Challenge Workouts

Here’s a 20 minute challenge with ALL my favorite moves.

Do this AMRAP style (or as many rounds as possible) in 20 minutes:

So… if you spend time before your workouts doing conventional, unproductive warm-ups that never really help you increase your flexibility, mobility, balance or coordination then I recommend you grab the CT-50 Progressive Warm-Up while it’s still free…
Get The CT-50 Progressive Warm Up System When You Grab A Discounted Copy Of CT-50 <–

Give this workout a try and let us know how many rounds YOU got through. When I did it, I got 8 rounds, but I had to swap in 20 KB swings for the jump rope doubles because I’m nursing a bit of plantar fasciitus in my right foot.

Lately I’ve incorporated more kettlebell and strength movements into my workouts. I usually will add some burpees or jump rope to my workout, but since I’m nursing a little plantar fasciitis, jump rope is out while it gets better 🙁

There are other ways to get sweaty and burn calories other than doing HIIT type movements. One of my favorites is metabolic resistance training (like complexes), another is just pure strength training. Many folks make the mistake of discounting the fat burning potential of these options.

I have an article from kettle bell guru and good friend, Chris Lopez. He’s got a really cool idea I want you to check out:

Do This “Strength Hack” by Chris Lopez

RKC Author: The TT Kettlebell Revolution, KettleBellWorkoutsforAbs.com

If you’re doing a major strength exercise today – like a squat, deadlift or a press – then check out this “hack” to get more juice out of it.

Let’s say that you’re squatting today.

Set yourself up the way you would normally set up creating tension before you descend, BUT focus on crush gripping the bar or implement that you’re using with special emphasis on your pinky finger.

No seriously, test it and try it.

Do a set as you normally would of whatever squatting movement you’re doing today, and THEN do another set focusing on crush gripping the handle or bar emphasizing your pinky finger and then tell me what happens.

You should be able to generate more “nerve juice” and the squat should feel easier.

Why does this work?

Well, for one the Law of Irradiation is in play which basically means that you are recruiting more muscles to do the job of squatting (squatting is a whole body exercise, not just a leg exercise).

The more muscles involved, the more tension your create.  And, as Pavel (KB guru) would say, “strength is tension and tension is strength”.

But more specifically, the pinky is so important because there is a direct relation between your pinky finger and your lat.  This is what’s fondly known in the KB world as “the trigger”.  

Pulling the trigger when you press allows you to actively get more juice from your lat to drive heavy things overhead.

“Yeah, but we’re squatting here”, says you.

Same difference.  Remember how I said a squat is a full body exercise?

Well, your lats play several roles when you squat…

1. They work synergistically with your abs to help stabilize your spine to keep you upright.

2. If you’re double KB front squatting, they are the shelf for which you are holding your kettlebells in the rack…KEEP THOSE ELBOWS GLUED TO YOUR RIB CAGE.

But most importantly and the least known fact of all…3. Your lat on one side has a direct connection and relationship with your glute on the opposite side through a fascial sling.  

It’s what we talk about in Original Strength when we say your body is built like an “X”.  

Left lat & right glute, Right lat & left glute.

So if you want more “juice” from your butt – pardon the mental picture, but you get what I mean – crush grip your kettlebells or even the bar while it’s on your back, focusing on your pinky finger, and get your lat really firing and chances are, that squat will feel a lot easier.

BOOM! More muscle activation!

Give it a shot today – and you can use this trick with presses and deadlifts as well – and let me know how much lighter everything feels.

Instant strength.

Thanks Chris! He really knows his stuff, I’ve learned so much from this guy.

If you like these “Strength Hacks” then you’ll really enjoy what Chris covers in his Kettlebell Essentials videos.  It’s a 16-part online video series that comes as a FREE bonus with his Kettlebell Evolution Advanced Fat Loss Program.

I’ll leave you with a workout I recently did where I implemented this strength hack and my squats felt fantastic! This is a workout that I wanted to go a bit heavier, but also wanted to get my heart rate up. After a good warm up and a few lighter sets, this is what I did:

• Set my timer for 1 minute with 30 seconds recovery
• 8 sets of 3 reps barbell squats FUW (finish up with) KB swings

So basically, I did 3 heavy squats, picked up the KB and did swings for the rest of the minute. Then I rested for 30 seconds and repeated 7 more times.

Good sweaty fun! And the ‘crush grip’ on the bar really helped. 

If you need help on your KB swing, you’ll find expert instruction (including a video from Chris) on the kettle bell swing on the blog HERE. 

Give that workout a try! Can check out Chris’s videos here.

Before I get to this fun workout, I want to tell you when it’s the  PERFECT time to do a workout like this is…

No, it’s not ‘when H*LL freezes over’ =====>

It’s great to do a metabolically challenging workout BEFORE a treat meal. A workout like this will BOOST your metabolism so when your intake is a little higher than ‘normal’, your body will burn it up more effectively.

