Archive for the ‘Classes’ Category:
Doing the 100 Push Ups Training Plan
One Hundred Pushups is a site that outlines a six-week training program that claims to have you doing one hundred pushups straight after you’re done. That’s right… a hundred. That’s a lot of freaking push ups!
It all begins with an initial test that calibrates the six week training regimen and each week requires three days of training, which consists strictly of pushups. That’s right, all you do is more and more pushups. After the first two weeks, you take another calibration test similar to the initial test and continue onward. After week four, you take yet another test. The hits just keep on coming.
I think it sounds like a great idea and I like the idea of a challenge. Based on what I know about myself, I estimated I could do around 20-25 solid correct form pushups.
My initial test, which I did last night at around 11pm, yielded 27 good pushups before exhaustion started messing up my form. So, that sets me up for success tomorrow when I start the program.
Subscribe to the comments for this post4 Guys in Body Pump Today: World Record!
Actually, it’s probably not a world record but it’s certainly a record in the two months I’ve been going twice weekly. On Tuesdays it’s often just me in the class, though the class is usually in the high teens; but on Thursdays my class is slightly larger, low twenties, with at least one regular guy. Today, we had the regular plus two people I’d never seen before, both of which identified themselves as first timers! Now, I’m really not as excited about it as my punctuation indicates but I am happy that the class won’t be just me and women.
I think there’s a stigma with classes and men, as if the only place men should be is the free weight room or where the bikes/sleds/rowers/treadmills are. I’m certainly a fan of the free weight room, it’s where I built up all of my bulk, but I’m slowly learning to love the low weight, high repetition workout that Body Pump affords me.
First, I’m forced to work of the major muscle groups. When I did free weights, I would often skip the back because I didn’t like to do it. With my back, I felt no fatigue (and thus, no feeling of “working out”) and went from being able to pull the weight to not being able to. I also saw very very slow gains, so I would occasionally (read: frequently) drop it. With a regimented class, I can’t drop working out my back.
It also keeps things entertaining with different music, different exercises, and something that captures my interest. Lastly, having a set time to go, otherwise I’d lose my spot, is a good incentive. The class is at a specific time on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I better make it each day.
The last time I saw three guys in the Body Pump class was nearly a month ago, wonder if I’ll see four next Thursday? (incidentally, Body Pump is a national program, didn’t know that…)
Importance of Breaking Routine & Monotony
After you get a routine down, your brain consciously and subconsciously starts to figure out ways to make it more efficient, to use less energy, and consume fewer calories. It’s totally natural and there’s almost nothing you can do about it, it’s what took us from the trees and put tools in our hands. However, this very skill that has enabled so many things is something we always have to combat in our workout routines. Have you heard about how “your body adapts to the exercise” or that “you’re plateauing because your body is getting used to it?” That’s what I’m talking about.
In addition to adapting, your brain also gets bored. When you first start doing a routine, it’s fresh and new and exciting. You look forward to straining that muscle, feeling the pump, and then stretching it afterwards. It makes you feel alive as you feel the sensations in different muscles. After a while though, you recognize the feeling and it’s not so fresh and new anymore. The routine becomes… well, routine.
That’s why it’s important to vary your workout regime and introduce new types of exercise.
The prime example is in the twice-weekly Body Pump classes I’ve been taking. Every few weeks, they begin varying the motions you go through for each body group. They introduce new exercises or new positions along with new songs. While it’s a little tricky to follow along, the variation does keep you continually interested in the class.
This can apply to nearly anything, just give it a little change, work that muscle a little differently, and you’ll see dividends. This isn’t some novel idea I came up with either, people have been saying it for ages!
Photo: Alexpgp
Body Pump Is Teaching Me Correct Form
One of the great benefits of taking these twice (or thrice) weekly Body Pump classes is that it’s teaching me the correct form for lifting. The prime example is with the chest, I had always been using my triceps heavily to the push the weight when I should’ve been using my chest. This is because I wasn’t pulling my shoulder-blades together when lifting. By concentrating on pulling the blades together a little more, I felt the weight working my chest more. Part of the reason I was doing it wrong was because when I did chest lifting, I don’t feel the burn I do in other exercises, I just couldn’t lift anymore. With Body Pump, since it’s lower weight and higher repetition, I can feel the burn more and thus know which muscles are being used.
So, Body Pump is teaching me correct form!
(Today marked the first time I was in the only male in the class!)
Schedule Classes to Enforce Regimen
In about fifteen minutes I’ll hop into my car and head over to the gym for the third Body Pump class in my life and one of the main drivers to my resurgence to working on a more regular basis. See, my gym offers free classes to Premium members, which means residents of the area pay $30 a month instead of $25 a month, and, an active frugalist, I try to take advantage of these as much as possible because they take the thinking out of working out!
The main impetus to signing up for this class was that it was a good hour-long mix of aerobic and anaerobic workout but it also enforced a strict regimen. By signing up for this class every Tuesday and Thursday, I guarantee that I will feel obligated to go to this class that is limited to twenty attendees. There is a waitlist but why would I not take advantage of my coveted spot!?
This feeling of responsibility is something that is very difficult to self-generate when you first start back up with a workout regimen and one of the reasons so many books and experts recommend working out with a friend. Since very few of my friends (or my wife) have the benefit of being able to work out during the day, and none of my friends work out at my gym, this is the next best thing!
So, consider signing up for a few classes if you can and you never know what you’ll learn!
Took A Body Pump Class, It Whooped My Butt
Last Thursday, I took the first group fitness class of my life with a class called Body Pump (if you’re part of a gym, you probably have something similar to this, probably even with the same name). Body Pump is a high-rep, low-weight weight training class in which you hit every major muscle group over the course of 55 minutes… and it’s set to music.
It kicked my ass.
I didn’t walk into the class thinking it was going to be a cinch, because you can make classes as hard as you want based on effort and weight, but I totally underestimated how it was going to get me the next day.
I don’t know how much the bar weighed (maybe 7 lb.?) but I was doing bench presses of only 15 lb. plus bar, but like fifty million of them, and the next day I could hardly move. My legs, felt like jelly after only a couple of lunges, squats, and other exercises.
But I love it!
I’m going to go again tomorrow (it took me that long to recover, since it was my first time) but eventually I want to get on a regular schedule of Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
(Too bad the music isn’t that great, but I’m too busy getting killed in the back for it to matter too much)
