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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

How to Gain Lean Muscle Mass:

How to Gain Lean Muscle Mass:

Throughout the years I’ve been modeling and personal training the number one goal I’ve tried to personally achieve is bulding lean muscle mass and maintaining low body fat. One thing that’s very important in the fitness and modeling industry is to have good porportion throughout the entire body.  I’ve seen hundreds of guys who have a great upper body and lack mass in their lower body or vice-versa.   To have good solid mass throughout the entire body without looking unproportional can be hard to achieve, but pays out when done the right way! It takes time and consistency, but if you stick with it the results will show.

Building muscle mass the “Clean” way can be time constraining and maybe a little more expensive, but it shows better results from what I’ve done and taught. My clean way to building lean muscle mass is done by adding clean and healthy calories to your current daily meals. The average male needs to increase his daily calorie intake 500 to 2,000 calories a day depending on his goal. Some men get the mix up that they can eat whatever food to add for those additional calories, but really those calories should be clean and healthy foods eaten.

In order to keep your existing body weight you really should consume one gram of protein per pound of body weight. For example, if you weigh 175 pounds then you need to consume 175 grams of protein a day to maintain that weight. Ideally, if you’re trying to gain lean muscle mass you should increase your protein intake to your goal weight. So a 175 pound man who wants to gain 20 pounds of lean muscle to get to 195 pounds will need to intake 195 grams of protein. From my experience in gaining lean muscle mass it’s important to try to keep your daily protein and calorie consumption to 75-85% real non-processed or enhanced food. By that I mean don’t rely on protein powders, mass builders, supplements, or or other enhanced foods for the majority of your meals. Your body reacts and process real natural food better then going on the supplement bandwagon. In my experiences I’ve seen better gains in my mass and physical size by eating natural foods, but the downfall is that it will cost you more money. More food means more trips to the grocery store and more meat to buy. I know that it’s convenient to have an afternoon protein drink that is 300 calories and 40 grams of protein without having to make any food, but if you were to eat a large grilled chicken breast and some vegetables instead you would be better off.

Gaining Lean Muscle Mass Key Factors:

I. Set and Rep Count

Generally, in lean mass building sets and reps should be kept to a maximum of three to four sets with less than eight repititions per set.

Common Sets and Reps for Lean Gaining Muscle Mass:

8x6x4x2

8x7x6x5

9x6x3x1

8x6x4

8x7x6

II. Rest Time Between Sets:

A huge factor in building muscle mass is your rest time between sets. It’s better to wait longer than to start too soon.  Remember you want have to rest time between the sets to lets your muscles recover and avoid your heart rate getting to high. I recommend to rest 2-3 minutes between sets. At times it can be hard wait that long, but once you develop a consistent routine you’ll get use to it.

III. Hear Rate Monitoring:

Your heart rate should be at 60 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. At this rate you’ll peak into a fat burning zone, but won’t burn to many calories during your workout. It’s a good idea to invest in a heart rate monitor that has a strap to go around your chest. To calculate your muscle building heart rate use this formula.

Click Here for Calculating Heart Rate Zone

IV. Breathing and Form

Breathing and form the one the most important elements for weight training. Breathing through the mouth is high recommended when participating in weight training, sports, and other cardiovascular activities. When breathing during your weigh training session you want to keep these tip in mind

- Breathe out when when pushing or pulling on reps.  Make sure that your neck is always up and never positioned down in your throat. When your chin is down you will cut off oxygen to your lungs therefore excreting more energy, lose stamina, and rick potential injuries.

- Inhale between with mouth open.

When lifting weight it’s very important to have full extension in movements in your reps. For example on barbell bench press, the bar should hit your chest on the way down and the on the extension up your arms should be fully extended out straight to remember to breathe out.
V. Nutrition and Protein Intake

Keep in mind that my lean muscle mass building program is used for men that are looking for a natural way to gain lean muscle and to look bigger porpotionately . This program is not designed if you’re looking to do “Bulking” for bodybuilding or competitions. Also, this program is not designed for strength training although you will see gains in your weights when lifting.

The protein your body stored is a process called protein synthesis—the larger your muscles grow. But your body is constantly draining its protein reserves for other uses—making hormones, for instance. The result is less protein available for muscle building. To counteract that, you need to “build and store new proteins faster than your body breaks down old proteins,” says Michael Houston, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition at Virginia Tech University.

In addition to adequate protein, you need more calories. Use the following formula to calculate the number you need to take in daily to gain 1 pound a week. (Give yourself 2 weeks for results to show up on the bathroom scale. If you haven’t gained by then, increase your calories by 500 a day.)

A. Your weight in pounds.
B. Multiply A by 12 to get your basic calorie needs.
C. Multiply B by 1.6 to estimate your resting metabolic rate (calorie burn without factoring in exercise).
D. Strength training: Multiply the number of minutes you lift weights per week by 5.
E. Aerobic training: Multiply the number of minutes per week that you run, cycle, and play sports by 8.
F. Add D and E, and divide by 7.
G. Add C and F to get your daily calorie needs.
H. Add 500 to G. This is your estimated daily calorie needs to gain 1 pound a week.

A 2001 study at the University of Texas found that lifters who drank a shake containing amino acids and carbohydrates before working out increased their protein synthesis more than lifters who drank the same shake after exercising. The shake contained 6 grams of essential amino acids—the muscle-building blocks of protein—and 35 grams of carbohydrates.

Since exercise increases bloodflow to your working tissues, drinking a carbohydrate-protein mixture before your workout may lead to greater uptake of the amino acids in your muscles,” says Kevin Tipton, Ph.D., an exercise and nutrition researcher at the University of Texas in Galveston.

For your shake, you’ll need about 10 to 20 grams of protein—usually about one scoop of a whey-protein powder. Can’t stomach protein drinks? You can get the same nutrients from a sandwich made with 4 ounces of deli turkey and a slice of American cheese on whole wheat bread.

Research shows that you’ll rebuild muscle faster on your rest days if you feed your body carbohydrates. Post-workout meals with carbs increase your insulin levels, which, in turn, slows the rate of protein breakdown. Have a banana, a sports drink, a peanut-butter sandwich.

If you don’t eat often enough, you can limit the rate at which your body builds new proteins. Take the number of calories you need in a day and divide by six. That’s roughly the number you should eat at each meal. Make sure you consume some protein—around 20 grams—every 3 hours.

Eat a combination of carbohydrates and protein 30 minutes before you go to bed. The calories are more likely to stick with you during sleep and reduce protein breakdown in your muscles. Try a cup of raisin bran with a cup of skim milk or a cup of cottage cheese and a small bowl of fruit. Eat again as soon as you wake up.