After reading all of your recent emails lately and reading your surveys, I have put together a 7 Day Coaching Program called Master Your Motivation designed to help you stick to any diet and exercise program.
It’s for anyone that’s having trouble getting started on a program, for those who start for a few weeks and lose enthusiasm and even those who have reached some goals but then let themselves slide to where they were in the past.
Before I launch the 7 day coaching program, I want you to watch a video where I introduce you to a woman named Jane who has struggled with her weight for the last 30 years, going through cycles of losing weight and gaining it back.
If you can relate to anything Jane has gone through, then I think you’ll enjoy and get a lot out of the Master Your Motivation program.
Last week I showed you a video of 5 of my favorite exercises for sexy abs.
Four of them involved being in a push up position where you are putting some weight on your wrists.
Some of you wrote in and said that you had weak wrists and you couldn’t sustain the pressure of your bodyweight.
This is very understandable and I’ve heard this from people before, especially in this day in age of carpel tunnel syndrome.
Well if this is you, I’ve got some very effective exercises that you can try that still work your abs very hard.
Again, none of these involve lying on your back.
Remember, I’m not a fan of those types of exercises where you are lying on your back as your abs are relaxed for part of the movement.
The exercises shown here still work your abs for the entire movement.
I’m going to show you some exercises that you can do on your forearms, as well as some of the same exercises as last week, but with your hands placed on a pair of dumbbells rather than on the ground.
Placing your hands on dumbbells takes considerable pressure off your wrists and will help reduce the strain.
Please try out these exercises. For those with weak wrists, I would love to hear some feedback as to whether or not these actually were better.
Did your wrists still hurt while performing the movements?
I used to have this cat named Allie - I actually shared her with an ex girlfriend Shana.
Allie was one rambunctious cat, I’ll tell you that right now.
But very fun to play with and full of energy and zest.
Allie made up her own playground - the fold out thing that you hang clothes on to dry.
For the life of me I don’t know what that’s called, but anyway…
We captured her on film one day, having fun on her playground - actually a little too much fun - and something happened at the end that makes me crack up every time I see it.
When it comes to exercise, I think Allie has taught us to try something new, challenge yourself, and have fun….but don’t do what she did at the end. : )
Go find YOUR playground. And if you have kids, take them too.
Enjoy!
Scott
P.S. Allie is in a new home with a puppy friend, and getting quite fat, so I hear. Maybe her playground days are over. : )
Usually when I do interval training, I”ll either use a treadmill in my apartment gym or I will find a track or a field and run sprints. By the way, when I refer to interval training, I’m referring to alternating short periods of intense exercise with longer periods of moderate exercise. An example is running fast for one minute, followed by walking for two minutes. Interval training is a great way to get more fit, and burn belly fat. Interval training - performed on a regular basis - will increase your cardiovascuilar fitness. It will also give you an afterburn effect, boosting your metabolism for several hours after you complete the workout, so you can burn calories all day long - a must if you want a flat stomach and six-pack abs.
Normally when I do interval training on a treadmill, I’ll do a proper warm up, then I’ll run at 11 miles per hour for a minute, which is the fastest our treadmills will go. I’ll then walk at about 3.6 mph for as long as it takes me to recover - usually between a minute and a minute and a half. Well yesterday, after I ran for a minute at 11 miles per hour, I wanted to increase the metabolic effect and get some strengthening in, so I got off the treadmill and performed 20 kettlebell swings and 20 kettlebell high pulls. Whew! My heart rate was high after this. I then got back on the treadmill and walked for about a minute to a minute and a half at 3.6 miles per hour. I performed 3 rounds. My total workout was about 15 minutes, and I really felt it. Remember, everyone is different, so you need to find what speed works for you on the treadmill.
So the workout was:
Warm up
Run at 11 mph for 1 minute
Kettlebell swings x 20
Kettlebell high pulls x 20
Walk at 3.6 mph for 1 to 1 1/2 minutes
Perform 3 rounds.
Again, if you are looking to burn belly fat, interval training is one of the best ways to do this. Once you get good at interval training, mixing it up like I did should enhance your results. Interval training was vital for my abs transformation and in getting them as lean as possible and I perform it about 3 days per week. But it’s always very quick - about 20 minutes or less.
What other ways can you mix up your interval training? I would love to hear what has worked for you.
Quick workouts and interval training were the topics of episode #3 of The Great Fat Loss Debate with Scott Tousignant and Scott Colby. Can you increase the intensity of your workouts so that you can shorten your workouts to 10-15 minutes a day and still get great fat loss results? Well the research is saying yes you can, and in my own workouts I have gotten great fat loss results with short, intense workouts. In fact, I often will string together three of four of these four-minute interval circuits together from my Four Minute Workout DVDs for a quick, but very effective fat burning workout.
Should you ignore all long, traditional, low to moderate intensity workouts? Well this is up for debate. In fact, this is much of what Scott Tousignant and I debated in our podcast. Ultimately, whatever you enjoying doing for your exercise is what you will stick with and make you happy. That is most important.
Scott T and I would love for you to listen to us debate the topic of quick workouts for fat loss. Please listen the podcast below and then click on the link that says Comments so we can hear what you think.
We would love to get your opinion. So speak out! : )
The Bodyweight 500 is a great workout that I first learned from Craig Ballantyne, creator of the Turbulence Training System. You’re basically going to take 10 bodyweight exercises and do 50 reps of each one as fast as you can. This will total 500 reps. Get your stopwatch out and time yourself because it will be fun to see if you can beat your score the next time out.
There are some great things about this workout. You can do it anywhere - so you don’t need to belong to a gym. As you can see from my video, I did it outside. It works your entire upper and lower body and heart rate. You are also working your abs really hard. And this is a quick workout - it doesn’t take forever to do.
Craig Ballantyne has come out with the original Bodyweight 500 as part of his Turbulence Training program. I put a variation of it in the video which I hope you will watch.
Here are the exercises I did (50 reps of each as fast as you can).
Squats
Push Ups
Tuck Jumps
Spiderman Climb (25 each leg)
Modified Pull Ups (or Body Rows)
Step Jumps (or 25 one legged step ups each leg)
T-Stabilization (25 each side)
Walking Lunges (25 each leg)
Close Grip Push Ups
Squat Jumps
Now if you are new to exercise, you might want to modify this to the Bodyweight 250 and do 25 reps of each exercise. Also, 50 modified pull ups are pretty challenging, so you might want to split them up and do 25 in the middle of the circuit as shown and then finish the circuit with 25 more.
One last thing, the final day to enter Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training Transformation contest is Monday, January 21, 2008. The contest is open only to those who have purchased Turbulence Training, and post their before/after photos on the Turbulence Training Member’s site.
Don’t worry, when you buy Turbulence Training and enter the contest, you get a free 3 month membership so you can record your transformation.
There are 3 big prizes for the winners.
Grand Prize - $2000 & a 3-year Platinum TT Membership
Second Place - $1000 & a 2-year Platinum TT Membership
Third Place - $500 & a 1-Year Platinum TT Membership
So go ahead and take a peek at Turbulence Training and enter yourself in the contest.
And try the Bodyweight 500 workout below. Feel free to post your comments on how you did in the workout.
By the way, the pull-up straps in the video are a piece of equipment called The Jungle Gym and they can be purchased online from Lifeline USA.
