Tag: bootcamp

The Most Savage Workouts – How To Stay In Shape After Gymnastics

It’s that time of year again and my heart is heavy as I say goodbye to some of my wonderful kids. They are moving on, away from a sport that has given them the kind of strength and coordination that nothing else can and for that reason they need something to keep them going. Hitting the gym 16 hours a week is always going to be hard to replace but there is hope with a little dedication, hard work, and the wealth of workouts that are buried right here in this site.

Where to start?

For a start, the tag cloud halfway down the right side of the page is a great place to find posts that are tagged with bootcamp, cardio etc. Once in a while I will post something like my Frosh Week series or something specific that someone has asked for. But digging through the site is hard to find what you are looking for so I am on a quest to find a better way of organizing things. Until then, I will link a few posts or tags here to get you started.

Basics on how to stay in shape after gymnastics – Some rules to follow, and choices to make

Christmas Countdown. 3 workouts to get you in the festive spirit – Christmas Countdown

Frosh Week workouts – Guaranteed to fix that hangover – FROSH WEEK

Bootcamp 3 tag – Some of the best bootcamp workouts were later in the series – Bootcamp3

If you are familiar with Crossfit here are some WODs I had completed – WODs I HAVE DONE

Here are 20 more basic Crossfit workouts for home that will cause you great suffering – 20 WODs for home

 

Some additional interesting educational and motivational pieces:

Health and Fitness 101

A special nod to Aly – Stop listening to yourself

Motivation. If this doesn’t get you off your ass nothing will… MOTIVATION

After this you are on your own. I am always available to help with planning and motivation as long as you are willing to listen and work hard. Here is the basic knowledge you need to schedule your own workouts:

The simple rules for any workout program
You were a gymnast, half body workouts are fine
Use your basic skills from conditioning and gym
Legs: Squats, lunges, jumps, 1 leg squat
Arms: Dips, reverse grip chinups
Shoulders: Handstands, HS Pushup, burners
Back: Chinups, high pulls, rows
Chest: All pushups, plank walk
Core: Crunch, situp, vsnap, leg lift, rockers
Cardio: Sprints, burpees, jumps, plank runs
Monday: Arms Shoulders Core
Tuesday: Legs Cardio
Wednesday: Chest Back Core
Thursday: Cardio and flexibility
Friday: Legs Core
Saturday: Arms Shoulders Back Chest Light day
Sunday: Off

 

 

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If You Want Change… Change.

It’s been a while since I have posted here, and probably a big reason why I feel like I have stalled in my progress. Not being accountable even to strangers on the internet is a liberating and damning situation. I have said before that going to the gym at LA Fitness is making me bored and predictable in my workouts and I really want to change that but I am so comfortable in that situation that it’s hard to try and implement change.

But now is the time. It’s the last day of coaching for the year, and next week we start on a new season, new kids and new responsibilities. Since there are major changes in the off, I figure I may as well just do everything at once and handle the changes together. The question is what? What am I lacking right now? I think the obvious answer is Olympic lifts and the WOD style workouts that I enjoyed at home the last 2 summers. Not only that but the lack of HIIT work has made me deficient in the cardio department and I need to fix that also.

After browsing through the last couple of summers on here I have come to the conclusion that only adding home work will be the solution. Not only because I will now be coaching MTWR during the summer leaving only FSY to do actual hour long gym workouts but also because the only way I can add WOD or HIIT to my schedule is to do it at home. Typically HIIT isn’t really something you want to do at a regular gym. I could of course go whole hog and try crossfit again since the crossfit Ark location has a summer special again this year but it’s still expensive especially when I have the equipment and the knowledge already.

I would like to get some KB workouts back into my arsenal, something I can probably do at least once a week with the gym girls for their 30 minute conditioning. I would like to start doing full cleans again, something I haven’t done since I felt a twinge in my left side of my back (the opposite side from normal) and I would also even like to start doing some heavy bag work since I bought a bag last year and have hardly used it, I should actually hang it on the back deck and use it out there, it would be a great cardio workout I could actually do in the morning before work.

I am definitely going to do something at the gym once a week with the new kids, they have a great conditioning program but I think they need some of my work to really make them understand what I mean by hard work. So my schedule at a minimum would be Fri Sat Sun at the gym and one day cardio / bootcamp / KB at gymnastics. That’s still only 4 days a week which means I would have to add a cardio workout before gymnastics or if I can get a day during the week where I am off or able to get home early then squeeze a cardio workout in before coaching.

