Don’t have much time? Can you spare 4 minutes? Great I thought so. Check out this tough 4 minute workout that will torch fat and leave you sweating. Want a little more? Then repeat it 2-3 times.
If you are part of my Fit Moms For Life DVDs, you are familiar with this type of training for our cardio section of the DVD workouts. Even though it only lasts a couple minutes, I have been told and also believe it to be the most challenging part of any workout.
FYI, this video was shot about 2 years ago! I wasn’t too comfortable on camera back then 
You will notice that this is pretty high impact, so if you have bad knees or other joints you need to cut the intensity down or pick lower impact exercises.
The possibilities of different exercises are endless if you have a knowledge of the body and how it moves in addition to a little creativity. In this CBS episode I show some exercises you can do on a picnic table. My guest today is Emily a Fit Fun Bootcamp veteran of over two years. Like we mention in the video, she is 48 years old, but doesn’t look a day over 35. Her positive energy and enthusiasm is contagious and we are very blessed to have her in our bootcamps.
Question of the day: What are some fun workouts you do outside?
Summer is in full swing and finding places to workout while you are with your kids becomes important. Playgrounds can provide an great array of equipment that you just can’t find in your house. Marsue, my trainer for the Oregon and McFarland Fit Fun Bootcamps, puts together insane playground workouts using bands, ropes, and TRXs (I might try to film a video sometime of her doing this). But sometimes you don’t have any equipment at all, so I have put together 3 exercises that you can do at the playground. Sure you might get some looks and some negative comments, but usually you don’t want to look or feel like the person that is doing the ridiculing or staring.
My little brother was in town and he made his TV debut. I think he did very good! He is a great example of not letting genetics be an excuse to getting in shape. All through high school he was about 6’4 and only weighed 160 lbs and got made fun of for it. The past few years he has changed his diet and works out extremely hard and has put on about 50 lbs of muscle and now weighs 15 lbs more than me and is quite a bit stronger than me.
A couple more of my favorite playground exercises are:
-Knee tucks on the swing: Be in a pushup position, hands on the ground and feet up in the swing. Pull the knees into the chest.
-Swing rollouts: Put your forearms in the swing and kneel on the ground, slowly lean forward straightening out your arms. This works the deep core.
-Dips on parallel bars: This is more advanced but you put your hands on two parallel bars and lower your body down until your shoulders are at your elbow height, and then press back up.
Do You Have Any Ideas, Suggestions, Or Comments About the Playground Workouts?
I love to use the ball in my workouts. Using the ball increases the instability and allows for greater range of motion and support for your back. If you aren’t one of the near 1000 people to already be working out to my Got Core DVDs, I highly recommend the $30 investment. There are 8 15 minute workouts with over 50 exercises using the ball.
In this video I am in Vegas with my friend Davey who is a trainer and creator of Model Body Workout. I am going to go visit him again in Huntington Beach in a couple weeks. Enjoy the video and I apologize for the inappropriate but funny comment from my camera guy
Click the links below for past episodes.
This past week I have been sharing with you some of the most effective exercises to target specific areas.
Click here to learn what body part training is and the benefits of it.
Click here to see a couple longer FREE videos on body part routines.
Today, I would like to show you a few more video clips of some of my favorite exercises.
Just a reminder that my newest DVD program Buns, Guns, Shoulders, and Back will be released Tuesday June 15th at 9 AM CST. There will be a limited number of quantity available.
This video is pulled up from the archives and I did this one over 2 years ago. The J-Lo booty, as I have called it, is one of the favorites for my clients to help them lift and tighten their butt.
I get questions asking about how to get rid of the back fat area, or the “bra fat” as it is commonly referred to. The number one thing that it comes down to is nutrition, but there are some very good exercises that target that part of the back. Here is one of my favorites.
This next video is very important from a functional standpoint, but also for appearance. This exercise will help make you look good from behind and tighten up most people’s underdeveloped hamstrings and tighten the butt in the process.
This last one isn’t exactly body part training, but it talks about overall fat loss and is one of my favorite videos!
I hope you enjoyed these videos and will try some of these exercises in your next workout. Results don’t happen overnight, but with consistency and hard work, your body will be like putty, that you can begin to mold and shape to change your body size and shape.
One last reminder that Tuesday June 15th my body part training DVDs will be released. There will be 4 DVDs and 12 workouts included as well as some awesome bonuses. We will have a limited quantity available so don’t wait til it is too late.
For many women, the butt and thigh region causes the most stress and anxiety. Many women are shaped like a pear, meaning that they hold their fat below the waist. Ultimately, fat reduction in any area comes down mostly to proper eating, but exercise can play a nice role in toning and tightening the trouble spots.
