 reps:  From a tuck position on your back, roll into a yoga “boat” pose with scissored legs (one leg up).  Hold for a couple of seconds and then roll back to the tuck and repeat with the other leg scissored. (THF)
3. One-legged Romanian deadlift – 10-reps:  Standing on one leg, extend the other leg behind you, bend forward at the waist and touch the floor.  Return to standing position and repeat.  Do all 10 reps with one leg and then repeat with the other leg. (YAYOG)
4. Hip-up twist – 10 total reps per side:  Balance on one side with stacked feet, elbow bent and forearm on the floor.  Lift your hip up to the ceiling for two reps, then turn feet into pushup position and twist the free arm under your chest as far as it will go.  Stack feet again and repeat. (THF)
5. One-legged squat jumps –  15-20 reps per side: From a lunge position, leap into the air as high as you can.  Land in the lunge position on the same leg and repeat.  Complete all reps for one leg and then do the same with the other leg. (YAYOG)
6. Bridge burner – 10 reps:  Start in the what Tony calls the “banana” position, lying on your back, arms stretched over head.  Torso and legs elevated 15-30 degrees.  Pull yourself up into a yoga “boat” pose — torso and legs make a “V” — arms in front parallel to the floor.  Perform four mason twists in the boat post — twist and touch knuckles to floor on each side.  Return to banana position and repeat. (THF)
7. Hip raiser – 10 reps:  Lay on back with legs bent.  Put hands down by sides and push up into a yoga “table” position, trying to create a straight line with your thighs and torso.  Hold for five seconds then lower and repeat.  (YAYOG)
8. Downward dog crunches – four sets per leg, 24 crunches total:  Start in a yoga downward dog position — body in V facing the floor with arms and legs straight.  Lift left leg up and back and then bring it forward to touch your knee to your  right elbow, bring it back and up and then crunch forward to touch your knee to your forehead, bring it back a third time and then touch your knee to the left elbow.  Repeat with other leg. (THF)
9. Burpees – 12 reps:  The classic maneuver.  From a standing position with legs together, crouch down and jump legs back to a pushup position.  Perform a pushup and then leap legs back to your hands.  From that position jump into the air.  Land back in the crouched, squat position and repeat.  (YAYOG)
10. Teaser — 10 reps:  Tuck into a ball on your back with knees to chest and arms wrapped around legs.  In one motion, sweep arms up, out to the sides and then in front of you while raising up into the Yoga boat position. Hold for  few seconds and then repeat. (THF)

You’ll definitely want to watch Tony Horton’s video on YouTube to understand his core moves.

Go through the entire sequence twice for an awesome workout.  With the warmup, it took me 54 minutes to complete.

Today’s invented workout

Today, my workout objective was to complete a series of intense intervals, going anaerobic with compound, multi-dimensional movements that worked the entire body.  While lying in bed this morning, I devised this cross-fit inspired set of exercises to achieve that objective.

1. Double over-unders x 12 reps — With the olympic bar on a low setting on the squat rack, squat laterally under the bar and back and then immediately step laterally over the bar and back.
2. Burpees x 12 reps — The classic exercise — squat with hands on floor alongside feet, kick feet back into plank position, do a pushup, return to squat, leap in the air and then repeat.
3. Bench vaults x 12 reps — Place both hands on a bench with both feet on one side. Quickly vault over the bench from side-to-side.  Over and back is one rep.
4. Revolving door hang x 8 reps — Hang from the pull-up bar with an overhand grip.  Switch hands to rotate around and face the opposite way.  Each half rotation is one rep.
5. Crab to bear x 12 reps — Start in a crab walk position, lean forward into a squat and kick legs back into a bear crawl position. Then reverse the motion to return to the crab walk position.
6.  Jab, cross, hook uppercut x 20 reps on each side — Air boxing a la P90X KenpoX

I did this routine three times in approximately 36 minutes.  The toughest elements were the Burpees and(surprisingly) the revolving door hang.  By moving quickly from one exercise to the next, I kept my heart rate pretty high.  You’ll note that the exercises were staged to allow recovery of the primary muscles fatigued in each set.  Overall, it was a great way to get everything moving, get the blood pumping and start the day!

