We did Chest and Abs this morning. Loved it. Some of it was tough but that's part of the love. Yesterday was legs and that's just a killer workout. Next week is Recovery Week and then I switch things up again for a month. I've already designed my workout schedule for next month.
I've taken it down to something very simple. 4 or 5 exercises each day, done in circuit fashion, completing as many circuits as possible. Super simple but not super easy. I created 4 different workouts that will rotate through 5 days of exercising. This means that the workout done on Monday will also be done on Friday. The next Monday will be a different workout but that one will be repeated on that Friday. So it will go and by the end of the month, each of the 4 workouts will have had their time in the limelight, being used on a Monday and Friday of the same week.
This is something that I started doing a couple of months ago and I really like it. The first month that I did this, I threw in a cardio day as one of the workouts just for fun. You know, there aren't a lot of rules for these things. Do whatever it is that keeps you challenged and interested in working out.
One of the exercises that we'll be doing next week is Band Push-Ups. These things are tough. Well, it depends on what level of band you use and how much slack you take out of the band at the beginning of the exercise but this exercise certainly has the potential to be tough. Watch this and see if you don't agree:
I did these this morning as part of my chest workout. I don't do them every month but I'm going to do them again next month. Imagine doing 4 or 5 sets of these. Talk about quivering. By the time you're done, you feel like you've tied to the ground. You can't push back up at all. The band just pins you to the floor.
I eluded to it in the video but I'll make it clear here. Make sure that you buy quality resistance bands. I bought that little purple band for beginners back when I taught a women-only class. One of my beginning women in that class snapped one of these purple bands doing one-arm rows. No one was hurt, not even a sting from the loose end whipping up toward her arm but I can tell you that no one uses these little purple bands anymore.
All the bands that are used in my class are from BeachBody. Mainly because I bought most of them but even the ones that were bought by participants were bought from BeachBody because we trust their equipment.
The black band here is definitely a resistance band, heavy on the resistance. They have bands for all levels of resistance and the cool thing about bands is that by changing the amount of slack, you can ease off the pressure of a hard band, or increase the pressure of an easier band. You could get one medium band and use it for a wide variety of exercises because of this. It's a great inexpensive answer to get some exercise equipment.
As I've mentioned in some of the video posts, there is a lot that you can do with just body weight but there are a couple of body parts that are designed for pulling and they are hard to work with just body weight. Back and Biceps being prime examples. If you have a pull-up bar, you can work these but you can do all kinds of exercises for them if you have even one resistance band.
Most of the people in my class bought a set of three bands so they had options. If you had one that's super tough, you might have to leave so much slack for a motion that for most of an exercise, there was no resistance. Or, if you took out the slack, you wouldn't be able to do the whole range of motion. There is a huge variance in muscle strength between, for example, your legs and your arms. You might want a higher level band to do squats with but a lower level band to do curls. Again, with a band that was somewhere between the two, you could probably make it work but these things are inexpensive enough that it's worth having at least 2 or 3 of them.
I had no intention of going into that much detail on bands but hopefully the information is helpful. Let's get back to the topic of this post.
If you can crank out more than a dozen push-ups and you want to work on your strength, add a band to your push-ups to make them that much harder. Keep your back straight. Don't let the band make a sway-back out of you. If the band seems to be winning, give yourself some more slack. Create slack when you are laying on the ground because these things can get a mind of their own if you loosen your grip while they are under tension.
Try these out let me know if they were hard enough for you.
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