Yesterday I talked about how body part training can help improve certain parts of your body. Click here to read yesterday’s post.
I would like to share with you a very short workout that uses the body training principals that I talked about yesterday to totally exhaust the butt and thigh region. This video has nearly 80,000 views on YouTube and has helped women from all over the world. Let me know how you like it.
After doing this workout, you will see and feel the powerful benefits to adding some body part training into your workouts. It definitely kicks things up a couple notches.
I also wanted to show you a tough arm workout that demonstrates this body part training style. I filmed this video over a year ago and it is one of my most popular videos on YouTube. This isn’t a true body part training video, because between every arm exercise I throw in a lowerbody cardio exercise. So if you want to just focus on the arms, take away the cardio exercises.
More on Killer Butt Toning and Arm Toning Workouts You Need To Try!
Hey everyone. This coming week I am going to be focusing on a topic that I get lots of questions about: exercise program design and body part training programs. Body part training is where a person does exercises for only 1 or 2 muscle groups and does a large volume of exercises for that specific area. This is the type of program that bodybuilders and fitness model
Are you looking for a backside like J-Lo?
competitors generally do. If you are part of my Fit Moms For Life DVDs, Fit Fun Bootcamp, or Mamatone, you will know that I believe in total body weight training, meaning total body strength training 3 times a week. On the other hand, body part training refers to working one area, like the chest and triceps, for the whole workout. There are definitely pros and cons to both. Let me go over them.
Pros of total body training:
-highest amount of calorie burn
-very time efficient workouts
-work multiple muscle groups in one exercise
Cons of total body training:
-can’t focus a lot of attention on specific areas
-don’t have enough energy to train 100% effort in any one given area of the body
-requires a higher level of fitness starting out
I have come to realize that a combination of both types of programs is the best for total body fitness, muscle tone and look. Each have their place and should be used. Only doing body part training is quite time consuming because you have to workout 6 days a week, but each muscle group generally only gets worked 1 time, maybe two at the most. More on Body Part Training
I want to introduce you to a special bootcamper of mine, her name is Angie, and she doesn’t let anything stop her from achieving her goals. I get tired of hearing complaints about why people don’t want to start working out, or eating right, i gets pretty old. Angie has a pretty legitimate reason why bootcamp isn’t right for her; she only has one arm! But that isn’t stopping her from doing pushups, pull ups, rows, and pretty much anything else I can throw at her.
Check out this video she made of her at my Fit Fun Bootcamp. Who cares if you have 100 lbs to lose. At least you probably have two legs that work and two arms… What is your excuse?
This also reminds me of another story of a 4 year old boy named Ezra. ABC News won’t let me embed this into my website, but here is the link to it. I got goosebumps from it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrpO0rkzvHM
Question: What EXCUSE are you going to get rid of, and what TRUTH are you going to now embrace?
Today I have a special guest write named Alecia. She was recently on CBS news with me showing some great lower body exercises. What impressed me most about Alecia was how hard she continued to work throughout her pregnancy as well as soon after she delivered the baby. At this point I need to say that I am not a doctor and you should check with your doctor to make sure you are cleared to exercises.
For those of you who are further along in the Fit Moms For Life DVDs you might recognize her as one of the moms in the DVD, but she did it while she was 7 months pregnant so you might not have recognized her. She is also the star of one of my new DVD programs that will be released late summer to early fall for moms who have a baby and want to workout with the baby.
Here is Alecia!
I have to say I am super excited to be writing about this! Pregnancy and exercise, I could talk about them all day if someone would let me! For me exercising while pregnant was just as important as eating healthy and taking prenatal vitamins. Your growing baby is counting on you to give it the best start possible and anything you can do to improve that is awesome. I exercised during both of my pregnancies, but after I could really tell that how I exercised made a big difference in how I felt while pregnant, during labor and then after with baby.
