No Weights? No Problem

I found an interesting article by Nick Tumminello, the founder of Performance University. In it he outlines a few different workout regimes for the lower body. What I really liked was that they didn't require weights and instead forced high repetitions in a short period of time. So these would not only work well to integrate into a fully developed workout plan, but also when you're away from your regular training spot.


Here is a sample of one of his workouts:

Leg Complex #1 - Cosgrove Complex

This first complex I learned from some Scottish guy named Alwyn Cosgrove. This is usually the first complex that I throw at most athletes because it's simple to understand, easy to memorize, and involves only one movement — the squat.

Perform the following exercises back to back:

20 seconds of Squats (as fast as possible). Try to get 20 reps.

20 seconds of Squat Jumps (land as quickly as possible). Try to get 10-12 reps.

20 seconds of Isometric Squat Holds (pause at the bottom).

This workout can be done in a very short time with no weights and he claims it'll give you a very intense burn!  Since I'm big on doing full body workouts I'm going to incorporate this into a full body routine as follows:

Series 1

Pullups x 20
Incline pushups + 100 lbs x 6
Glute Bridge + 100 lbs x 20

Rest 2 minutes repeat twice more.

Series 2

Leg Complex 1

20 seconds of Squats (as fast as possible). Try to get 27 reps. (100 lbs on the first, the rest no weight)

20 seconds of Reverse Lunge. Try to get 10-12 reps each leg.

20 seconds of Bulgarian Squats (pause at the bottom) 10 reps each leg.

Rest 2 min. Repeat twice more.

Series 3

Curls 100 lbs negative x 6 reps
Triangle Pushups x 15
Bodysaw x 6

Once over.




If you wanted to make it a complete body weight exercise take out the curls and exchange pullups for chinups and change pushups for dips or simply do more reps of pushups. Last, do single leg glute bridges if a bodyweight glute bridge is too easy.

This should be doable in any hotel room, park or basement so it's really great if you're on the road or just looking to change things up a bit.

UPDATE


The leg workout is an absolute killer! I did use weights for my first set of double leg squats but didn't need to the second and third time. Also, the bonesaw is one of the best ab exercises I've ever done.  Let me know how this works out for you guys in the comments.

Cheers!

Get out the chalk, this workout gone'nd killed me.

Beginner Workout

I had a request to create a workout plan for someone. They pointed out that the other workout I had listed wasn't very nice to someone just starting out. My bad!  Here's something that will help you move your way into a more advanced workout.

This plan is designed for 2 things: muscle preparation (strengthening and conditioning) as well as fat loss. I'll jump right to the workout for all the eager beavers, if you're more interested in the why this works, it will be at the bottom of the post.

Day 1

Weights

Series 1 - Squats, Push ups, rows
Rest 2 minutes
Series 2 - Hamstring raises (you don't need the ball. A chair will do fine), Glute bridge, crunches

Do series 1 once over. This means do your squats until failure then do your push ups until failure then do your rows until failure. No rest between exercises. Once completed take a 2 minute break and move on to Series 2. Do the same thing with hamstring raises, glute bridges and crunches.

Cardio - walk/run for 30 minutes

Day 2

Cardio - walk/run/swim/box/skip rope/ etc etc 30 min


Day 3

Cardio - walk/run/swim/box/skip rope/ etc etc 30 min

Day 4

Rest or Cardio. If you're really eager and disciplined do the cardio. It's great for you! If you're feeling burnt out though you can take a rest day.

For the first week it's fine to keep the routine stable. After that really work on progression; Build on the amount of reps you're doing and the amount of weight. After a good 3 weeks you'll want to do 2 sets of each series. By this I mean  do series 1, rest for 2 minutes, do series 1 again, rest for 2 minutes. Once that is completed, do series 2, rest for 2 minutes, then do series 2 again before doing your cardio. Also, we're starting at 30 minutes of cardio but after about a month and a half you should be pushing yourself to do an hour of whatever you were doing before. So if you originally started off skipping rope for 30 minutes, then by month 1.5 you want to be doing it for an hour. Once you've hit the hour mark increase the intensity. If you would walk for an hour, start increasing to a power walk, then a jog and then perhaps to a bike ride or a run. The absolute most important is that you continually increase the intensity and time of your cardio.

Once you've done this for about 4 months you should be ready for a more intense workout. Then again, if you're coming back from a long break from activity, rather than just starting out, you could be ready much sooner. It's best to listen to your body and how confident you are.


