This year I have decided to post Creative Training on my blog to get you out of your exercise Rut! Creative Training is training in ways that you have not trained before. We all get stuck doing what we did last year. But this year I want you to look at your current program and add creative training somewhere in it. I will be posting different ways to add/change your program throughout the year. In this particular post I'm focusing on strength training. I have lots of videos and workouts that all do different things with strength training. Some are total body, some are split workouts (chest/back. abs, Legs/shoulders, etc.), and some are upper and lower body. How do you put all of these workouts in a weekly routine? It can be a challenge and you could miss out on really getting the most out of your workouts if you stick to the same ones all the time or rotate them wrong throughout the week. So how do we make the best out of our strength training workouts/videos?
1. Group your strength training workouts according?
Total body
(Total Body with an emphasis on............) Lots of instructors like to kill a particular body part in a total body routine and when you do that video make a note that it is a total body with emphasis on whatever body part they killed. Ex. Pump Party/shoulders ( I love shoulder work) NYC/triceps (Kelly Coffey-Meyers)
Split Routine-- Bis/Tris , Chest/Back, Shoulders/Abs, etc. (You can change your split routine by grouping them differently-- Bi/Legs, Shoulders/ Legs, Chest/Abs, etc.)
Lower Body -glutes, quads, calves, hamstrings, inner and outer thigh
Upper Body -- back, chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, and abs
Compound Total Body (compound exercises)-- working lower and upper body together
Circuit Workouts--- (cardio alternating with strength training)
Ab only Workouts
2. Decide what your goals are?
Tighter thighs--- Lower body
Tone arms-- biceps/triceps/ shoulders
Muscular endurance-- compound exercises
Rock hard core-- abs
One stop shop-- circuit training
Weight loss
Etc...........................
3. Decide what type of rotation you would like to do for how long? I suggest not doing the rotation longer than 4 weeks. Anything longer makes it hard to stick to and boring. Here are a few examples:
1.Total body with an emphasis on abs for 3 weeks-- 3 sessions per week Ab workout everytime you total body Mon/Wed/Fri
2.Circuit Workout for 4 weeks-- 4 sessions per week Mon-Thurs
3.Split workouts for 3 weeks with an emphasis on Lower body-- Mon-- Chest/Back and Lower body workout Tuesday-- bis and triceps Wednesday-- Abs, Legs
Friday-- Shoulders and Lower body workout
4. Total body with emphasis on a split-- 3-4 exercises from your split Chest/Back and 1 exercise from each other body part. 3-4 exercises from Bis/Tris and 1 exercise for each other body part
5. Alternating Upper and Lower Body-- Monday-Upper Tuesday-- Lower, etc.
6. Split with 1 total body exercise
7. Total body x2 with 1x compound exercise
The list could go on and on. So I encourage you to pick a way to train that you have never done before. Step outside of your box. Our bodies adapt and we have to keep tricking it. My
current 3 week creative training consists of --- Total body with emphasis on abs/ cardio 45 mins alternating days--step,kickbox or hi-low,Walk/run (interval workout), yoga once a week. After you are finish with your rotation, measure your results? Muscle strength, tone, endurance, clothes fit better, can see abs, thighs looking tighter, weight loss, and did I like it? See what rotation works the best for you and your body and work from there. So I encourage you to put an identity to your workout today. Look at your workout and name it.
The beauty of fitness is that you can create your own way of training to figure out what works best for you. So encourage you to look at your program and think of ways to add variety to jazz up your program. I know lots of people that do the same thing everytime they exercise. How boring is that? Anyway, let's add creative training to our program today.
Katina Hunter
