All Entries Tagged With: "Circuit Training"

The Best Workout Programs & Workout Routines

                 Finding the time to exercise while balancing a busy work schedule and personal life can often be both emotionally and physically draining. However, when your health is concerned, it’s important to prioritize and make time for a regular and consistent workout schedule.  Figuring out how to workout, what kind of exercise is best and how much is enough can be a daunting and difficult task, especially if you’re not a fitness professional. For this reason at Lucas James Personal Training we’ve taken the guess-work out of creating a workout routine that best fits your daily routine, that you can do on the go and with minimal to no equipment. Here’s some of the best workouts and exercise routines for maintaining a healthy body and mind while still leaving time for family, friends, work and leisure.

• On-the-go (Quick 15-30 minute workouts)

-Lunges With your shoulders back, chest forward and back straight, step one leg forward into a lunge position. Make sure you’re on the ball of your back foot with your front foot flat on the ground in front of you. Drop your back knee straight down making sure the knee of your front leg does not come pass your the ankle.  Pretend as if there is a wall directly in front of your torso making sure not to ‘lunge’ forward. The movement is a lunge straight down.  After 15-20 reps on one leg, alternate sides. Remember to breath! Inhale on the downward movement and exhale on the way up.

-Squats With your back straight, shoulders back and chest forwards, step your feet out sideways – shoulder distance apart with a slight bend in your knees.  ‘Sqaut’ straight down, maintaining a straight back, and sit into the squat as if you are about to rest on a small stool. As you squat downwards, raise both arms out in front of you for stability and to maintain proper posture. Remember to breath! Inhale on the downward movement and exhale on the way up.

-Push-ups Lying face down towards the floor, place your hands shoulder distance apart at chest level and feet making sure your body is perfectly inline.  Keeping your back straight and hips level with your legs and torso press downwards towards the ground until your arms are bent at a ninety-degree angel.  Push upwards back to your starting position. Remember to breath! Inhale on the downward movement and exhale on the way up.

-Vertical Jumps Starting in the ‘Squat’ position as described above, jump upwards, exploding off your feet using your quads and squeezing your gluts to propel you upwards.  Jump as high as possible.  Make sure to keep the intensity high, to increase your cardio-vascular endurance.

-Sit-ups / Crunches Lying in the prone position, bring your feet towards your gluts and plant them flat on the ground in front of you so that your legs are bent slightly. Resting with your hands crossed in front of your chest – crunch upwards, engaging your abs. Make sure to bring your shoulders and upper-back up off of the ground to ensure you are using your core muscles.  Remember to breath! Exhale on the way up.

-Burpies This is a cardio-plyometric exercise comprised of two exercises mentioned above (push-ups and vertical leaps).  Start by standing straight, drop down and kick out your feet into a push-up position, do one repetition, kick your feet inwards to your chest and stand up quickly, moving directly into a vertical leap, and explode upwards. This is one repetition. Repeat for a minute straight to get ample resistance and cardio training.

-High-knees  End strong with one-minute of jogging in place, making sure to bring your knees up tight to your chest. Remember to get into a good rhythm and breath normally throughout the duration of the exercise.  Make sure to time yourself!

• Workplace Workouts

Don’t drive to work…walk, run or ride your bike!

Clearly you’ll reap more health and fitness benefits by exercising on your daily commute to work.  If you ride the bus or take other public transit, try getting off a few stops earlier than usual and walk, jog or run the rest of the way.  If you’re one of those people who just lives ‘too far’ and drives a car to work, try parking at a near by business or far away from your building in the parking lot and walk the rest of the way to your office.  Keeping this in mind, always take the stairs no matter where you are rather than an elevator!

Stand more than you sit!

Your body burns more calories standing than it does sitting.  If you’re on the phone in your office stand while talking.  Even better, try pacing while you talk or even try static lunges in the same spot, alternating legs, while in your office.

Take a fitness break

There are many simple exercises you can perform at work without any fitness equipment at all.  Some simple examples are:

-Wall-sits: 30 Seconds to 1 min or More! (Glutes & Legs)

-Desk Incline Push-Ups: As many as you can do at a time! (Chest & Arms)

-High-Knees: 30 seconds- 1 min So you don’t get too sweaty! (Cardio)

-Sit-Ups or Crunches: Until you feel the burn! (Core)

Try keeping simple fitness equipment at work.

If you need equipment to keep you motivated, try bringing an inexpensive resistance bands, small hand weights or a stability ball to work.  Try doing bicep curls, tricep extensions and other exercises throughout the day. You can even trade in your office chair for a stability ball!  Not only will you have an arsenal of fitness tools to keep you in shape during those short coffee breaks, but you’ll improve your balance and core strength by sitting on a swiss-ball behind your desk.  You’ll be engaging in passive exercise and no-one will be the wiser. You can even use your swiss ball for wall squats, plie squats or throughout the day and power up before meetings!

