Blog Archives
Feeling Tired
I love feeling completed exhausted after my workouts. I love that feeling of just wanting to sit on the couch and not move for a couple of hours.
I especially love that feeling when it takes me less than 30 minutes to get it!
Like today, Ryan and I went down to the gym in our apartment building. This honestly is one of the most ridiculous gyms I’ve ever seen. Four treadmills, two recumbent bikes, a bench press machine, a leg extension machine and one functional trainer (aka a cable machine with a pull up bar). It also has medicine balls up to 10lbs and 3 kettlebells ranging from like 2lbs to 20lbs. Not exactly a personal trainers dream gym.
BUT that didn’t stop us from getting in a killer workout in the very small space that we had. We mostly wanted a cardio workout after doing the 300 yesterday.
So we did:
4 rounds as fast as possible of:
400m Run
20 Burpees (Chest touches the ground on each one)
20 Sit-ups
1 minute wall sit
Great workout that took less than 15 minutes. I got a nice sweat going and my legs started to burn during wall sits especially after the 50 deadlifts yesterday!
Yep..A great cardio session in less than 15 minutes. So why are you spending an hour on the treadmill?
Below is another great workout although it took a bit longer between the heavy lift and the circuit. Still under an hour though (I didn’t really pay attention to exactly how long).
Strength:
Back squat 5×5
Auxiliary Lift circuit: 5 rounds as fast as possible
500m Row
15ea 1 Leg Squats
30 Box Jumps
30 KB Swings
30 Jump Knee Tucks (Jump as high as you can and bring your knees to your chest as much as possible)
Also, an awesome “Show Me Yours” photo from Francine. A different way to show off her Man Biceps and Man Lats!
Nice back muscles!
Now go workout and have a great Sunday and a great Easter or Passover! 🙂
Don’t Be Embarrassed
“I don’t like lifting weights on my own because I’m embarrassed.”
“I won’t do that exercise because it’s embarrassing.”
I’ve literally had clients refuse to do certain exercises because they deem them to be embarrassing.
Really?
For one, why do you care what anyone else thinks?
Two, if a trainer is having you do it, it is a worthwhile exercise! AND probably anyone who is watching you is thinking to themselves, “I should do that exercise. It looks hard!”
Three, do you really think people are more concerned with watching you than doing their own workouts?
AND FOUR, have you seen some of the DUMB things that people do that they think don’t look dumb?
Also…
Do you really think any of us look GOOD while working out?
HA! I most definitely don’t!
I look like a drowned rat. Or like I’m about to puke. Or both.
But aside from all of those reasons listed above…
Who really cares what anyone else thinks? You are there to get in a workout. To drip sweat, get out of breath and work as hard as you can. It isn’t a beauty pageant.
It’s what you do so that you can be healthy and beautiful and DO a beauty pageant. 😉
So next time you think about skipping the weight room floor or that exercise your trainer showed you, DON’T. Remind yourself of everything listed here. Or maybe just think about the fact that you should be more embarrassed by the fact that you were too chicken to do something you knew was good for you.
Up to you…I think I’ll just keep looking ridiculous…like a drowned rat about to puke.
Some Friday Ramblings
So it is almost the end of March, which means you only have 1 more week to get a FREE, CUSTOMIZED 2 month Man Bicep diet plan! In April, I will be launching a new second Man Bicep site for online training. YAY!
Have I mentioned yet how much I love warm weather?!?
This week it’s been warm enough for Ryan and I to BBQ (great recipes to come!). It has also been warm enough to tempt me to eat ice cream, which I’ve only avoided by indulging in one of my favorite healthy treats….Want the recipe? Check back tomorrow!
This past week I started my new workout program, which I’m EXTREMELY sore from. Try this week’s weekly workout and see how you feel afterwards!
And some motivation to get you going…
A 10-year-old girl sets powerlifting world record for all age groups!
AND an awesome bicep from Jill!
Jill's Man Bicep!
Weekly Workout #6
Strength:
Front squat 3×10
Auxiliary lift circuit: 3 sets
50 KB swings
50 Burpees
50 Double unders
50 Sit ups
Show Me Yours – Anywhere, Anytime
So I got some great emails AND pictures this week.
One was from Lisa:
Hey Cori, so fun story…. I won my cornhole championship tonight and everyone was commenting on my biceps as I one-handedly drank the trophy of beer! (The trophy is heavy.) It spurred the thought to push-up drink from the trophy in the middle of the bar… The waitresses hated me…everyone else was amused. Someone asked about the story behind the ruckus… I said ” It’s for Man Bicep, a movement about breaking the taboos about women lifting weights, which I love to do.” Then I said… “Drinking beer is so much better in full decline push up position….just because I can.”. 🙂
Lisa doing a very nice decline push up!
Two more great bicep pictures were submitted by Ada and Toni this past week.