How it works

We're taking two approaches here. First is that we want to prepare the body for some intense performance! We do that by building the neurons between the brain and the muscle. Doing weights is a great way of achieving that because we make sure to hit almost every muscle in the body when we workout. By having these neurons your muscles will become more responsive and actually become stronger without having to again any size (after a few weeks/months your muscles will start to grow, but that is good in the long run).

The other neat thing we're doing is showing our results to help us keep motivated. By doing a lot of cardio with the weight training we should start shedding off some fat and actually seeing our progress rather than just feeling it.  When you look in the mirror and you can actually see the changes it can really help us keep motivated!

Workout Plan - Details

Start out by picking 1 exercise from the back, quads and core muscle group. (ie. Pullups for back, Bulgarian Squat for quads, Leg lift for core). The more compound your exercises are, the better results you'll see. Perform each exercise in successive order with no breaks. After performing all three exercises, take a 1 to 1.5 minute break. Do this 3 times.

Each exercise should be done until failure. Failure meaning you do as many reps as possible until your muscles can no longer do the exercise. The weight should be sufficient to burn your muscles out in the range of 6-15 reps.

If you can perform more than 15 reps, increase the weights by 10%. Ie. If you can do 100 lbs on the bench press 15 times, increase the weight to 110 lbs. If you can not do more than 5 reps, lower the weight by 5%. Ie. If you can only do 100 bls on the bench press 4 times, lower the weight to 95 lbs.

After finishing 3 sets of 3 exercises take a 4 to 5 minute break and proceed to the second half of the workout. This entails doing the same as before but with three new muscle groups: chest, hamstrings and calves. 

This entire routine should only take 45 minutes. If it takes more than an hour you are probably taking too long of breaks. Really focus on intensity by keeping the break times short.

Once you've finished this routine you'll need at least 2 days of rest to let your body heal before you can perform it again. I typically do weights, cardio day 2, rest day 3, weights, cardio, rest. Sometimes though, I will need more than 2 days to recover, but I never take more than 5 days rest. If you wait more than 5 days your body will have stopped growing muscle and will start losing it again.

Here is a quick example:

First Half

8 Pullups, 11 Bulgarian squats (each leg), 15 Crunches - Rest 1.5 minutes

8 Pullups, 11 Bulgarian squats (each leg), 15 Crunches - Rest 1.5 minutes

8 Pullups, 11 Bulgarian squats (each leg), 15 Crunches - Rest 5 minutes

Second Half

13 Pushups, 12 Hamstring raises, 9 Single Leg Calf Rases (each leg) - Rest 1.5 minutes

13 Pushups, 12 Hamstring raises, 9 Single Leg Calf Rases (each leg) - Rest 1.5 minutes

13 Pushups, 12 Hamstring raises, 9 Single Leg Calf Rases (each leg) - Done

Here are some good examples of exercises to choose from.

Back

My favourite exercises:

• Pullups
• Chinups
• Rows
• Lat Pulldown

Pullup sand Chinups can be done on a pullup bar at home. I use something similar to the Iron Gym bar.

I'd recommend the bar with multiple grips. This adds a huge variety of exercises to your back workout with one device.

Quads

My favourite exercises:

• Leg Press
• Bulgarian Squat
• Double Leg Squat
• Single Leg Squat

For Bulgarian squats I use a flat bench like the one shown to the left. If you have a set of dumbells it doubles the versatility. You could, for instance, do your dumbell presses, flys bent over 1 arm rows and elevated pushups (among a ton of others).

For single leg squats you can do them off the floor or on a step workout system.

If you can find one with a soft matted top you can also use it for some neat glute exercises I'll be blogging about in a bit. If not, you could be crafty and use a thick folded tower over it to give back support. More about this here.

Core

My Favourite Ab exercises:

• Leg Lift
• Crunches
• Jack knives
• Hanging Leg Lift

Top Oblique exercises:

• Side Hip Raise
• Oblique Twist
• Overhead leans

For most of these you'll want a soft surface. If you don't have one, try using a thick towel or grab a workout mat.

Chest

My favourite exercises:

• Dips
• Pushups - wide, narrow, elevated, 1 armed
• Benchpress - incline/decline/flat

Hamstrings

• Hamstring curl
• Double hip raise
• Single hip raise

Calves

• Single leg calf raises
• Double leg calf raises

 You can do them right off the floor, but if you do them on a set of stairs or a step workout system they will work you out way better!