SIDE NOTE: Did I mention that it’s a GOOD thing to have a treat meal at least ONCE a week? {insert happy dance here 😉 }

When on a calorie restricted plan, an increase in calories from a ‘treat meal’ will boost the all important hormone LEPTIN which helps your body burn fat versus store it. Leptin levels can drop up to 50% after only 7 days of calorie restriction, so along with the mental break a treat meal provides, it actually works hormonally to help you drop fat…

So, you can go ahead and enjoy a treat meal GUILT FREE about every seven days.

Now, if you want to feel like you’re having a treat meal every day, but stay within your nutrition plan, you need to check out Flavia Delmonte’s Flavilious cook book.

And here’s a bonus: Flavia has offered a limited number of hard copies for purchase – FOR A FRACTION OF THE COST.  Obviously this is a NO brainer and will be a welcome addition to you cookbook library. Lovely photos and scrumptious recipes – count me in ==> CLICK HERE

Flavia has +150 fully illustrated recipes that even I can make. Flavilicious Cooking is the FIRST and ONLY “No Calorie Counting” cookbook, and a fabulous collection of fat burning recipes that were designed after working with one of North Americas top professional chefs.

The recipes are 100% allergy-friendly and will help you lose fat the more you eat them. Every single recipe is “non-cook” friendly, truly tasty, light on the wallet, and everything can be made in less than 30 minutes.

And best of all, the recipes are dedicated to appealing just as much to your taste buds as they are to your abs.

I asked Flavia, “What’s so special about the cookbook?” and her simple reply was, “It’s literally impossible to get fat eating these recipes because they balance your hormones”   

Flavia explains how this is possible with her 3-Step Skinny Solution which you can read more about right here== >  Flavilicious Cooking <<< No More Counting Calories

Okay, so enough with the recipe stuff, but I highly recommend you ‘treat yourself’ with this cookbook. Go HERE to check it out.

Here’s that workout….

Tell me, is there anything more challenging than burpees and pull ups? Well you could combine them 😉

This is a ‘fun’ way to get 100 burpees and 100 pull ups in a workout….

In set 1, you’ll start with basic ‘burpee/pull ups’. Then you’ll decrease the number of burpees and increase the number of pull ups. So you’ll do 8 reps of 1 burpee + 2 pull ups, then you’ll do 6 reps of 1 burpee + 3 pull ups and so on.

In set 2, you get to do less pull ups, but more burpees (yay!) as you reverse the ladder. You’ll start with 10 reps of everyone’s favorite burpee/pull up. Then you’ll do 8 reps of 1 pull up + 2 burpees, then 6 reps of 1 pull up + 3 burpees and so on.
Feel free to do only one side of the ladder (either set one or two), trust me, that’s a great workout in itself! If you decide to do both sets, this is what it looks like:

1 burpee + 1 pull up – 10 reps

Now according to my maths – this adds up to 100 pull ups and 100 burpees, correct? (I dare you to post your time in the comment section!)

You can do jump pull ups or assisted pull ups with a band (although it will slow you down getting into the band for each rep). However you do your pull ups, make sure you make a note of it so you’ll compare ‘apples to apples’ next time you do the workout. You can do burpee walk outs, squat jumps or full body extensions instead of burpees when you get tired.

I just did this workout with the help of Sev. He seems to think it’s fun to chase my feet during the pull up and  jump on my head during the burpee. I’d say that may have slowed me down a little 😉

I did NOT do a push up this time I tried the workout. I’d say I didn’t really bust my butt to finish and I easily finished in less than 20 minutes (8:55 for set one and 9:01 for set 2 to be exact).

And don’t forget to pick up Flavia’s cookbook HERE (and get the hard copy for a steal).

You’ll also get this bonus (and 4 others) when you pick up Flavilicious today ====>

Watching this ‘Follow-Along’ Video is the perfect way to spend just under an hour on a Sunday to prep for your busy week ahead.

Professional Chef Amy Soddart and Flavia Del Monte show you how to whip up 15 meals in just 50 minutes.

My subject line may have been a bit mis-leading, but as far as I’m concerned, a host of issues can be solved with one thing: GRATITUDE.

Whenever I’m feeling down, I know it’s time to start to count my blessings and reach out to help others, it works every time for me.

It’s a good time of year to consider all the many things to be thankful for since it’s Thanksgiving here in Canada.

We celebrated yesterday with our non-traditional lasagne dinner. My kids get turkey’d out at their dad’s family gathering so our tradition is pretty non-traditional, but it was lovely.

I have three things for you today…

I have information about how to apply for my new coaching program.

