This week’s Long Beach Workout of the Week combined a strength component with a full body “gymnastics” component. This is really taxing to go from a heavier lift to a fast full body movement so the challenge is to stay on the “threshold” and start to learn your limits and try to test the waters past them.
Workout of the Week: Deadlift/Burpee
5 Rounds for time:
5 Deadlifts
10 Burpees
Rules/Standards:
Deadlifts: The bar has to touch the floor between reps, no near touches allowed. You must stand all the way up with the bar so that the hips are locked.
Burpees: Only 2 rules…lay on the floor fully as the bottom position and jump in the air with hands overhead at the top. Some may criticize and look for precise burpee form (to include the pushup) which we do normally but for this it is a test of work capacity, speed, agility and overall stamina. Using these as our only two rules for form means faster cycle time and less recovery. That being said everyone did pretty clean burpees!
This is a standard Crossfit Workout where the weights are usually considerably higher for the men and women. If you are accustomed to doing heavier dead lifts feel free to scale them up to body weight or even Crossfit Standard weights. (275lb men/185 women)
Here is the workout as Crossfit does it:
Here are the week’s Results:
Ladies
Time
Men
Time
S.W.(95#)
5:45
J.R. (115#)
5:55
F.M.(95#)
7:22
F.K. (115#)
7:55
K.M. (65#)
8:49
M.M.(135#)
10:01
M.K.(95#)
8:58
J.H.(115#)
12:14
C.J.(65#)
11:01
M.L.(135#)
14:22
So this was quite a surprise to everyone! Many were not used to handling some of the weights and they did a stellar job trusting that they could do it. Some great Personal Records for the Ladies this week. For some it was an eye opener as to how much further you can go. For many it was a great lesson in learning new levels and thresholds that you can push past. I think everyone felt the same way about how taxing it was and really enjoyed the challenge. Kudos to everyone for working hard this week!
My favorite quote of the week:
This was the hardest thing I have ever done in the gym…ever. -J.H.
If you are looking for a Long Beach Personal Trainer and want to feel great and get FIT, feel free to EMAIL ME or call 562.225.2244. I’d love to sit down and discuss your goals and map out a plan to achieve them.
When it comes to getting in shape we call come with our own challenges. For many Americans, food intake is our biggest challenge. Everything comes in “value” sized quantities and it has distorted our portion sizes tremendously. In many cases, single meals are the equivalent of an entire day’s food intake. AN ENTIRE DAY!
Let’s Get Real!
Thats right, its time to take a good hard look at your food intake. Don’t think its an issue? I’ve heard it before: “Oh I eat healthy! I don’t eat this or that or this…” You know what that is? Its a way of tricking yourself into feeling good but not putting in the real work to see if you are eating to lose or eating to gain. Even the “healthiest” of diets can make you gain weight. (don’t get me started on “but its a healthy fat”) Regardless of whether you cut out this, only eat that, don’t eat the other…you can still gain weight if you don’t have portion control!
We tend to underestimate what we eat and overestimate what we do…
What does this mean? It means we lowball our calories, thinking we eat less than what it truly adds up to. It also means we overestimate our exercise, thinking it burns more calories than it really does. For this discussion, lets focus on food intake. We don’t take into account ounces of meat, ounces of oil, cups of rice, pasta, cereal, condiments, add-ons, juices and sodas, alcohol, chips, popcorn, candy etc.. All are distorted, overlooked or just plain forgotten in the daily add up of calories. Though you may be glossing over it, the reality is in the inches gained or tight clothes that happen over time.
POINT TAKEN! (What can I do?)
Give youreself a reality check. Here is the plan. Write down everything you eat, including quantities, for 3 days (preferably Thursday, Friday, Saturday) and add up the calories of all the foods for each day. You can use any number of online calorie guides to help you or if you are more serious you can go to www.fitday.com and open a free account and enter foods there. It will add up the calories for you.
If you do this, you are on track to getting a solid headlock on portion sizes…and taking the first steps to being able to change your body AT WILL.
Well the New Year is here and I’m waiting for the Diet Pill onslaught, the late night infomercial for .025 second Ab Machines, and the latest “Eat only______ and lose 10lbs the first day” Diets to hit the market. Its bound to happen and as a Personal Trainer, its just a part of life that we have to counter every false claim, misconception and wrong statement that these so called products purport.
So I’m doing a little pre-emptive strike! I’m going to explain, in a nutshell, the basics of fitness for a specific goal. If I can save just one person from falling prey to these snake oil salesman, then I’ll have done some good.
Mantra: “Abs are made in the kitchen.”
Remember this statement.
I’m going to explain the concept of weightloss in terms all of us can understand. MONEY!
Your body has a bank account. It has money (calories) coming in and money (calories) going out. Our paychecks/deposits are calories that we eat. Our spending is activities we do. Movement causes us to spend more “money” aka calories.
So lets say we have daily bills of $2000. Each day our “boss”(you) pays us $2000 and through the day with work, moving around and body functions we pay our bills of $2000, exactly. This is called a balanced system. No surplus no deficit. We’ll call this “Maintenance” for simplicity. We maintain without over or under spending.
Next example, lets say we are now making a little bit more per day. We got a raise…aka…we eat more. We are still spending our $2000. So now we have the ability to SAVE some of our hard earned intake. So we put our intake away in “savings.” Can you guess what “savings” is? We’ll just say that we have what is called a “surplus” and continue on…it will all make sense soon.
Final example. Times are tough. We aren’t taking home as much as we used to, but our “bills” or expenses remain the same. Remember our take home “pay” is the food we eat, our “bills” are our activities. So we are only taking home $1500 a day and still spending $2000. Now we have what is called a “deficit” and what do we do when in a deficit? Borrow!!! So we tap into “savings” to pay our remaining $500 we owe.
Your body is very much like your bank account. If you take home too much you save it…in the form of body fat. If you spend the same amount as you take in you stay the same. No loss, no gain. If you take a pay cut (eat less) and spend the same (maintain activity) then you spend savings aka lose body fat. This is why calorie counting is like balancing your body’s budget without a budget you can’t run a successful business…right?
So we’ve covered why correct food intake is critical right? What about exercise?
Here is the beauty of getting your ducks in a row with food first: everything else you do only enhances your results!
Exercise is the “spending” your body does. If your food intake is only $1500 a day and you spend $2200 a day, you now have to borrow $700 from “savings!” Exercise maintains or increases the muscle you have and can actually cause you to “spend more” daily. By spending more I am referring to raising your metabolism! Muscle has a way of doing that.
Consistency=RESULTS!
Imagine having to tap into savings every day drawing out $500 a day. Over the course of the week you would have withdrawn $3500, right? Here is where it comes together.
1lb of fat=3500 calories. 7 days of being at a daily calorie deficit of 500 calories=3500 calories. That’s 1lb of body fat lost for reducing your food intake 500 calories. That’s before “spending” more has occurred. Lets say you exercise 5 days a week and burn an average of 300 calories…that’s another 1500 calories on top of the 3500. So that’s a body fat loss of over1.5lbs a week!
So now we understand and see the relationship between proper food intake and proper exercise and how they work hand in hand to help you achieve fat loss safely and correctly. I hope that helps. Remember the Bank Account Example when someone tells you “lose weight and change nothing” and you’ll see right through the hype.
They say you should learn something new each day. (you know…”they”) Hopefully this will save you from falling for the hype, marketing bull and overinflated claims and put you in a realistic mindset about weight loss. It really is a math game.
Workout of the Week: Deadlift/Burpee
I’m going to explain the concept of weightloss in terms all of us can understand. MONEY!
