Monday, July 20, 2009

A Powerful Workout To Restore and Reconstruct Your Body

Do you feel like you've fallen into a rut with your workouts? Sometimes the most effective and often overlooked way to get back on track is to re-introduce workouts that focus on reconstructing and restoring your body.

Below you will discover the third installment in a 5-part series of workouts that aim to rebuild your body in such a way that allows you to break out of your workout funk and start seeing results.

Now in this workout you won't be performing supersets, but instead trisets (3 sets of exercises with no rest in between). So, you will do 2 trisets for a total of 6 exercises.



For your first exercise you have the option between deadlifts or dumbbell squats. With the deadlift, you will squat down in front of the bar and bring the bar right up to your shins, keeping your chest and head up, and then pull the bar up as you stand in an upright position. Next, slowly lower down, keeping the bar nice and close to your body.

A common problem for many people, however, is getting down into that low position. This tends to be the result of one's body being too tight and not mobile enough, hence the need for these rebuilding workouts. If you are unable to do this exercise, then an alternative exercise for you would be the DB squat.

With the dumbbell squat you aren't required to go as low, but it is still a very similar movement to the deadlift. So for this exercise, as you squat down, place your hips back, chest up, and squat down and then back up.

After completing all the repetitions for this exercise, you will then move into the chest press, however, it will be with a slight variation. This time, you will do the press 1 arm at a time, making sure there isn't a huge difference in strength between the two sides.

So, place one hand on your abdominals while the other arm does the chest presses. Be sure your movements are controlled and then switch to the other side. The amount of weight you can lift may decrease by around 20% when doing this exercise, but I recommend starting 50% lighter and then working your way up.

The third exercise is a very challenging 1-legged stability ball leg curl. So, get on your back, place one foot on the ball, bridge your hips up, and curl in then out. Switch sides after completing all the reps for one side.

You've just completed the first triset. Now, rest up to 1 minute, and then go through it again for up to 2 more times.

For the next triset, we will begin with an exercise that happens to be an underused exercise that really focuses on your upper back – the chest supported dumbbell row.

To get in position for this exercise, lean against an inclined bench with your DBs at arms length facing one another in front of you, then row the DBs up. Since the chest is supporting you, you can really focus on the back of the body by getting those DBs up high.

After this exercise you will either do the military press with the barbell or 1-armed DB shoulder press.

For the military press, you will want to get a nice bend in the knees, put your hips back, brace your abs, and then drive the BB up and overhead. When you extend overhead, your chest is forward, and the bar is overhead so your shoulder blades will come together, providing that extension in your upper spine. Be sure that when you drive up, the bar is not held up in front, but instead overhead.

If you do not have a barbell, then you can do the DB shoulder press. With this exercise you have two alternatives. One way is with palms facing out, while the other option is with palms facing in.

To finish off the second triset, you will do a reverse lunge. Start out in a nice proud posture and step back with one leg and then go down and pull yourself back to the starting position with your lead leg. Perform all repetitions for one leg and then switch.

Again, you can repeat this triset up to 2 more times, and then add in a short amount of interval training followed by some static stretching.

That's it for the third phase of the rebuilding workouts. Give these workouts a try and watch as your body reconstructs itself to perform at peak efficiency!

1 comment:

Andy said...

Very good workout program design...doing this for the whole month of July.