• The Best Cardio Exercise Routine (Interval Training)

The majority of fitness journals and university research studies suggest working smarter not harder. This means exercise efficiently not for ridiculous amounts of time.  When cardiovascular exercise is concerned this is especially true.  Instead of going for a few short sprints or jogging for 20 miles, switch things up.  By changing your resistance (incline) and speed throughout your cardio exercise you force your body to alternate between burning carbohydrates and fat for energy.  Not only will this boost your metabolism, but increase the toning effect for your lower extremities! Also, you’ll spend less time on cardio, but reap the same benefit of long jogs!  A simple twenty-one minute example of a cardio interval is:

• The Most Efficient Workout (Full-Body Circuit Training)

If you can’t decided between cardio training and weight-lifting, do both! Circuit training is an easy way to workout a variety of muscle groups and is a simple way to get a quick total body workout by combining multiple forms of exercise.  Circuit training helps to train for both cardiovascular endurance, promoting weight-loss and enhances resistance-training routines by elevating your heart rate throughout resistance exercise to help augment your muscle building potential and increase strength all at once.  Circuit training forces our bodies to adapt to multiple forms of exercise and physical stress.   A circuit workout is typically comprised of multiple exercises, training both your lower and upper body muscle groups through a series of repetition or time-based intervals with little to no rest in between each set.  Each training circuit is normally repeated 3-4 times.

Here’s how to create an effective circuit training workout:

Guidelines from: http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/circuittraining.html

Fitness Circuit Training for Weight-Loss

When it comes to exercise, Scottsdale, Arizona based celebrity personal trainer Lucas James and nutrition expert Jason Apfel suggest working out smarter not harder.  In terms of maximizing the benefits of physical activity, both believe efficiency is key. Resistance training and aerobic exercise are beneficial for and essential to helping reduce body weight and improving one’s overall health.  Combining weight training, plyometrics and cardio within one routine as a circuit, is an excellent way to improve strength, endurance and flexibility, while helping to shed those extra pounds the quickest.

Circuit training provides a quick and effective total body workout by combining multiple forms of fitness one.  It helps to train our body’s cardiovascular endurance, while enhancing into muscle performance and increasing strength at the same time.

Since our bodies adapt to physical activity, as well as in response to our diet, it is important to constantly change our workouts to confuse our muscles. With circuit training, the body must adapt to multiple types of exercise and physical stress.   A workout circuit is comprised of multiple exercises, each based on a specific set of repetitions or time-based intervals leaving little to no rest in between each different activity.  Each round of exercises is repeated 3-4 times, resulting in the same impact of resistance training in normal workouts, but at a higher intensity.  An ‘active rest period’ can be simulated within each circuit by incorporating  exercises that focus on isolating opposing muscle groups. With this approach to fitness clients can work towards varied health goals simultaneously in less time than with traditional workout programs.  This is accomplished by keeping an elevated heart rate throughout the workout because of the way the intervals, exercises, and rest periods are laid out.  Circuit training ultimately increases the number of calories burned per minute.

One recent study in the Brazilian Archives of Cardiology suggests that resistance exercise combined with aerobics helps to decrease the risk of metabolic disorders, reduce cholesterol levels and aid in weight loss.  Other American studies note that circuit training can help burn 30 percent more calories than tradition exercise.

Aside from the health benefits, circuit training is great to break up the exercise to the next, your mind doesn’t have time to wander or get bored.  More so, a circuit e monotony of lifting weights. By constantly moving from one that combines both cardio and strength exercises will help to sculpt muscle physique and tone your body. 

A simple circuit workout can be done at home with little or no equipment at all. Try integrating squats, lunges, push-ups and crunches a minute of quick sprints, high-knees and mountain climbers in between each exercise.

If free weights, resistance bands or even a jump rope are available, you can incorporate simple resistance and cardio exercise that will aid in quicker weight-loss and strength building.

Try A simple Routine:

Exercise #1 
Squat Jump 10-15 repetitions

Exercise #2 
Standard Push-ups 8-12 repetitions

Exercise #3

Burpees

Exercise #4 
Calf Raises on a step-up or raised ledge 15-25 repetitions

Exercise #5

Jumping Jacks 1 min.

Or-

Exercise #1 
Lunges

Exercise #2 
Jump Rope

Exercise #3

Planks or Toe Touch Abdominal Crunches

Exercise #4 
Leap Frogs

Exercise #5

Switch Squats