Challenge Workouts

It’s sort of a rude question, isn’t it? How do YOU feel when you get asked your age?

Are you honest with your answer?

I’ve never really understood the benefit of lying about my age.

While I’m not thrilled to be over 50, it’s nice to see the surprised look on the face of the person that finds this fact out. (I get a little uncomfortable so I always comment that the person must have failing eyesight or something.)

Of course I secretly am pleased that I don’t look my age. (When I was 10 years old, age 51 was ‘old as dirt’, but the older I get, dirt seems to get older too.)

What’s the secret to looking young? Well, it’s not found in a cosmetics bottle, unless you could purchase good old-fashioned sweat.

In a nutshell, here’s a secret:
Immediately after the right style exercise your body produces elevated levels of testosterone (T), growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). Serra, C. et al. (2011). The role of GH and IGF-1 in mediating anabolic effects of testosterone on androgen-responsive muscle. Endocrinology, 152, 1, 193-206.
These hormones are all necessary for repair and development of lean muscle and lean muscle is really the fountain of youth.
When you add lean muscle, you get sexy in all the right places, your metabolism skyrockets to burn more fat, your functional fitness improves and your mood is elevated.
Is it too much to say that your entire quality of life improves? It sure works for me….
Here’s a fun ‘anti-aging’ workout that’ll create the right hormonal environment so that you can actually turn back the hands of time:

Six Feet ABOVE Ground
AMRAP set: AMRAP means ‘as many rounds as possible’.

Count the total rounds completed in 12 minutes.

Equipment: Timer
Exercises:
– 6 squat jumps (full body extensions or squats)
– 6 decline push ups (regular or modified push up)
– 6 (per leg) spider crawl
– 6 (per leg) jumping lunges (reverse lunge)
– 6 pull ups (assisted pull up)

You will repeat this circuit in AMRAP style for 12 minutes.
Want more of this sort of workout?
How about month of fun home workouts that’ll kick your belly fat to the curb? You’ll need about 20 minutes with very little equipment and space.

And the price is right 😉

You’ll get these free when you grab my Challenge Complexes program.

Now, you’re going to be hearing about Challenge Complexes this week from my friends and me.

It just so happens that training with complexes is the new ‘cardio’.

Did you know that traditional cardio increases your cortisol production and can lead to muscle and strength loss?

Also a recent study at the University of Tampa showed that adding ‘Jogging’ to a weight training program decreased strength gains by 50%.

If you’re getting weaker you’re losing muscle. And if you’re losing muscle, your fat percentage is going up. Getting fatter is NOT part of my anti-aging plan!

Your workouts can actually be your anti-aging magic bullet, or literally the ‘kiss of death’ when it comes to looking and feeling younger.

Take it from me – probably one of the oldest women in the fitness industry that has year round visible abs, only trains 20-30 minutes a day and doesn’t survive on a lettuce leaf daily – you want to try these workouts.

Here’s the ultimate anti-aging workout and cardio replacement

Don’t lie about your age, just use your training to help you look younger 😉

Start with the workout above and continue with these workouts.

If you don’t use it, you lose it.

That’s how it goes with muscle.

But what if you can’t exercise to work your muscles because you’ve lost mobility? Well, if you don’t remain flexible, you lose what flexibility you have too :/

This will open you up to a ton of injuries and it’s a slippery slope to being sidelined and losing more muscle, strength and more mobility (man, this is a bad downward spiral…)

This is a serious issue with many of my fitness boot campers. For them, I use my friend, Eric Wong’s tips and tricks to increase flexibility to help them.

He’s got some great flexibility tips HERE.

Hip mobility is a problem for many. When you address hip mobility, you’ll improve many things including your basic body weight squat.

With increased flexibility, you’ll be able to go deeper when you squat. And when you go deeper, you’ll build a more shapely bum, and seriously, isn’t that what it’s all about?

(Well, no, but that’s a nice side benefit 😉

Follow this system for at least 7 days to get flexible hips.

After 7 days of following the program as Eric outlined, you can expect to feel looser when doing things like squatting down and lunging.

After 14 days of following the program, you can expect to feel faster and more powerful and little chronic nagging injuries like knee pain and back pain will diminish.

And after 28 days, you can expect to feel looser than you have in YEARS. I don’t know about you, but this is the best part.

If you want to increase your training performance and generally just be more mobile in ‘life’, you need to maintain a certain amount of flexibility. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how little effort you need to make to have this happen.

I’ve got a few others from Eric that I don’t have images for, he really knows his stuff for QUICK increases in flexibility. These seem to keep me in pretty good working order. I spend a few minutes everyday after training to roll and stretch. Thanks to Eric, my mobility is pretty good for an ole lady 😉

Your flexibility, mobility and strength with improve with Eric’s help.

Check out his program here.

Okay, okay, so I was wrong…..

I’ve come to realize that all the treadmill bashing I’ve been doing is falling on deaf ears.

So I re-evaluated the reason I bash the treadmill and I’ve come to realize that the treadmill has really been getting a bad rap from me.

The treadmill is really no different from any other piece of fitness equipment, the issue I have with the treadmill is the general way it’s being used…NOT the actual piece of equipment itself.

I can in no way put the treadmill in the same category as the ‘hula chair’ or the ‘shake weight’. The treadmill has been around for eons and for treadmill lovers,  there’s no end in sight.

And actually, for good reason….(more about that in a bit).

Here’s where the ‘eating crow’ part comes in…

If the treadmill were to be used properly, then, in my books,  it’s totally redeemed as an acceptable method to burn fat and even gain lean muscle tone.