The Toni Bicep! Love it! Keep up the weight training!
The Ada Bicep! A great way to build the bicep...PULL UPS!
Also, a BIG Happy Belated Birthday to Man Biceper Kristen who just recently started lifting weights.
Kristen stated recently, “I have really been enjoying what I’ve been doing thus far and feel great! Tomorrow is my birthday and I feel better than I have in quite a few birthdays!”
Motivated now to workout? Try this workout of the week!!!
5×5 = Torture
So I’ve started reading Bigger, Faster, Stronger, which is a program that started in 1976. I think this program is still probably one of the BEST ways to increase your strength (and I really want to try the program at some point!).
Basically (and I mean this is a very BASIC brief outline..the book goes into WAY more detail) the book outlines a 4 week program. The first week you do a 3×3 workout (so 3 sets of 3 reps trying to do at least 70% of your max weight). The second week is 5×5. The third week you do either 5-4-3-2-1 or 5-3-1 (a max out week) and then the fourth week, you go back to higher reps either 10-8-6 or 4-4-2.
I think right now we’ve been way too focused on maxing out. We’ve been maxing out almost every week, which isn’t good and I think it is causing me to get very nervous when I go to max out (so much so that I’ve had a few bad lifting days recently).
So I decided it was time to change up what we were doing just a little. Yesterday Candy and I tried the 5×5 workout structure for our deadlift workout. We did two warm up sets (the first at 135lbs and the second at 185). We then did the next 5 sets of 5 reps at 225lbs. And let me tell you…it wasn’t easy.
And today…My back is definitely feeling it. On top of the 5×5 heavy deadlift, we did RDLs supersetted with split squats and then KB Swings supersetted with deep KB squats. We also did some bosu crunches and weighted hypers at the end.
It was a great workout! Around an hour because of the long breaks during the heavy lifting.
There really is something to the 5×5 program. It definitely makes me want to try the StrongLifts routine!
“I’ve tried everything and nothing works”
“I’ve tried everything and nothing works.”
This statement always frustrates me. Why? Because it is absolute BULLSHIT (yep the curse is necessary to explain how absurd the statement is!)!
For one…there is ALWAYS something you haven’t tried.
And two…if you utter this statement then you’ve given up on trying.
There isn’t one program that will work for everyone because everyone is so different. BUT I guarantee that there is some diet or workout plan that works for you…not everyone but JUST for you.
How do I know that there IS something that will work for you? Because I’ve tried A LOT of different things. And I’ve found lots of diets and workout plans that DON’T work for me. Like a workout plan without weights..it doesn’t work for me because I just get skinny. I have to lift HEAVY to maintain any muscle and eat LOTS of protein.
And through all this experimentation I have found something that works for me (which of course I’m constantly tweaking to make it work even better).
And my diet and workout plan isn’t the same diet and workout plan that works for the Man Bicep Mom. She prefers portion control and applies the 80/20 rule daily. Her daily diet also doesn’t include red meat and saturated fat like mine does, but does include whole grains, which I don’t eat. She also prefers circuit training with weights to slow powerlifting style workouts.
And my diet isn’t the same as Brian’s even though we are both doing powerlifting style workouts. He does a lower carb diet similar but not the same to Primal. He will NEVER (I repeat NEVER) give up his peanut butter or whole wheat wraps!
BUT while the Man Bicep Mom’s and Brian’s diets are both different from mine, they work for them! AND there is something out there that will work for you!
You can’t get stuck on what works for OTHER PEOPLE! You have to think about yourself – what foods you like, how much time you have, what activities you enjoy doing, how much you enjoy cooking..
I mean just look at that U.S. New Diet Rankings list (which I still don’t agree with). There are 20 diets on there and each of them have people who voted “yes this diet works.” Even the Paleo diet, which was the “worst diet” had 5,791 people say it worked for them!!!!
Don’t get stuck doing a diet or workout plan just because it’s popular or worked for you friend. If you find you can’t stick to it during that first month when you are most committed, it probably won’t work for you. So don’t waste your time. Try something else.
I mean shoot combine diets and workouts that you’ve tried and make up your own!!! Self-experimentation is key!!!! ( I can’t repeat that enough!!!)
But PLEASE don’t tell me, “I’ve tried everything and nothing works” because that is a lie. Don’t give up!!!
It’s Monday…
So today was a bench day. BLEH! haha. I almost got 125 which would have been 5lbs over my bodyweight. I blame the fact that I didn’t on the fact that it is Monday.
Candy, however, did hit a new PR of 135! Ten more pounds and she be benching herself! It was so cool though that she got to put on the big boy girl plates! I’m jealous! 😉
It was a killer workout though. Heavy bench, incline bench, incline flyes, close grip bench, dips, push ups, front and side raises, tricep pushdowns and a BAZILLION bicep curls. Brian wanted to grow his beach muscles! 😉
Anyway, I was motivated today. I was excited to workout this week partly because of the video below about Annie Thorisdottir.
