Full Body Workout

What's up everyone?? Had a pretty good workout yesterday with a friend that I thought I would share with you guys. This workout was designed to hit a majority of the large muscle groups as well as work up a good sweat. Here's the workout breakdown.

10 minute cardio warm up

Triple Set (2-1-2 tempo, 2-3 sets, 60 seconds rest between triple sets)
- Push ups (15 push ups)
- Dumb bell rows (15 reps per side)
- Should press (12-15 reps depending on weight)

Super Set (2-1-2 tempo, 2-3 sets, 60 seconds rest between super sets)
- One arm bicep curl with other arm doing isometric hold at a 90 degree angle (12-15 reps per side)
- Single leg bicycle crunch on bosu ball (finish one side and then switch, 12-15 reps)

Super Set (2-1-2 tempo, 2-3 sets, 60 seconds rest between super sets)
- Single leg lunge with back leg elevated on 12 box (finish one side then switch, 12-15 reps)
- Trunk rotation crunch on bosu ball (15 reps per side)

10 minute cardio cool down

This workout proved to be challenging and worked up a good sweat.

Until next time, get your sweat on and happy dieting.

- Joel

A Day of Celebration

Saturday the 12th, which was technically yesterday was a very good day. My girlfriend graduated with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Psychology. I'm so proud of her. All the hard work paid off. Congrats babe!!

So in celebration we had a graduation dinner celebration at Claim Jumpers.


This was my dinner. A nice rib eye steak with mashed potatoes and some veggies. I know that this meal alone is probably more calories than I should eat for my entire day but it was a time of celebration. I did spend a large majority of yesterday helping friends move so I burned my fair share of calories on top of working out with a friend earlier that day. Good job Terri by the way. Maybe next time you'll take my legs challenge.

Just thought I'd add a fee more pictures from the dinner.


















It was quite a large group of us so we had a variety of food on our table. And that was only the side of the table I was sitting on. And people wonder why America as a nation is over weight. Look at the portion size of these plates. Even the salad is giant. I've talked about before how important portion control is. So today being a special occation, portion control sort of got thrown out the window.

So I know this wasn't exactly a fitness related post but I just wanted to share a little about the good news that went down over the weekend. Hope all is well for everyone.

Until next time, get your sweat on and happy dieting.

- Joel via iPhone

Back on the Grind, Finally an update

What's up everybody? Well it's been quite a few months since I updated last. I'm finally getting my act back together and getting back to my weight loss goal. I weighed myself this morning and I'm back above the 200s. 204.6 to be exact. I'm not very happy about that but I can't say I'm surprised either. The past couple of months have been somewhat stressful to make a long story much shorter. But I think I've figured out at least part of so I feel a lot better about that.

So back to a life of calorie restriction and trips to the gym. I wish I had the discipline that my girlfriend has when it comes to calorie counting. She counts and measures everything she eats. It has become an exact science for her.

It's funny when you know you've been dieting for a while when you think of food as fuel rather than something delicious. Going to bed hungry just becomes a normal thing. The tough part is remaining disciplined enough not to get up in the middle of the night in search of a midnight snack. I really miss my salty snacks like chips and crackers. But when you realize how much more time will be needed in the gym to offset that bag of chips, they don't look as delicious. I ballpark my estimates but at least for me I can burn about 10 calories per minute on most standard pieces of cardio equipment. If the average bag of chips or can of soda is about 150 calories, that puts me at another 15 minutes of cardio just to break even for that snack. I don't know about the rest of you but I'd rather not work harder than I need to when it comes to cardio.

At some point in my life I'd like to b at a low enough body fat percentage that I could be lean enough to try to enter a body building competition. I still have a long way to go and that ultimately will come down to how on point my nutrition is. I'm not at that point where I feel comfortable restricting the specific amount of macro nutrients that I'm allowed to intake. Like most people I get irritable when I'm hungry and when I haven't had enough carbs I can get mean and snap at people. So for the sake of others around me, we'll save those low carb days for another time. Well it's getting late and I should probably wrap this up.

Until next time, get your sweat on and happy dieting.

