Strength Training Fun

I'm in the last days of my "workout for fun" period, which has helped me to recoup physically and mentally from my race season. It's been SO much fun revisiting some of my old workout "buddies" - workouts and instructors that I used to do regularly, that I haven't touched in many months, and discovering new instructors that I haven't really worked with before.

I found two new workouts worth noting. First, Cathe, the undisputed Queen of advanced home exercise videos, has come out with a new series - the Four Day Split. As the name implies, there are 4 distinct workouts in the series, each about an hour long with 30 minutes of cardio followed by 30 minutes of weight training for a particular body part. The weight training uses HEAVY weights, as you are only hitting each body part 1x/week - you've got to just nail it hard. The split breaks down as follows: High Intensity Step / Chest & Back; Low Impact Step / Shoulders & Core; Cardio Kickbox / Legs & Core; Bootcamp / Bi's & Tri's. This is a GREAT series - the cardio is all really fun, particularly Bootcamp which is just a party in a box, and the weight work is TOUGH, but super effective. I like the efficiency of this series, and will use the weight work in particular often.


Amy Bento has also come out with The Challenge Series, and I picked up her Slo-Mo Strength Challenge. This is another multi-workout DVD (I'm really liking this new trend - multiple workouts that work well together so you can create a week-long rotation that covers all body parts) that's set up as a 3 day split: Lower Body; Back & Shoulders; Chest, Bi's & Tri's. In addition, there is a separate ab routine that you can tack on as you'd like. She's also got a huge variety of additional pre-mixes created from the primary routines, so you can do a full UB workout one day, or a total body workout (of various length options). The DVD is VERY flexible - there are an amazing number of ways you could structure a schedule using this. Amy is a great instructor, and she's introduced a number of really interesting twists. I did the Back & Shoulder workout yesterday, and WOW - both parts got worked incredibly well, and it was a lot of fun. I'm nicely sore today, and am looking forward to trying out another workout later this afternoon.

Let's see if I can finally get some meat on my puny shoulders from one of these heavy lifting series!

I highly recommend both of these instructors and these particular workouts - give them a try if you are looking for a new challenge, especially if you like or want to try split training (which I happen to find incredibly effective). Check out Cathe or Amy's site for more information on the workouts (including video clips), or buy both at the Advanced Workouts site.

Happy lifting!