-It has been an unbelievably nice winter so far.  Many days in the 40s and 50s, and quite a bit of sun.  This has made my transition from California back to Illinois quite a bit easier.  But the reality of living in the Midwest has hit, and hit hard…

My first time shoveling snow in about 10 years!

It has actually been kind of fun!  But the thing I hate, is when these type of conditions last month after month after month.  That’s why I’m so glad we had such a nice first part of winter.  This greatly shortens the winter season… March is only just over a month away!

-Tony Gentilcore had a really good blogpost the other day.  Q and A: My Supplement List. Tony delivers in his usual funny and informative way.  The gist of his post is this (as he points out)…

It’s been said supplements are progress enhancers, not progress starters.  If your current diet and training program isn’t getting the job done, then taking “x” supplement probably isn’t going to be the answer.

Check out the entire piece – Q and A: My Supplement List

-You want to know what is absolutely unbelievable and ridiculous?  Let me tell you; there are about a zillion toys made specifically for babies, and the only things they want to play with are (in no particular order)…

1) My watch

2) The remote control

3) My cell phone

4) All the cables by the TV

5) The dog food in the dog dish

Kids these days!  But, it’s hard to get mad at this face…

Capri in her hoodie

-Here’s a powerful picture…

Just a reminder of the power of weight lifting. Lifting can help you add muscle and as you can see, muscle takes up a lot less space than fat!  This is why the scale can be deceiving.  If person A and person B weigh exactly the same, but person A has more muscle than person B, person A will take up a lot less space (ladies, this means your clothes will fit better!).  Now go get your lift on!

-I finished off the last day of my current training block on Thursday. I’ll be starting my new program on Sunday.  It’s always exciting to start a new program.  I’ll fill you in with some of the particulars in future posts.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.  If it’s snowy in your neck of the woods, remember to take er easy on the roads.

Connect with me on twitter.

Now that the weight lifting portion is covered, lets get into the cardio portion.

Inverted Ladder

I got the concept of the “inverted ladder” from Strength Coach, Tony Gentilcore.  You can use almost any exercise while using the inverted ladder as your cardio “finisher” (right after your lifting session) of the day.  You can also do this on your non-lifting day.  Here is what an inverted ladder is;

-You choose 3 exercises (BIG compound movements, not like exercises like curls for the girls)

-The first exercise you perform just 1 rep.  Then you move onto the next exercise and perform 10 reps.  And finally, for the 3rd exercise you pick a constant number of reps and stick with it until you finish the ladder (as you’ll see below, my constant in the first video was 5 push-ups, and my constant in the second video was 3 chin-ups).  When you come back to the first exercise, you add one rep (so you are now doing 2 reps), when you go back to the second exercise, you are to do one less rep than you did in round one (so 9 instead of 10).  And finally you finish off round two with the 3rd exercise and stay with the constant number throughout (5, in the case of the push-up video).  So, it will look like this in video #1:

Medicine Ball Slams X 1 rep

Box (or bench) Jumps X 10

Push-ups X 5

Medicine Ball Slams X 2

Box Jumps X 9

Push-ups X 5

Medicine Ball Slam X 3

Box Jumps X 8

Push-ups X 5

Continue with this until you are up to 10 reps on the medicine ball slams, and down to 1 rep on the box jumps.  Time yourself and then try to beat it the next time you do the same exercise sequence.

And the next video with the 3 exercises … 1) Kettlebell Swings (use a dumbbell(s) if you don’t have a kettlebell 2) Broad Jumps, 3) Chin-ups (3 reps as the “constant” in this circuit)

Do you think I taped only a portion of the entire session because;

A) I didn’t want to show off?

B) I was too tired to do the whole thing?

C) I didn’t want to make you bored by watching the entire session?

If you answered “A” then you are wrong – I didwant to show off, I was just too tired.  So, the answer is B + C.  If that was your answer congratulations, your major award will be shipped to your house on December 23rd (and Ralphie will be delivering it).

I’ve been using the inverted ladder with my clients over the last few weeks and they’ve been loving it!  Well, maybe “love” is a little stong.  Their enjoyment of the ladder has been somewhere between the enjoyment of a relaxing 90-minute massage and a punch to the stomach… that means they kind of like it, but don’t love it.  And it also means they like it WAAAY more than running on the treadmill for 30-minutes although they also seem to like a punch to the stomach more than a 30-minute jog on the treadmill.  But I digress.

Exercise Selection

As mentioned above, pick BIG compound movements.  After all, this is the cardio portion of the workout.  So “isolation” movements like calf raises or I don’t know, blinking, just won’t cut it.  Also, thinkof this as using weights to get your heart rate up to make your cardio session harder.  Do NOT think of the inverted ladder as your lifting session.  I had one of my on-line clients tell me that he used 40 pound dumbbells for one of his exercises (push presses) and said that he could barely finish.  Well duh, his 10 RM (rep max) is about 40 pounds.  I suggested next time he tries , to go with about 25 pounds.  Again, that will be more than enough to get his heart to feel like it is going to fly out of his chest, but not too much weight that the shoulders become the limiting factor (rather than his heart ‘n lungs). 

One more thing, if you are going to use a body weight exercise as one of your 3 exercises, make sure that it is one that doesn’t get you too close to muscular failure after 3-5 reps.  I chose chin-ups in one of the circuits because if I only had to do one set of chins, I could get over 20.  Therefore chins are a good choice for me.  If you can only get 4-5 chins, I’d go with another exercise if I were you.  Something like inverted rows would be a great substitute.

So there you go.  Your lifting session (again, from the routines I gave you HERE), plus the finisher will get you in and out and on with your day… just leaner than you were before!