I have a ‘fun’ workout for you.

But first, I wanted to honor a good friend and ask for your prayers for his family. My webmaster, Pete Porzuczek suddenly passed away a week ago today. His wife, Kelly is devastated as she not only lost her husband, but also business partner and best friend.

Kelly and Pete have been my virtual ‘right hand’ for over 10 years for all things web related. Kelly actually did most of my work, but Pete was always there to help out. I was one of the few fortunate ones to meet Pete. As you can well imagine, being a webmaster involves having many clients and contacts that you never actually meet in person. These people are as honest and hard working as the day is long.

I urged Kelly to provide us a way to help her and so she reluctantly made this page. Pete passed away while they were on holidays. As you can well imagine, this added to the stress and trauma for Kelly not even being at home. If you’d like to send an encouraging message, or even make a donation, you can do so here. Her email is webmaster@pineconecomputing.com if you’d like to send a message.

Remember how I was working on the Challenge Fit Club? Well, I’m very excited to be releasing that program to you, but progress on all things technical is a little behind partially due to this tragedy.

The good news is that the program is done and videos are being processed as I write this. The launch is a little later than expected but in the meantime I’ve decided to get gong on something else.

My online coaching program will use the Challenge Fit Club modules. You’ll work with me and a gang of like-minded people to ‘challenge and change your physique’. I’m super excited about it.

Here’s what you need to know:

Do you have 10 minutes? Then you can get a full body kick a$$ workout in.

This is a ‘RIST’ style workout, that means ‘reps in specific time’. The goal is to get 15 reps the first set and count down every set after. Each set is one minute long.

The exercise is everyone’s favourite: the BURPEE!

Now you can follow along with me or you can do this on your own.

To spice things up, I’ve added a different burpee variation for each of the 10 sets. You can do my variation, do your own or just do regular burpees. For this workout, I did NOT do the push up except for one set.

Here are the variations I did for each set:
15. regular burpee
14. rev lunge burpee
13. burpee with push up
12. double jump burpee
11. mountain climber burpee (Duh! I forgot to do #11 in the video)
10. get up burpee
9. plank jack burpee
8. lateral lunge burpee
7. tuck jump burpee
6. RDL burpee
5. sit out burpee

I like making killer workouts.

It helps me from actually killing some one 😉

Just kidding (sort of).

Sometimes I just need to take some frustrations out and a perfect way to do that is with a great workout.The workout in this blog post came in handy when I smashed  the screen of my brand new iPhone 6 by dropping it on the garage floor – my phone was only 2 weeks old and I bought it because I had smashed the screen of my iPhone 4…grrr

(I should note that I’m didn’t purposely SMASH my phones, they fell out of my pocket each time and landed ‘just right’ to shatter the screens even though they were in a case.)

I loved the fun stuff in this workout to help me realize that smashing a phone is a first world problem and nothing to get too upset about…

‘Anger management’ is what some of my workouts could actually be classified 😉

My quads were on fire, but the good thing is that I got a full body workout done and over before I even knew it.

In my recent survey, I had some of my readers asking for MORE video follow along workouts while some of you said LESS video follow alongs 😉

So, in an effort to satisfy both types of readers, you’ll find a video follow along workout, but if you watch just the start of it or read below, you’ll have all you need to go get your 15 minute full body (bodyweight ONLY) workout done in a snap.

Here’s what you’ll do:

Set 1

• 5 burpees 
• 5-10 pullups (or wall sit stick ups)
• 5 burpees
• 5 inchworm push ups
• 5 burpees
• 5 get ups per arm
• 5 burpees
• 10 split squats
• 5 burpees
• 10 split squats
• 5 burpees
• 10 prisoner squats + 10 pulsing squats
• plank recovery 1 min

Set 2:

• 5 squat jump shoe touch
• 5-10 pullups (assisted or wall sit stick ups)
• 5 squat jump shoe touch
• 5 inchworm push ups
• 5 squat jump shoe touch
• 5 get ups per arm
• 5 squat jump shoe touch
• 10 split squats
• 5 squat jump shoe touch
• 10 split squats
• 5 squat jump shoe touch
• 10 prisoner squats + 10 pulsing squats
• plank recovery 1 min

This is the perfect workout to do just before a treat meal to raise your metabolism. Or if you’re somewhere that you must get a workout in but have little time or space and NO equipment.

Or, if you smash your brand new iPhone screen by dropping it on the garage floor…;)

This is the type of workout you’ll see in my Challenge Burpee program.

You’ll get a ton of ‘fun’ stuff, suitable for controlling angry outbursts 🙂

Check it out here.

Oh, and let me know what YOU do for anger management? Is there really anything better than the burpee??

PS. Use the coupon code ‘Yayforburpees‘ on the check out page to get 33% off.