No gym? No problem!

One of the key principles of Resilient Fitness is mixing things up — trying different exercise to hit body parts a different way, keep joints balanced, maintain healthy connective tissue and simply keep things interesting.  I admit that I was first introduced to the concept with P90X where Tony Horton uses the term “muscle confusion” and promotes it as a way to accelerate fitness gains by preventing adaptation. Of course, after several 90 day sessions, even P90X starts to get monotonous (ab ripper X — 30 times over 12 weeks, ugh!!).  Having a full retinue of exercises in your fitness toolkit ensures that you never get bored.  It can also help you identify weak spots while giving you the means to address them.

I’m always on the lookout for new and creative exercises, and therefore I was pretty excited to stumble across You Are Your Own Gym  — an exercise book/program billed as “the bible of bodyweight exercises”.    The author, Mark Lauren, is a special operations physical trainer who was tasked with developing exercise programs that special ops forces could use to maintain peak “mission ready” fitness no matter where they were based.  He has applied many of the same principles in You Are Your Own Gym, assembling a comprehensive collection of exercises that can be done anywhere without equipment.  To be honest, I actually did not purchase Mark’s book.  I’m sure it has useful insights and an interesting perspective on building a fitness and nutrition program, but what really got me excited about You Are Your Own Gym is the mobile app — which I did purchase from the Google Play store for $1.99.

The You Are Your Own Gym app is a bargain.  It includes over 200 different body weight exercises organized by muscle or by muscle groups (Push, Pull, Legs, Core and Whole Body), and each exercise has detailed text and pictures explaining what to do.  You can even install the extra YAYOG Video Pack for free if you want to see the exercises in motion.  The app includes several features in the “Start Working Out” section — enabling you to follow preset workouts as part of the four different You Are Your Own Gym 10 week programs or to build your own workout.   The app will guide you through each workout, timing sets and rest periods and allowing you to record the number of reps so that you can track your progress over time.   The other day, I tried one of the “Quick Workouts” (another feature) — opting for the intermediate circuit with 10 sets.  This consisted of four exercises — squats, pushups, swimmers and mountain climbers, each completed as 30 second tabatas (20s workout, 10s rest).  It was a killer full-body routine!

Even if you are not interested in following the pre-set workouts in You Are Your Own Gym, it’s a great app because of the many different exercise ideas that it provides.  Let’s say you are traveling, and you need a quick workout that hits your core and legs.  With the app on your phone, it’s easy to find exercises that will do the job, not require any equipment and can be done in your hotel room.   And of course, you can do the exercises at home as well.  You Are Your Own Gym is an excellent addition to your fitness toolkit and a great way to add variety to any fitness routine.

Getting the most out of every workout

In today’s post, I’m going to reveal the key to effective workouts, the “secret” technique that fitness trainers, exercise physiologists, olympic athletes, and professional body builders all incorporate into their regimens.  It has nothing to do with heart rate monitoring, VO2 max, super sets, pre-exhaustion or any other advanced technique.  It is something that everyone who exercises can (and should) apply to their workouts, and — like all universal truths — it is elegant in its simplicity….So, what is this amazing principle?  It’s this … Set a concrete objective for each workout.

Of course, that seems pretty simple, but the challenge comes in setting meaningful objectives.  Note that I use the term objective — not goal.  A fitness goal is a longer term target — like “losing 25 lbs” or “running a 5k  at a 6:30 pace”, and goals are very important in the context of an overall fitness program.  Objectives, however, are short term and much more functionally specific.  They set the context for your workout — in effect, providing an answer to the question, “Why am I working out today?”

Meaningful objectives are those that create a purpose for each element of the workout and enable some quantitative or qualitative assessment of success.  There’s a clear distinction between meaningful objective and those that are meaningless.  If they are meaningful, you should get a sense of accomplishment when the workout is completed. If they are meaningless, then you will be asking yourself, “what exactly did I accomplish by doing that?”  In the table below, I’ve listed several examples of meaningless objectives and details that can make them meaningful.