Talk about motivational! If this doesn’t make you want to start Crossfit and heavy lifting then nothing will! Annie Thorisdottir you are amazing!!!!
Anyway, here’s a little picture to make you smile on a Monday…
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!
Poor Burger King. Their sign got graffitied! HA!
Learning Binges
Yesterday I went on a learning binge. By learning binge I mean:
- I spent hours searching all my favorite blogs for new sources of information. I perused some great new fitness blogs such as myathleticlife.com and  beheavy.wordpress.com.
- And I googled the heck out of women’s fitness, lifting, powerlifting and strong is the new skinny (which by the way…I LOVE THIS “MOVEMENT!”).
And during this learning binge I found so many topics that I want to discuss. But this morning (sore, grumpy with two hours of spin ahead of me), the only thing I wanted to talk about was the learning binge itself.
Yesterday just reminded me of how important it is to constantly seek out new information – how important it is to always be open to learning.
We can never know everything so to really be knowledgable about any subject, we must always be seeking out new knowledge. We must be in a perpetual state of learning.
So sometimes we must go on learning binges. I usually check out the same few websites, but every couple of months I’ll spend an extra few hours searching everything in sight (which can include picking the brain of any human around me!). When I do this I’m looking for any new studies or developments that have come out about fitness or nutrition. I’m also looking for new exercises and new trends in women’s fitness.
I’m looking for information and not just information that reinforces what I already believe (actually most of the time I’m searching for information that argues against what I believe in just so that I can tell them how wrong they are! :-P).
I don’t like to follow anything blindly, even lifestyles I agree with and/or follow. There is always someone out there with a slightly different perspective on things. AND that new perspective that you find may help you adjust your lifestyle to make it work even better for you.
IÂ always inform my clients of new things that I’m trying or topics that I’ve found. I want them to start exploring fitness and health by themselves. I want them on a constant quest for knowledge or at least to every once in a while go on a learning binge!
Of course a constant quest for knowledge isn’t just about finding new information it is also about trying it out!
Self-experimentation is an integral part of learning. I mean how do you really know if something works unless you try it out!?!
If you find a new workout routine, try it out! A new diet, try it out! But when you “test” something, make sure you first follow the plan EXACTLY. If you cheat on what is prescribed, than you aren’t giving it a fair shot. You can’t really honestly report back on how that workout or diet works.
But once you’ve found something that you like, edit it! Learn more about the diet through research and experimentation and then make changes to the diet or workout plan so that it works perfectly for you. Once you’ve done the research and run an experiment on yourself (sounds sort of creepy but it isn’t!), tailor it to fit your specific needs!
By constantly trying to learn, you will find a diet and fitness plan that works perfectly for you (a.k.a. it keeps you satisfied while helping you look AMAZING and reach your fitness goals!) 🙂
Tabata ’cause I’m tired!?!
So yesterday Candy, Brian and I did some power lifts. We did deadlifts, power cleans, snatches and dumbbell split jerks. It was actually very successful except I was sad I didn’t manage to deadlift 270.
Today – my body is destroyed. My legs are tired. My back is tired and knotted. My shoulders are sore and bruised (bruised because I can’t keep the weights from bouncing on my shoulders when I do dumbbell split jerks). EVERYTHING IS WORN OUT haha.
Since I felt tired but still wanted to work out, I decided I wouldn’t do any heavy lifting today. Since my chest is still tired from Monday and my shoulders are tired from Monday and Tuesday, I figured I would do legs and abs and some cardio. I also kind of wanted to do a circuit so I figured what the heck….Candy and I will do a tabata workout!
Uhm yea…a tabata workout isn’t the best idea when you are tired. Tabata workouts mean that you do different exercises and you do 8 sets of 20 seconds work with 10 seconds break.
Ok so this is just one of the exercises we did…I definitely didn’t jump that high though haha
We decided to do Tabata for each of the exercises below (So 8 sets of each exercise…we completed all 8 rounds before moving on to the next exercise):
Row
Bodyweight squats
Teapots with 25lbs (Standing up you lean to the side working your oblique.)
Burpees (BLEEEEEH)
Floor wipers (Lay on your back. hold a weighted bar above your chest like at the top of a bench press. Keep the bar still as you raise and lower straight legs. Alternate bringing your legs to the right and left sides. Don’t touch your legs to the floor during the 20 seconds.)
Split squat jumps (These may have been worse than burpees today!)
Upper crunch with 25lbs
Squat jumps
Mountain climbers
Run
40 minutes…
I don’t know which was worse…The tabata or the power lifts…I guess at least I won’t have bruises from the workout today! And if I have to do cardio…well tabata workouts are my kind of cardio!
Man Bicep 