Hybrid Workout Week 6

Ok- so for Hybrid Week 6- I was actually SUPPOSED to be on a beach, but my trip got canceled, and thanks to a variety of aggravating circumstances it never materialized. 2 days, 2 different airports, a malfunctioning airplane and the like…all with a tired, impatient, wiggly toddler…meant I had my first staycation. I *don’t* recommend this for anyone! *sigh* Anyway.

The one positive thing is that I get to head to the gym this week for Week 6 of Hybrid. My weight is amazingly and gradually inching up (yeay!) and I’m still making strength gains. I’m at 116 now and it’s inching upwards.

For my upper body hypertrophy day, I’m trying to challenge myself with shorter than 1 minute for rest periods. For some reason, and maybe it’s because I’ve been starting with incline DB presses I’m not seeing much improvement in weight here. I’m stuck at the 35 and 40 lb DBs but I see 10 lb improvements in lat pulldowns (which come after the chest part on upper body hypertrophy days). I’ve also introduced cross bench DB pullovers and although I’m using the 40s, I’m getting in more reps with the same amount of weight than the last time I tried this. I gradually need to increase the rest from 45 seconds to 1 minute by the time I hit shoulders. I happily note a 5 lb increase for side lateral raises for shoulders (last time it was a special 16 lb DB for 12 and 10 reps for sets 1 and 2, and this time it’s 20 lbs for 8 reps for both sets- yeah!) , break even with seated DB presses for shoulders, but come out better with standing barbell curls.

My happy moment this week was seeing a big improvement in my front squat! This is one of the exercises for the legs that was challenging at first because of the bar placement, but now everything seems to be fitting just right! I break the 100 lb mark which is a personal record for 8 reps, discover how much fun walking barbell lunges are (everyone just kind of clears the way for you! and hello, feel them right away in the glutes!). It’s my first time doing these for lower body hypertrophy day, so I’m using 75 lbs on the extra long olympic barbell for 12 reps, and I am confident I can tackle more weight next time. I come out even with the leg extension but see an improvement in the seated leg curl.

The third day and final Hybrid day this week is a Total Body HIIT day. Seriously- I think I’m fitter than the average bear, but GEEZ this day NEVER gets easier! I complete 20 minutes of HIIT (a total of 10 sprints) on the elliptical then wobble off to the chin, squat, bench circuit. I do rope chinups today and get through 8, 6, and 5 reps.

This is actually not an improvement from before (wah!) but I remember a fellow BBR member saying these get harder as you get heavier. I’m hoping he’s not right! In any event, I’m actually seeing an improvement in the bench and squat weight for the circuit, squatting 95 for 15 reps and 70 lbs for the bench for 15 reps.

This represents a 10 lb increase for the squats. I finish with one of the most butt-kicking cardio machine known to Sumi- the step mill. For those of you that haven’t seen this cardio machine, it’s like an escalator that never ends. 20 minutes on this thing at level 6 and I’m the definition of toast. The awesome thing about this machine is that you can really squeeze the glutes with each step. I haven’t seen this machine at many gyms and probably with good reason. It’s hard as heck!

Please feel free to leave some comments or suggestions below. Lots of people at the gym are asking me what “I’m doing” and it’s fun to be able to represent such an awesome program like the Hybrid! OK time to go eat!

Sumi is an experienced group fitness instructor, personal trainer, full-time public policy manager, and mom to two-year old Shaila.  She has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Tufts University and a Masters in Environmental Management from Duke University. Her passion for fitness gives her the stress relieving release that keeps her going!

A life-long weight-training addict, some of her most proud fitness accomplishments include: losing all the baby weight just eight weeks after a C-section; bench pressing her own body weight; and placing in her age class in several 5 Ks.

Her personal fitness journey continues to get better and more exciting with time. While she loves to lead by example and inspire people to "go for it," her ultimate goal is to be a great mom.  Her daughter’s name, Shaila, means the Goddess of Strength and Confidence. Sumi owes it to her to be strong and confident so that she, too, can realize her full potential!

Sunny is currently following Will Brink's Hybrid Workout program which comes free with the deluxe edition of Will Brink's Bodybuilding Revealed.

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Your Fat Burning Workout How To Burn Fat Faster

Fat Burning Workout How To Burn Fat Faster

By the end of this article you will have the information you will need to set up your own fat burning workout.

