It’s Monday morning and I have a ‘Hannah Hangover’.
My daughter, Hannah returned from Africa last night and what I mean by a ‘Hannah Hangover’ is I stayed up super late talking to her about her Uganda adventures. I’m not much of a night owl, but with the time change for her, she couldn’t sleep and I was so excited to see her I couldn’t either.
Let me tell you how good it is to have my 18 year old home safe and sound. And how good it is to know what a good thing she did volunteering at that baby orphanage there for six weeks. I’m so proud of that kid.
It’s a busy today today of catching up with her, and squeezing in all the other things that have to get done. I decided to train in my home gym and thought I’d share with you what I did.
My back workout was super fast:
DB rows, DB pull over, band assisted pull ups, skip 100 jumps….repeat 5 times
I did 10 reps of each with as heavy a weight as possible.
Instead of intervals to finish my workout, I did this:
Do 10 rounds of:
3 burpees
3 body weight squats
3 pull ups (these can be assisted pull ups, inverted rows, or any modification needed to complete)
Ug!
My pal, Mike Whitfield is famous for his finishers and you should be using them instead of intervals. He gave me this article to share with you:
How to Replace Intervals with Finishers
Mike Whitfield, CTT
I prefer metabolic finishers over interval training, but one good question I get is, “How do I replace intervals with metabolic finishers?” That’s like asking me,”How do I make something that is already awesome into somethingawesomer?” Let’s say you are facing one of these problems:
1) You’re out of town and lack equipment
2) You used to enjoy intervals, but you found yourself in a rut or you find yourself constantly sore from interval training
3) You can’t make it to the gym
OK, you usually do interval training at the end of your workout on the treadmill. You are on a program where you run at a difficult pace (9/10 exertion) for 30 seconds, followed by 1 minute of recovery (3/10exertion). You usually do this 6-8 times for a total of 9 to 12minutes. Here is how to replace that with a metabolic workout finisher:
Do the following circuit 3 – 4 times:
1) Prisoner Squats (30 secs)
Rest 10 secs
2) Spiderman Push-ups (30 secs)
Rest 10 secs
3) Jumping Jacks (30 secs)
Rest 10 secs
4) Mountain Climbers (30 secs) (Your six-pack abs are having a blast! Party! Party!)
Rest 30 secs
If you do the math, it takes just about the same amount of time to do the metabolic finisher above as it would to do the interval training. It also doesn’t require equipment.
Another great method of interval training is KB swings. A popular method to use kettlebells for interval training is to do KB Swings for 30 seconds, and then rest for 30 seconds. That’s a great way to burn fat, but how about we tweak it a little bit for a fantastic metabolic finisher?
You can shorten your time of KB Swings to 15 seconds, followed immediately by Explosive Push-ups for 15 secs, then rest for 30 seconds. (Don’t give me that look about the Explosive Push-ups – it’s just 15 seconds).
With you reducing the amount of time invested in KB Swings, your legs won’t be as sore the next day. Also, you worked your upper body along with your lower body for extra calorie burning without having to add time to
your workouts. Boom goes the productivity dynamite.
A) You hit all major muscle groups, burning more calories (on the bike, the emphasis is on the legs and episodes of Judge Judy)
B) You are spreading the exertion all over the body, which allows your legs to be more fresh at your next workout
C) You did more in less time
You just literally turned on the six pack abs igniter.
Those are just a few ways to replace traditional interval training with metabolic workout finishers. Your legs will be fresher for your intense workouts and you will finally “finish” off that belly fat. Ohhh man, that was a good sentence. Besides, most interval training methods use the legs, so why not allow the rest of your body to help burn more fat in less time?
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If you’d like Mike’s finishers, you can grab them HERE (well worth it), And guess what? it’s his birthday so YOU get the gift of savings.
Oh, and if you want to improve your pull ups, grab my program HERE.