I can sacrifice my shoulders and arm days at the gym since I will be getting lots of shoulder work doing HIIT / WOD work. That leaves only chest, back and legs for LA Fitness. My schedule then would look something like this… However it is suspicious in the way that I don’t have a day dedicated with enough time to do HIIT I am actually just waiting for a day off or some spare time which isn’t ideal. Looks like I will have to rethink this.

Monday – OFF
Tuesday - Bootcamp at coaching
Wednesday – Morning HIIT or OFF
Thursday – Morning HIIT or OFF
Friday – Chest LAF
Saturday – Legs LAF
Sunday – Back LAF

Christmas Countdown Workouts – Bootcamp

At Christmas as the mood lightens I like to give my kids some fun things to do for conditioning which usually just means a 12 Days Of Christmas theme. This year is no exception so here you are, the next 3 days will contain my Christmas Cracker workouts. Merry early Christmas.

Christmas Cracker Bootcamp

My Coast, Thanks To LA Fitness

snatch-5215c14f11168I have been out of the gym for literally years, at home doing barbell related and bootcamp / HIIT / WOD style workouts.

I loved having enough equipment at home that I could easily do my deadlifting, squatting and other Oly lifting stuff and that I was creative enough to make wallballs, parallettes and other items to help with the stuff I needed. Also building what eventually turned out to be 6 pullup stations around the house was a help since pullups revolutionized my workouts ever since P90X. However, there is nothing like the variety of a gym. It’s like goin gto a buffet when you have been home cooking for a year, there is so much variety and the access is so easy it’s really hard not to get addicted to it. LA Fitness gave us a great deal as I wrote earlier and I have been going quite regularly recently because I find that I am able to do more fo what I need to more easily. I still like to to my deadlifting and my oly lifting at home, I don’t usually enjoy seeing people doing cleans or snatches at the gym so I don’t do it. Also there are no appropriately sized kettlebells at the gym so if I am wanting to do a KB workout I have to stay home.

So that brings me to my current workout scheme that has settled into a smooth groove for the time being. Although there have been only 2 days off in the last 45 I did have a week vacation in there too. My philosophy for the next month or so now that I have come off my cut and am taking some time to stabilize is to keep the workouts a bit lighter and to watch what my weight does. I will probably do another strength push towards the end of the year to get my lifts back up as long as my shoulder stops bothering me. But here is my current deal, not including the bootcamp workouts I occasionally do with the kids and also not taking into account the KB or Oly lifting days. (At home version in brackets for reference)

Chest – Bench and Flys (Same at home, but add pushups and DB pullovers)
Back – Deadlifts (light), Pullups (Same at home but more DL and weighted vest pullups)
Legs – Squats (light), leg press, extensions, hamstring machine (Squats, weighted lunges, extensions.)
Shoulders / traps – Military press, flys, barbell shrugs, cleans (Cleans, snatch, Power clean and KB at home due to ceiling height)
Arms – Curls and close grip bench, dips and preacher curls (close bench and dip station dips plus Oly bar curls.)

It’s super basic, my rep counts are somewhere in the region of 12-15 sets of each pyramiding up in weight and down in reps. I do tend to do quite high rep counts compared to most people, it’s just how I have always done things. For bench for instance it’s not unusual for me to do 120+ reps for a session and for arms and shoulders it can go a lot higher. Unless I am specifically doing 1RM or very low rep high weight counts my workouts are usually like this.

So that’s it for now. For the next 4 week or so things may be a bit boring, I will keep posting my WOD workouts for the girls at gym and also any off plan work I do that’s interesting. And for what it’s worth, it has been 3 weeks since I stopped cutting and went to Cuba and my weight is almost identical. I posted a 224 @ 17.0% this morning.

Frosh Week Is Over. The Punishment Never Ends…

your-missionWhat now?
Frosh Week is over, there will be a maximum of 3 workouts posted here each week from gym so what do you do in the mean time? In other words, how do I build my own workout.

Here’s a quick method.

How many workouts a week? Should be 6 so I will go with that. If you can only manage 4 then welcome to the Frosh 15. Again.

1. Upper body
2. Lower body and abs
3. Cardio
4. Upper body
5. Lower body and abs
6. Cardio
7. Rest

If you really only want to do a 4 day split you can do a push / pull approach but there is no getting away from cardio.