Let's look at How To Burn fat and Your Fat Burning Workout.

Fat Burning Fact

In order to burn one pound of fat, you have to create a total caloric deficit of 3,500 calories. Aim for 500 calories a day so that you total the 3,500 calories over the course of one week.

Many people underestimate just how long it can take to burn fat and calories contained in many of their favorite foods. For three minutes of eating pleasure, you may have to spend an extra hour working out. For fat burning, look to make small changes in your diet.

In order to burn fat, however, you must be in a caloric deficit, which you can do by reducing the number of calories you eat each day or increasing your energy expenditure through exercise. For fat burning fast do a combination of both.

Your Fat Burning Workout - Burn Fat Not Muscle

Fat Burning Fact: the more lean muscle you have the higher your metabolism. The higher your metabolism equals more fat burning.

When it comes to your fat burning workout what's your first thought? cardio training. Good for fat burning but there is more to it. Cardio training with circuit training and interval training is great I highly recommend them for a fat burning workout. To get the permanent results in fat loss we want don't under estimate weight training.

Weight training for fat burning boosts your metabolism during and long after your fat burning workout is over. Weight training will help you not only maintain but gain lean muscle, creating an increase in metabolism and fat burning.

Cardio training will only cause a short rise in metaboliism for an hour or two after your fat burning workout, burning less calories compared with weight training.

Overdoing cardio will decrease your lean muscle, your metabolism can slow down decreasing your fat burning efforts.

Weight training will help change the way you look, replacing fat with muscle, changing your body composition.

A weight training fat burning workout is a great alternative to cardio and will give you better, more visible results...

Your Ultimate Fat Burning Workout:

* Do 3 weight training workouts a week.
* Concentrate on compound exercises squats,deadlifts, presses, rows etc.
* Do 3-5 exercises 3-5 reps and 3-5 sets per
* Do 2-3 Interval training/Circuit training workouts a week
keep your fat burning workout to about 20 minutes.

while cardio may make you lose weight, weight lifting will help you lose body fat, altering your body composition.

Weight training will help change the way you look completely, giving the impression that you’ve replaced fat with muscle and are actually working at improving your body and changing your body composition.

Lose 10 Pounds Of Fat In A Month

Are you still stuck on the marathon aerobics workout nonsense?

Have you ever lost 10 lbs of Fat in a Month? I'm not talking weight loss I'm talking Fat Loss( there is a difference) but you knew that already.

Let me introduce you to circuit training. Read through this whole article use the sample workout at the end and you will be on your way to losing around 2 lbs of fat a week. As long as you are also eating clean but that is another article.

Many people simply don't get what circuit training is and that it can be beneficial for anyone. The reason most people don't get it is beacause some of the so called trainers out there don't teach it correctly.

If you have fallen for the marathon treadmill workouts will burn fat fast lie don't feel bad. You, me and thousands of others have also. But we are done with that now. Right?

"What is circuit training"?

The purpose of circuit training is to keep you moving by only allowing you to take minimal breaks between exercises. If you absolutely must rest( this will be based on your conditioning level), you can take 30 seconds to walk around and then start again. Whatever you do, don't stop moving.

Circuit training is completely different than traditional weight-training programs, but can provide a much greater boost to your metabolism than plain cardio. Circuit training, works because it causes you to keep pushing your body aerobically, while still challenging you anaerobically.

The Misconception About Circuit Training

If you're like many men, you probably think that circuit training is something a woman does with really light weights. This is probably because you associate no rest periods with light weights, and if you are trying to increase your strength, you likely think you need to be lifting as much weight as possible.

However, muscle responds to the total tension produced. If you use lighter weights, but are able to get in more sets during a certain period of time, you will produce the same -- if not more -- total tension and will stimulate your muscles to grow.

Try the follow program; you'll see, it will give you a run for your money.

Circuit Training benefits

First, it allows you to work your aerobic system while simultaneously working on your strength. Since you are constantly progressing through the workout, you will keep your heart rate up, getting much more out of it than guy who mindlessly logs all those miles on the treadmill.

Second, due to fewer rest periods, you will increase the amount of testosterone you release, which serves to help your muscles grow. While it is true that if you were to perform long aerobic sessions, your testosterone level would drop and you would start to release cortisol (which causes the body to break down muscle tissue), this workout won't take that long to complete. Therefore, you won't reach the time required to start this cortisol-releasing process.

