Thursday, December 29, 2011

Whole Body Functional Cardio and Muscle Burning Workout

-Today's workout requires a warm-up and then a warm-up. Better known as doing a general warm-up and then a more workout movement specific, 'dynamic warm-up.'

We are going to get the joints loosened up with a general joint rotation routine (click to review the joint rotation routine.)

For the dynamic warm-up, you are going to do a slower, easy pace of the first intervals. That's right people, it's Tabata interval training time, and we are going to follow this up with some pulling exercises for strength and muscle growth.

If you are a beginner, lower the number of rounds and sets to allow you to get through the whole bodyweight workout.

2-4 rounds (warm-up round doesn't count,) for each exercise do 20 seconds high intensity followed by 10 seconds rest.

-Jumping Jacks
-Quad Hop Burpees (Do a quad hop and shoot the legs out to a pushup; bounce back and repeat.)
-Knee to Chest Pushups ( Not 'Spider Pushups' here. Do a pushup while bringing one knee up to the side. Alternate knees each pushup.)

Quad Hop Demo:



Next, do 2-4 rounds of 20/10 of:

-Elephant Walk/Ab Wheel Rollouts (Review the Elephant Walk here:  Elephant Walk Instruction )
-Bent Over Shoulder Press
-Isometric Pushup Plank

Bent Over Shoulder Press. This can also be done with feet on the ground; just walk the feet up towards the hands and bend the knees slightly:


Finish your workout with some gymnastics ring pullups, assisted suspension trainer pullups or basic pullups. Use the following guideline:

3-5 rounds of 10 second hang with active shoulder + 3-10 full range of motion reps. If you cannot do full pull-ups, lower the rings or suspension trainer straps and do body rows.

Finish the workout with some easy stretching to cool down, and guzzle plenty of water when you are done!

You can find a selection of gymnastics rings here:

Gymnastics Ring Training

Review pullup bars here:

Home Gym Pullup Bars