- Joel via iPhone

Quick update

What's up everyone? I know it's been a while since I've updated my blog. Not sure how many people read this but I thought I'd do an update for the people who do visit my blog every now and then. It's been a busy couple of weeks and I have been a little bit off my diet. It just shows how you can get caught up with life and everyone gets a little off track with their own fitness goals. For some of us, we deal with stress by eating foods that aren't necessarily good for us. The last time I let junk food get the better of me and I wasn't getting enough exercise to burn it off. I've been working out about 2 times per week which isn't nearly enough for the junk food that I've eaten lately. I just need to refocus my efforts and get back on track. I can't wait for it to get warmer more consistently so I can get back in the pool and I'm thinking about combining swimming with the Insanity workouts. I hope everyone is doing okay and once I get back on track I'll get back to having tips of the day as well as showing some interesting exercise demonstrations while explaining how to do them. Until next time, Get your sweat on and happy dieting.

- Joel via iPhone

MOTIVATION!!!

What's up everyone? Its been two weeks since I last updated this blog. I had a lot of assignments, quizzes and exams to study for last week. Didn't have as much free time to update the blog like I used to. But I got it done. Its nice to stop and breathe for a little bit but have new course work to get started on so I can't relax for too long. Two things that I have to update, one is I took the Insanity - Fitness Test again. Have to stick with the program of a two week retest. The retest felt good. I started off really strong. Was

able to go full throttle for the first three exercises. Power jumps are just killer because they require you to use your entire body. And also because it is considered a power move, you are trying to be as explosive and quick as possible. It really causes your heartrate to rise very rapidly. I was only able to go full force for the first 30 seconds of the movement. I had to catch my breath for the second 30 seconds that I was supposed to be doing the power jumps. Considering that last time it took my the full 60 seconds to get 30 jumps and it took me 30 seconds to get 30 jumps I would still consider that number an improvement even though it doesn't show as a direct stat.

The second thing that I have to update is my weigh in. Weighed in at 197.6. Finally consistently weighing in under 200 lbs. That makes for a grand total of 14.2 total lbs in two whole months. Progress has slowed down slightly due to having a slightly busier schedule for the month of February. I checked back from the beginning of last month's weigh in and it was 203.8. So that was still a 6.4 lb weight loss for the month. More studying in accounting had to be done to take care of business. March will be busy as well but I should still be able to keep up the high intensity workouts. Its starting to warm up a little bit more so hopefully I'll be able to start going for a morning swim again and then also get in an Insanity workout in as well. When we get to April it going to be on like crazy. No school to worry about during April and then back to another class in May. So that means plenty of workout time and I can run slightly lower calorie intake to increase the weight loss and not suffer in the studies. You should have seen me some days during the month of January. Low calories and low carbs made me feel really slow sometimes mentally. Carbs are the primary brain fuel so got to eat enough to keep the brain working at an optimum level for studying. Good times.

TIP OF THE DAY/EXERCISE OF THE DAY:


How many people have been working on glute isolation exercises? The exercise that I'm going to be talking about today is a new and improved version of the one that most people know already.

First off, I'm going to talk about the standard glute isolation exercise that most people do already. As you can see in the picture that Shaun T is demonstrating, the standard glute isolation starts on all fours and then extends one leg out so you are now on three points of balance. Two options can then be done from this position. One, you can pulse the leg with it extended to activate the glute muscle. Or option two, you can contract and extend one leg back and forth from this position to one almost back to on all fours. I personally was never very fond of these exercise. It provided little resistance and an extremely high number of repetitions had to be done in order to get any type of substantial burn going. I find Shaun T's adaption much more challenging as it challenge more body parts besides the glute muscles.

So for Shaun T's version, start on all fours.

Next, raise your knees off the floor while keeping your toes and hands still on the ground. The nice thing about changing the stance to this way is that it causes you to use your shoulders and core a lot more to stabilize your upper body. With your knees off the ground, it activates the quads on both legs and you also use your butt to stabilize your body in this controlled position. By forcing yourself to stabilize more, you activate even more core muscles, as well as your hips.

Now, extend your leg out like in the standard glute isolation exercise. You really start to feel the burn in the front of your quad that is still on the ground. Your shoulders activate even more to keep yourself balance and in proper form. Again, you have both options to either pulse or contract and extend your leg back and forth. With this version of this standard exercise, you get more muscle group activation and makes for a much more challenging workout.


When I did this exercise, my leg that was bend supporting my body weight was on fire. I highly recommend doing this modification of this exercise as it works the body out a lot harder ultimately burning more calories which is what we all want in the long run anyway.

Anyway, that's all for tonight. Time to sign off. Get your sweat on and happy dieting.

- Joel