Finally, since you will move through this workout quickly, you won't have to spend long hours in the gym, and you will be able to spend your time doing the things that you never seemed to have time for when you were making the gym your second home.

Try out this sample workout and decide if you still think circuit training is for girly men

The Sample Circuit Training Workout

This circuit training workout consists of 5 different exercises to be performed a total of six times. Perform 10 reps of each exercise before moving on to the next one. Once you have completed all six exercises, start the sequence over again.

Over time, you can gradually increase your number of reps to 20 per exercise; however, this is intense, so start slowly.

1) Mountain Climbers. While in the push-up position bring your left knee up to your chest, now do the same with the right leg. You may need to practice these a little to get a rythem and feel for mountain climbers. A great bodyweight exercise.

2) Pushups. Remember to keep your hands approximately at chest level in order to target the proper muscles. You may not know this (most people don't) but to really do push-ups correctly and get the most out of them keep your elbows close to your body.

3) Squats. You don't need to use weights ( but use them if you have them); If not do prisoner squats clasp your hans behind your head and squat down below parallel.

4) Barbell, Dumbbell or Kettlebell Cleans A fantastic total body workout in one exercise. One of my personal favorites.

5) Burpees. Start in a standing position, squat down and place your hands on the floor. Kick your legs out behind you, hold for a second, then bring your legs back to your hands. Next, explode off the floor, straightening up at the waist and jumping as high as you can. Land and bring your hands to the floor once again; this is one rep.

After completing all 5 exercises rest per your conditioning level( absolute begginner 90-120 seconds you will have to judge this for yourself). Work to decrease your rest times.

a final note

Since this workout does not target all of the muscles in your body, it is still best to include a normal strength-training routine in your program. This will keep your body balanced and ensure you are still strengthening all the muscle groups.

Circuit is a great thing to include in your workout when you are feeling like you are reaching a plateau or you're just ready to try something new to kick-start your metabolism and kick your workout up a notch.

Since it is quite intense, only perform it twice a week and be sure to take at least one day off in between. To progress and keep stimulating your body, try incorporating different versions of each exercise, such as one-hand pushups or clap pushups, and turned-out squats or squat jumps.

Hopefully, by set five of this program, you will have a newfound respect for circuit training.

You Fit And healthy

How to live a life of Health and Fitness

With cancer cropping up left and right, people are suddenly becoming more conscious with what they eat and do with their bodies. Fad diets have become a craze and so are gym workouts and alternative exercise for the body. But despite being the in thing to do right now, some people still find it hard to start walking the road to a life of health and fitness. After all, when you have already lived a life of debauchery, it will be harder to convert and walk the other road even if it is not as less traveled by.

To help you, here are some of the ways that you can start with your healthy lifestyle.

1. Don’t smoke If you do not have the habit of smoking, good for you. Don’t try to start as you will only get addicted with the cigarettes and it will be harder to quit when that happens. It is not true that you can smoke and quite when you want to. It’s not. Once you become hooked into it, there is no turning back. If you are already part of those people who burn their lungs out everyday, the best bet is to make a commitment to quit. By doing this, you are already halfway to recovery. Make sure though that you are serious with your plans and you are not just doing it for any other reason than your health.

2. Lessen the junk One of the ways you can help keep your body healthy is to eat foods that are more natural and with less chemical content. Avoid eating junk foods like those huge packs of potato chips or binge on candies. You should also make it a point to lessen your intake of meats and consume more vegetables, fruits and seafood. This does not mean that you will forgo with meat altogether. You should still eat meat. The protein that it contains is important for some of the basic processes of the body.

3. Skip the Soda and even the iced tea As much as you can, drink water. This is the safest and healthiest drink there is. Sodas even the diet ones, are carbonated and contain high amounts of sugar and carbohydrates which can later be translated into fats. You can also try drinking green tea which can help in the digestive system. Iced tea may be tamer than sodas but these drinks also contain a lot of sugar which can pile up in the body. Stick to water and drink lots of it.