That’s a BIG caveat though. It’s a slippery slope from the sort of workout I’m going to suggest to the long, slow plod that I see most folks do on the treadmill…

First of all, I want to tell you the reasons I previously had a hate on for the treadmill:

• It’s lower body based exercise that can open you up to over use injuries if you don’t change up your workouts
• You’re always moving in a frontal plane which doesn’t challenge your mobility/agility (and again, potential overuse issues)
• Usually folks do long workouts which stimulates cortisol production (the fat storing hormone)
• Minimal core or upper body muscle is developed
• Body transformation is difficult if this is the only exercise done
• Interval training is OVER DONE when it’s not paired with resistance training
• It’s boring
• Oh, did I say how boring it is? Most lose motivation and straight up give up on fitness (but the treadmill is great for hanging laundry on 🙂 )

So, how can you use the treadmill to avoid these pitfalls? Here are a few tips:

• Keep the workouts short and intense
• Change up your stride
• Include upper body and core exercises within your workout
• Spice it up! Do NOT repeat the same workout twice in a row
• To avoid boredom, run naked on the treadmill (Ha! Just checking if you were paying attention – this is totally optional 😉 )

Wanna know what this kind of workout would look like? Well you’ll soon have your hands on 21 of them. I’ve just put the final touches on the program and it’ll be yours, but you can get some sample workouts here.

If you LOVE the treadmill and want some new fat loss workouts (that are MORE effective!),  you can get a few fantastic NEW sample treadmill/bodyweight fusion workouts HERE

If you’re ready get the ENTIRE PROGRAM (for just pennies a workout) now, Check out Treadmill Fat Loss HERE.

Okay, so that may be a bit of an over statement…

But man, it felt like I was drowning.

If you’ve been reading my emails you may know that I took up a new challenge: surfing.

Recently I was out on a new beach in waves that were ‘over my head’ – literally and figuratively speaking. The friends I was surfing with described me as a ‘wet angry cat’. Up until that point, I surfed much milder waves with some success, but I jumped from 2-3 foot waves to 5-6 foot waves and my skills didn’t match.

There wasn’t the progression I needed to handle those bigger waves and I repeatedly got pummeled. Given that I’m as stubborn as they come, I kept trying until I was exhausted and beat up. Let’s just say it wasn’t my favorite surf session.

Have you ever felt this way about your training?

Maybe you’re just starting out but you jump right into a workout similar to those 5-6 foot waves, you end up sore beyond belief and possibly even hurt.

You have every reason to feel beaten and may not enjoy training like you should.

If this is you, or someone you know, I have a solution…

I’ve been talking about my good friend, Tyler Bramlett and his program called CT-50 this week. Now this program is FULL of videos that follow the natural progression necessary to SAFELY push yourself from workout to workout. He’s got five levels, 9 workouts and a challenge at every level (50 videos in all!).

Here’s a sample workout from the first level:

CT01

Perform 3 rounds as fast as you can with a 10-minute maximum time limit (10.00)

• 20 touch jumps (squat jump with a touch down to the ground)
• 10 Two arm presses (hold one DB horizontally with both hands to press)
• 5 one leg shin taps (modified Romanian deadlift)
• 5 one leg shin taps (other leg)
• 10 two arm rows (hold one DB horizontally with both hands to do a bent over row)
• 20 climber toe taps (modified mountain climber)

Here’s a sample workout from the fifth level:

CT47

Perform 4 rounds as fast as you can with a 12-minute maximum time limit (12.00)

• 10 kipping pull ups
• 20 jump lunges
• 15 one arm snatches
• 15 one arm snatches (other arm)
• 40 sit outs

Now, you can see there’s quite a difference between these workouts. The cool thing is that Tyler has a solid progression that will take you from level 1 right through to level 5. He’ll even direct you as to what level you should start at based on a few simple tests.

Each workout is less than 20 minutes and he’ll coach you the entire time with the follow along videos.

Where your fitness is concerned, don’t get frustrated and be like the ‘wet angry cat’ I was surfing those waves.

Today is the last day to pick up CT-50 for only $19.

You can’t go wrong at this price, but it’s only up until midnight tonight so grab it now.

I should probably tell you that on top of 50 progressive videos, you’ll also get these fast action bonuses:

The 5 Day Metabolism FIX – This is a 5 day system that shows you how to repair your damaged metabolism so you can start burning fat faster then you are genetically used to in only 5-days!

The CT-50 Progressive Warm-Up System – This is 5 different 7-minute warm up videos that take you from basic warm up exercises to advanced ones that will help you boost your flexibility, mobility and energy all while making you significantly less likely to get injured.

The (3 PHASE) Flat Belly Accelerator Diet And Fat Loss Tracker Journal – This is Tyler’s personal diet system laid out over 3 different levels making it easy for you to find the right diet for you whether you are a total beginner or an advanced dieter with only the last 10lbs to lose.

The Power Isometrics Manual – This manual will show you some basic Power Isometric routines you can use to add significant strength and muscle tone to your body all without getting sore or affecting the results you’re getting from your other workouts.

As you can see, this is a pretty crazy bonus package and it’s all yours today if you act fast…

Now you might be thinking, “you can’t change your metabolism over night”, but I’m here to say that you CAN make a difference in just 5 days.
 
The reason YOU might not be able to do it is because you don’t have the right tools.

Check out ==> 5-Day Fast Metabolism Repair Plan (this contains 10 essential tools for building a fast metabolism and a healthy, fit body).

Plus, it has an EXACT 5-day implementation plan for you to use so you can boost up your metabolism FAST.

Here are four recommendations to boost your metabolism all day long: Read the rest of this entry »