Thursday 3 November 2011

Our first full-body workout!

Hey everyone,

We took a few days off at the start of the week to help us recover from our colds.  Incredibly, we are still sick, but have fortunately begun to finally feel a bit better.  After three days off, we were very eager to get back into our fitness routine.  We were especially excited because today was our first full-body workout in our two-month trial.




It was a bit of a struggle to come up with today's routine.  Perhaps that is a sign that it was a necessary and beneficial change from our previous split routines - time for us to change it up.  We decided to do couplets (supersets of two exercises, repeated three times each).  Thus, we had six different exercises, repeated three times each, for a total of 18 sets in the workout:

  • A: Front squats
  • B: Alternating kettlebell rows

  • A: Pullups (weighted for Alex)
  • B: Incline bench press

  • A: Straight-leg deadlifts
  • B: Kettlebell snatches

The kettlebell snatch

The toughest part of picking the exercises was trying to select ones which sufficiently covered the most significant muscle groups.  For example, when you can only choose one exercise for your chest (whereas you normally would have two or three in a back/chest or upper-body focused split), you have to be more selective.  One thing we will have to keep in mind, however, is that in a full-body routine, we will work these muscles several times each week (instead of just once or twice).

The straight-leg deadlift


The workout was fairly long, although that could be because we took longer rest periods than we normally would.  It certainly was challenging and had a different feel from our previous workouts.  In this routine, every exercise counts.  You only have that limited opportunity to really hit that muscle group and thus have to give every exercise 100% effort...

- Alex & Tannys

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