4. Stay active Another way to start living a life of health and fitness without having to shell out money and make lots of effort is to schedule an exercise routine every day. You can schedule it every morning when you wake up in the morning or do it at night after work. Whichever schedule you want to, make sure that you keep it to 30 minutes long to an hour. That way, you can exercise those muscles and avoid muscle pains. Exercise will also strengthen your bones and your body, promote better breathing and cellular activity, clear the brain and of course keep those extra calories out of the body. Thus, even if you eat a lot, you are not storing those fats and carbohydrates. You are expending them through your workout routine.

Tabata Training Never Say Only 4 Minutes Again

Few things in life live up to their hype . But the Tabata Training method deserves its reputation. It's a simple cardiovascular-training routine that's been proven to improve performance and fitness in a very short time 4 minutes to be exact. Sound too good to be true? It's not, and if you give it a try, you'll quickly find out why.

ONLY 4 MINUTES YOUR THINKING THIS IS BULL!

The best way for me to answer that is anyone who has done Tabata Training and done it properly never again says ONLY 4 Minutes. It's that good and that Intense.

The Tabata Protocol--named after Izumi Tabata, Ph.D., a former researcher at Japan's National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya--is an high intensity interval training workout developed by the head coach of the Japanese speed-skating team. (It's called a protocol because Tabata and his team took the speed-skating coach's workout and studied it to quantify just how effective it really was.) The workout consists of six to seven 20-second full-speed sprints interspersed with rest periods of 10 seconds.

In Tabata's study, the researchers found that guys who used the routine five days a week for six weeks improved their maximum aerobic capacity (a measure of your body's ability to consume oxygen--the more oxygen you can take in, the longer and harder you'll be able to run) by 14%. What's more, it also improved anaerobic capacity (which measures your speed endurance, or the duration you're able to sprint at full effort) by 28%. So the Tabata Protocol is the rare workout that benefits both endurance athletes and sprinters--hard to accomplish. Consider: A study of traditional aerobic training--running at 70% of aerobic capacity for 60 minutes--for the same number of weeks showed an improvement in aerobic capacity of 9.5% and no effect on anaerobic capacity.

The key to the Tabata Protocol's effectiveness appears to be the short rest intervals between sprints. Conventional interval-training guidelines suggest keeping a 1:3 work-rest ratio. That is, your rest periods should last three times as long as the duration of your sprints. But the Tabata Protocol's work-rest ratio is 2:1, which means your rest periods are only half as long as the time you're working. And according to another Tabata study, that formula isn't just more effective than traditional aerobic training, it's also more effective than typical interval training. In that other study, Tabata and his colleagues compared their original protocol to a second configuration of intervals that consisted of 30-second sprints interspersed with two-minute rest periods. Despite the fact that this required subjects to sprint for more time at a higher intensity, the original Tabata Protocol still proved more effective at boosting both aerobic and anaerobic capacity.

QUICK RESULTS

On paper, Tabata Training offers a quick way to get fit in just four minutes of high-intensity work per session. But don't be misled: This regimen is grueling. It was originally developed for Olympic-caliber athletes, and Dr. Tabata reported that they were wiped out by the routine. It's worth mentioning that when testing the protocol--described as 6-7 sets--most of the subjects were exhausted after the sixth set of sprints and couldn't complete the seventh. So this style of training isn't for a beginner and should only be considered by someone who has a solid fitness base. That includes most Men's Fitness readers, but if you're just starting to work out or you're out of shape, start easy, rest three to four times as long as your sprint duration, and see "Assess Your Risk" on page 143.

TAKE THE TABATA TEST

If you think you've got what it takes, here's the drill. First, do a five-minute warm-up by running, cycling, or jumping rope for five minutes at about 40% of your full effort. For the intervals, work on a track, treadmill,Kettlebell Swings ,Barbell Front S1quats,Dumbell Thrusts , or a heavy gym bag, and alternate 20 seconds of activity at full effort with 10-second rest periods. Each sprint-rest combo counts as one interval. After the intense section, do a five-minute cool-down in the same way you warmed up. Try to do four intervals at first, then gradually work your way up to six. Repeat the workout three to four days a week.

Assess Your Risk

Get a physical exam before trying this workout if you re over 40 or have two or more of the following risk factors: a family history of heart disease, you re a smoker, you re sedentary, you re overweight, or you have high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

See Also

Tabata Training for an in depth look at Tabata Training and additional workouts