1. Pushups and Squats
2. Pullups and Abs
3. Bootcamp full body
4. Cardio

I suggest the 6 day workouts, you can make it a heavy 3 and a light 3 if you like, just stay active. Here is a list of just some of the exercises you can try. Also there are about 170 entries tagged with bootcamp of one sort or another, just click on the word in the tag cloud to see them.

Upper Body

Pushups – Military, Spider, Clap, Plyo, Sphinx to plank, side hold
Pullups – Narrow, wide, reverse, chin to hand
Dips – Chair, chair and feet, free dips on bars
Shoulder press – Down dog, feet on chair, feet on stairs, handstand (top of head touches ground)

Lower body

Squats, pop squats, squat tuck jump, squat 180, squat 360, Pistols (1 leg squat)
Lunge front, lunge back , walking lunge, side lunge, foot on chair lunge
Box step up, double stair walk, sissy squat (on toes)
Calf raises, calf raise on stairs, calf raise on stairs one foot alternate

Abs

Vsnaps, crunch, leg up toe touch, full sit up, sit up double twist
Hanging leg raise, tucked leg raise
In and out, crunchy frog, bicycles front and back, flutters all 3 levels
Side crunch, russian twists, roll to boat hold

Cardio

I recommend Tabata for cardio, 20 minutes and done, but work as fast as possible (20s on 10s off x8 = 4 minutes x5 rounds)

Jacks, squats, tuck jumps, lunges, knees up, heels up, burpees (all variations)
Mary Katherine lunge switch, long jumps or ski jumps (side to side)

How much? For everything except cardio try for anything from 200-800 total reps. Take something from each line or two from each and do anything from 3 to 50 of each. Here are a couple of examples of super easy workouts that you can put together for yourself with other items:

Mandy:
20-15-10-5

Pullups
Double Block Jumps
Pushups
v snaps

Pick a poison:
5x each one

5 chin up
10 push up
15 air squat

5 hip pullover
10 beam jumps
15 lunge switch

5 skin cat recover
10 leg lifts
15 vsnaps

5 ring inversions
10 dips
15 handstand shoulder touch

Barbara:
Five rounds, each for time of:
20 Pull-ups
30 Push-ups
40 Sit-ups
50 Squats

And everyone’s favourite:

Chelsea / Cindy (Sub Burpees for Pullups if you have to)

Chelsea:
Each minute on the minute for 30 minutes

5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats

Cindy:
AMRAP – As Many Rounds As Possible in 20 minutes.

5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats

Frosh Week Day 6 – The Last Day (Be A Gymnast)


straddle holdtuck plancheSince most of the people who this is aimed at are previous gymnasts this should be easy. For the rest of the world you need to start working on your gymnastics skills. It’s a tough sport to compete in but the skills you develop as a gymnast are valuable for all aspects of sport and fitness. So if you don’t have a handstand or a bridge or splits, get to work.

Day 6 – Memories of Gymnastics

5-10-15 for warmup

Pushups
Situps
Chair or free dips
Squats

Workout:

30s plank on hands
5 wall handstands @ 10 seconds
30s Bridge hold
10s straddle hold (hands only)

2 minute rest

60s plank on hands
10 wall handstand shoulder touches each side
10 fall to bridge recover or back walkover
20s Tuck planche hold

2 minute rest

90s plank on hands
10 Handstand half or full turn
10 Handstand bridge or front walkover
10 Free handstands hold as long as possible

2 minute rest

20 pushup side hold
20 free handstand shoulder touches (as many attempts to do 20 total)
20 pushup shoulder touch (40 touches total)
5 30s handstands assisted or against the wall

2 minutes rest and cry because you miss gymnastics so much…

Frosh Week Day 3 – Warmup and Stretch

perfect-split-leapTime for a rest, of course only if you have done the previous 2 days. This is not so much a day off as a chance to work back into your flexibility and is something that, if you don’t do yoga at the Student Gym, you are going to need to do twice a week. Those legs aren’t going to stretch themselves!

Frosh Week Workouts Day 3
Short workout plus stretching

3 rounds:
50 jumping jacks
25 Pushups
25 Double twist situps
60 second plank

3 rounds:
90s right split
90s left split
90s middle split
30s bridge
30s wall handstand