Alecia, 6 months after giving birth and 3X per week of heavy lifting and interval training
In my first pregnancy I exercised 3-4 days a week, running, using the elliptical and a few step aerobic classes here and there. In the beginning of my second pregnancy I was again doing cardio classes and feeling pretty good I thought. Then my sister and I decided to try a Mamatone class (same as bootcamps) and wow, was it different from what I had been doing! I was sore for 3 weeks straight (a good sore, the kind of sore that makes you feel like you did something great!) and I wasn’t even a newbie, I exercised 5-6 days a week! I had never used heavy weights before, the heaviest I had ever lifted were 10 lb dumbbells and I thought those were tough! I of course was mindful of my body and how I was lifting, certain moves didn’t feel comfortable and so I would modify them or just skip them all together. For the most part though I could do the same as everyone else. Other than being sore what I noticed most at first was how my body was different from my first go round. I was gaining weight at about the same rate but my body was so different. I was leaner looking (in a healthy, pregnant way), less swollen and my muscles were more defined. I had always thought what happened in my first pregnancy would automatically happen in the second so I was pleasantly surprised when although I gained the same I looked and felt so much better, this I credit to the addition of weight training. I stopped weighing myself after a while, I was eating healthy and exercising so it really didn’t matter to me what my weight was. I will tell you though that I gained more than is recommended (I ate very good 95% of the time, pregnancy wasn’t a free for all, so the only reason I can come up with that I gained what I did must be from decreasing the amount of exercise I would have normally been doing) so after I didn’t just have a few lbs to lose. I can tell you though it was much more difficult to move with the added weight but once it does start coming off it became easier and easier to move around and the bad aches and pains slowly become a thing of the past.
Another major bonus of doing more weight training vs. great amounts of cardio was that it was much easier on my body. As the relaxin hormone increased throughout pregnancy the pounding and quick movements of cardio classes and running were taking a toll on my joints and leaving me in a great deal of pain. I was able to do weight training right up until the end with just a few modifications. It wasn’t as strenuous on my joints and it left me in much better shape all around.
Keeping fit while pregnant is a healthy and smart choice to make but for me the best pay off was during labor and after with my baby. My first labor was long and not the most pleasant experience, so for my second labor I wanted to try something completely different. I decided to do self-hypnosis (hypnobabies), which sounds a bit kooky I know but it was pretty amazing and it fell right in line with my training. I truly felt little pain during my labor; I was able to get in the ‘zone’ that some of you may have gotten to in doing physical exercise. Your muscles are on fire but yet somehow you don’t really feel pain, you are just so focused on the end result that you press on, you are strong and you get it done! The people around me were amazed at how comfortable and calm I was, much of the time they couldn’t even tell if I was having contractions or not. Which if you’ve had a contraction or watched a woman having one you know when it’s happening and to not know is pretty incredible. For me it was just perfect, I was able to tap into skills I already had to get the outcome I so badly wanted. *Studies show that keeping up with regular exercise while pregnant can lead to shorter and less complicated labor*
Now, if you have children or have carried one for any extended period of time you know how physically exhausting that can be, throw in nursing in awkward positions and you’ve got a recipe for some major neck and back pain and even injuries. After my first baby I was getting massages weekly because I was so sore from nursing and carrying him all the time (although hmm…weekly massages, that actually doesn’t sound so bad!!). But really it was terribly painful and I felt that way for weeks on end. After realized this was because my core was weak from pregnancy and I hadn’t developed strong back muscles prior. I would not let this happen again! I did a lot of strengthening of my back and this time although I still had some discomfort in my lower back in the first few days it was nothing compared to the last time. To give example, last week when I took my kids to the zoo, I had a hungry baby and a two year old who would never think of sitting and waiting while I fed his sister. So I had to push the stroller (that of course had an infant car seat in it!) to keep up with my ever so excited two year old and nurse my 18 lb baby with no other support but my arm and for ten minutes; that can get pretty darn tiring! Things like that happen all the time, as moms we are multitasking all day long and it takes a toll on our bodies. In taking care of ourselves with exercise and weight training we can better keep up with our fast moving children and leave the massages for relaxation instead of easing our injured muscles!
-Alecia, 28 Madison
Great job Alecia, any new moms have questions for Alecia?
Today I want to share with you some of my favorite lower body toning exercises. I think legs are the best muscle groups to work because they have the biggest muscles in the body and therefore burn the most fat calories when worked. Click here to check out a previous post on butt and thigh exercises. If you want another butt and thigh toning video here is one more I recently did! I just found another butt and thigh video I did, this one has 60,000 views on youtube!
Alecia is helping demonstrate the exercises today. I will also have her back on the blog soon to share her story and advice for moms, especially those who are pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant. Alecia, not only got her pre-baby back quicker than anyone I know, but within 6 months is in by far the best shape of her life!
Check out the video:
A pet peeve of mine is runners who think their legs are strong because they run… I have usually seen the opposite, runners who run a lot but don’t strength train, have some of the weakest legs because they aren’t use to doing any weight bearing exercises past about a 30 bend in the knee. To make the legs stronger and glutes stronger you need to have weight bearing exercises up to 90 degrees of knee flexion.
Here are the exercises:
Side lunges
Single leg deadlift
Squats with weights at shoulders
Single leg hip raises on medicine ball
Squat jumps
Single leg squats