Workout Plan

So you're chubby. Or maybe you're scrawny. Maybe you're just not as healthy as you aught to be. You've been sitting around all winter eating stuffing and cake while watching every hockey game you possibly could sittin' on your tush.... and now you're paying for it. I've been there. It sucks, but it's not as hard as you think to get out of the slump.

Over the past year I've stayed up into the late late hours reading boring science articles just so that I could help you get buff. Ok not really for you, it was for me, but you're going to benefit from it so let's just pretend I did all this for you.

I originally started out with a much more traditional workout plan. Anyone who's read a bodybuilding mag or men's fitness can attest to this one. You basically take 5 days out of the week and hit the gym for at least an hour each day. For every visit you pick a muscle group (ie. chest and tris) and you work them into complete exhaustion with multiple sets of multiple reps of multiple exercises. By the end of the work out your one set of muscles are completely done.

This workout plan I've constructed is a little bit different. It's designed to build the most muscle mass with the least amount of time. It works great for people who have a busy schedule and can't make 4 to 5 workout sessions in a week. It also works well for competing athletes as it can be worked around competitions without weakening the body so much that it affects performance.

Why does it work just as well, if not better, than the 5 days of weights? Oh there are a whole heck of a lot of reasons. Here's a few off the top of my head, if you're still not satisfied, let me know in the comments and I'll list as many more as I can.


Here is a quote to make your eyes bleed...

Protocols high in volume, moderate to high in intensity, using short rest intervals and stressing a large muscle mass, tend to produce the greatest acute hormonal elevations (e.g. testosterone, GH and the catabolic hormone cortisol) compared with low-volume, high-intensity protocols using long rest intervals. - Kraemer WJ, Ratamess NA.

So What the heck does that mean? Well your body will release more human growth hormones when you workout with shorter rests, high - medium intensity when working out large muscle groups and doing high reps. This plan achieves all of those. When you workout you work out your largest muscles in every single session. Quads? Check. Pecs? Check. Lats? Check. Hamstrings? Check. Glutes? Check. Not only that but if you do mostly compound exercises you will hit far more muscles than if you do focused exercises. When you're done this workout you can really tell your whole body has been activated.

Now onto intensity and efficiency. With this workout you take very few rests between the exercises and you do a combination of low and high rep sets. This allows you to up the intensity as you are spending more time working out rather than sitting on your tush. Even better, you're making more use of your time while you're working out. In a standard muscle specific workout you will do 6 exercises with 3 sets for each one. Normally you'll do 2 minutes break between each set and 3 minutes between each exercise.

Exercise 1
set - 2 min break - set - 2 min break - set
3 min break

Exercise 2
set - 2 min break - set 2 min break - set
3 min break

Exercise 3

set - 2 min break - set - 2 min break - set

3 min break

Exercise 4

set - 2 min break - set 2 min break - set

3 min break

Exercise 5

set - 2 min break - set - 2 min break - set

3 min break

Exercise 6

set - 2 min break - set 2 min break - set

Add that up. It's a total of 39 minutes of rest. Let's take a look at the new age fancy pants workout plan designed by the master of the universe, Science.

Exercise 1

set - set - set - 2min break
set - set - set - 2min break
set - set - set - 2 min break
5 min break
set - set - set - 2 min break

set - set - set - 2min break

set - set - set - 

Total rest time: 15 minutes. To be fair, the time it takes to travel between each exercise isn't necessarily 0, it's probably more like 5 seconds if you have all your equipment prepped. So if we say 10 seconds between sets (this is too much but we'll be generous), it adds another 2 minutes for a grand total of 17 minutes of rest.

There's one last little thing I'd like to add in. I can't seem to find a bloody link for it though, so you're going to have to take my word on it. On one of my silly late night researches, I read a paper where they looked at Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and its affects on the body. From what they found, HGH tends to only affect the body for a short period of time. Something like 30 minutes if I remember right and the more intense release the better the results. So if you hit all your muscle groups at once with a very large amount of HGH they will all benefit highly from it; However, if you only hit one muscle group at a time they will only benefit from the small amount of HGH released from that one muscle.  A la corporate jargon, your muscles benefit from HGH synergy. Yeah that's right, I said HGH Synergy.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post in the comments section.

links for geeks

http://www.springerlink.com/content/gw3714668l5r34ul/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9140905?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=19