Meaningless Workout Objective	Meaningful Objective
Work chest and legs	Strength workout, Chest and Legs — pyramid sets with 5% more weight than previous routine
Run for 40 minutes	Endurance workout — run 40 minutes at 50%-75% max heart rate
Swim 30 laps	Swim stroke efficiency workout — 30 laps at less than 17 strokes per length.
Cycling 25 miles	Hill climbing workout — 10 hill climbs — each successive climb faster than the previous climb
Stretch	General warmup up and loosening of legs and back
Elliptical trainer for 1 hour	Um….can’t think of any way to to make this meaningful!!

Obviously, workout objectives are readily defined within the context of an overall fitness plan — designed to reach specific goals, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated.  I’m currently in a routine where each day I gauge what I feel like doing and then develop my workout objectives accordingly.  The important thing is to use your workout time most efficiently by knowing what you want to accomplish.  If you develop objectives consistently and apply that practice over the course of several weeks, you will get in the habit of making the most out of every workout.

Snow Tromping!

Today’s workout is a great example of the Resilient Fitness philosophy.  Normally, I like to run on the weekends, but we’ve had almost two feet of snow in the last week, and the sidewalks are not fit for any type of running workout.

It’s a great morning for snow tromping!

I could have gone for swim (at the gym) or ride my bike on an indoor trainer, but I wanted a more comprehensive cardio workout and I didn’t have a lot of options (I don’t have access to an indoor track, and in my opinion, treadmills are the modern version of medieval torture equipment.).  The solution was “Snow Tromping!”   I put on my boots and snow gear, wandered out to the wooded area that borders my property, and tromped through the deep snow for 45 minutes.   In addition to the deep snow, other obstacles included random piles of tree branches from logging that was done this summer and a fairly steep ravine leading down to a stream.  The tromping itself kept my heart rate up and had me sweating, and I climbed the ravine five times in a bear crawl as a sort of interval training (an anaerobic effort like no other!).  This was a really fun workout.  It had the cardio intensity that I wanted, incorporated compound, full-body movements, and got me outside in the fresh air on a beautiful morning.  Resilient Fitness is all about creatively adapting to the situation to achieve the desired fitness objectives.  It may not be possible for every workout, but it’s worth taking advantage of when you have the opportunity.

The Genesis of Resilient Fitness

As a 40-something, married father of three young kids, I am smack dab in the middle of the chaotic, time-crushed years of middle age, and like most of my peers, I am constantly juggling the demands of multiple responsibilities, all competing for my time and attention and none quite getting the time they deserve.  Included in this mix (of course) is the responsibility of staying healthy and keeping fit, and as those of you who are in similar situations can attest, it’s an ongoing challenge.

I’ve exercised regularly for most of my adult life, consistently maintaining some sort of strength training and cardio regimen for over 30 years, and my training has evolved as my fitness goals have changed and my free time has become more scarce.   An engineer at heart, I’ve also focused on understanding what works.  Through reading, experimentation, trying different programs and applying common sense, I’ve learned what works (for me) in terms of exercise and nutrition, adapting my regimen to accommodate  changing situations, work demands, nagging injuries and family priorities while maintaining a reasonable level of fitness.

That’s why this blog is called Resilient Fitness.  It’s about being flexible in how fitness goals are achieved — adapting, improvising and adjusting routines to work effectively within a busy lifestyle.  I’m still learning, and Resilient Fitness is my attempt to chronicle that ongoing effort and share what I’ve discovered.  I’ll cover a broad spectrum of fitness topics — popular programs like P90X and Cross Fit, exercise equipment, triathlon training, food/nutrition, physiology and work/life/health balance — all from the perspective of a guy who also has to work for a living, be a good father and loving husband, maintain the yard and house, call his Mom regularly, etc.

Welcome to my blog…I hope you find it helpful!