Week 1 workout ideas

1. Flies on the wall- (works shoulders, legs, butt) This is a wall sit and flies combined. Find a comfortable weight of dumbbell and hold one in each hand at your sides, palms facing in. Stand with your back to a wall, feet shoulder width apart. Lean against the wall until your thighs are parallel with the floor (legs should form a square with the wall and floor). Raise your arms out at your sides to shoulder height and lower again for one rep, holding the squat the entire time.

2. Sumo Extension- (works butt, legs, inner thighs, triceps) Stand with feet wider than shoulder width apart, toes pointed out, a dumbbell in each hand. Holding your weights together, extend your arms over your head. Pull your abs tight and squat down, making sure your knees do not go beyond your toes. As you squat, bend your elbows and lower your hands behind your head, keeping your upper arms close to your ears. Stand up and raise your hands back u above your head to complete one rep.

3. Ball bridge and roll- (works butt, core) Roll back on a stability ball so that your head and upper back are centered on it. Step feet shoulder width apart. Keeping knees aligned with ankles, raise arms over chest and interlace your fingers. Keeping hips lifted, rotate torso to the left. Return to the center and roll to the right to complete 1 rep.

4. Calf raises- (works calves) With your hands at your sides and feet shoulder width apart, raise up onto your toes, and slowly lower back down, raising back up before your heel touches the ground. To make this move more difficult, do it on a stair, lowering your heel beneath the step, or hold dumbbells in each hand as you are doing it. To make it easier, hold on to a chair with one hand as you do this.

5. Planks- (core and back) lay on the ground and bring your elbows to your sides, hands u by your chest. Push up onto your forearms and toes, making sure your body is straight from head to toe. Hold for at least 30 seconds, or as long as you can.

***These workouts are designed to give you a variety in what you are doing and incorporate various parts of your body, strengthening a greater variety of muscles. Do these moves at least 3 times each week, giving your body a day to recover in between. If you are wanting to lose fat, make sure you are doing a cardio workout 3-5 times per week for a minimum of 20 minutes at a moderately hard level each day. ALWAYS warm your muscles up with low intesity cardio for 5-10 minutes first, and always stretch either prior to or after your work out. If you are doing a cardio workout, allow 5 minutes at the end to cool down with at a low intesity as well.

Be cautious!

This will be my fist weekly workout, and the format is going to be changing a bit each week, but the basic idea will be to incorporate moves that will work each muscle in your body, and sometimes tips or advice on cardio workouts, eating habits, nutrition advice, etc. In this first one, I am going to introduce ideas behind how to do resistance/ strength training.

1. If you are looking to build endurance, find a weight that you can do about 12 repetitions at one time with, and plan on doing a minimum of two sets, working toward three.
Ex: If you are doing a crunch, a rep would be going up and down one time. A set would be doing 12 crunches. Rest for 30-60 seconds, then do your second set of 12 crunches, or work through your entire workout completing one set on each move and then work through the entire workout again for your second set of moves.

2. If you are looking to build strength (I am talking in general, not body- builder style) look for a weight that you can complete about 8 reps at a time with.

3. Truthfully, the number of repetitions is not as important as HOW THEY ARE DONE! Make sure you are doing each move correctly as I will be describing them and do them slowly, so that you are not working off of momentum, but off of your muscle strength. Also be careful not to hyper extend and don't do a move half-way in order to make it through all 12 reps. Go through the full motion of the move if you really want to see results. If you cannot make it through your first 12 reps doing the full move and you are wanting to build endurance, not strength, go down in weight. If you fall short on your second or third set, no sweat. Just keep working at it!

4. Please remember that I am offering this as advice and a free service, and not as your personal trainer. If you feel discomfort or pain while doing a move, don't do it! And if you have any reason to be unsure about where your fitness level is at and if you should be working out, talk to a doctor.

5. If you have any questions or something is unclear, please let me know and I would be happy to try and help you out and get it cleared up for you!