Exercise for 1-31-11 Push Pull with Cathe

 I've done this workout sooo many times, I always say it's pretty easy...but not doing my normal weight training for a while (since moving) made this workout fairly hard. That's probably also because I loaded my barbell and weights as heavy as I used to, than picking something lighter and more reasonable to ease back into. For those of you who do Cathe workouts, I used the same weights Cathe does...and she has big muscles where as I don't, but mine are very defined and toned. Basically I'm very thin build but I'm quite strong for my size.  So anyway, my body is feeling it today and I'm looking forward to more pain from now on. :-)

Workout details: Push Pull is a 45 minute total body workout which features many new and refreshing exercises to keep your muscles stimulated in new ways. The focus of this workout is to promote muscle balance as well as strength and endurance gains through exercise variety and balance challenges. We use the stability ball quite a bit in this workout to create this added balance challenge which in turn promotes even greater muscle recruitment. It's important to point out that when using a stability ball you should use a lighter weight than you typically would for a given exercise since the unstable environment makes the muscles work harder to stabilize. As your body gets acclimated this "wobbly" environment you'll find that you are able to gradually increase your weights again.

The soundtrack to this workout is filled with soft rock classics. Here is a list of the songs:

Walking In Memphis
Freedom
Our Friends Are Electric
Breakfast at Tiffany's
In The Living Years
Dreams
Sleeping Sattelite
This ain't a love song
Missing

Keep in mind that for muscle balance we are doing one muscle group then the opposing muscle group. In most cases this is anterior (front) and posterior (back) but when it comes to shoulders we have both anterior (front delt) and posterior (rear delt) as well as superior (mid/top delt) and inferior (lats) which are directly beneath them.

The exercises for Push Pull are as follows:

Barbell Squats (legs with focus on quads)
Deadlifts (legs with focus on glutes/hamstrings)
Static lunge with heel lifted (legs with focus on quads)
Leg Press (legs with focus on glutes/hamstrings)
Bench press on ball (chest)
Deadrows (back)
flys on ball (chest)
Y's on ball (thats the Push Pull picture where we had our arms going back with thumbs up...for upper back)
Inverted shoulder press on high step (top/mid delt)
One arm row (back/lats which are beneath shoulders)
Front raise on ball (front shoulder)
Rear delt raise on ball (back shoulder)
Bicep curls with ball (biceps)
Slow Dips/immediately to kickbacks (tricep)
Outer thigh on ball
Inner thigh with ball
Superman on ball (low back)
Crunches with ball (abdominals)
Calve raises
Tibialis Anterior w/ball (shins)
Full Body Stretch

You may initially find this workout to be easier since you are learning to make adjustments for the new variety, but once you have worked through this, form and concentration is of the utmost importance for optimal muscle recruitment. Feel free to add sets to any of the exercises for an even greater challenge.


Preview video:

You can purchase Cathe workouts from http://cathe.com/ 

~BLIX

Exercise for 9-13-10 Cathe Pyramid Upper

Yep, was busy and didn't end up doing this on Saturday like I had hoped. So Monday worked out better.

Video preview:

Pyramid Upper Body:Designed to increase lean muscle mass, shape, and sculpt the upper body, this upper body workout focuses on the full pyramid system as well as super sets to maximize your potential. As an added bonus, a mix of traditional and non-traditional ab and core work is included with the stability ball to promote better posture and help decrease common back pain associated with poor posture.

Pyramid Upper Body Format: warm-up (3 1/2 min.), upper body weight training (41 min.), Stability Ball (8-min.), Stretch (4 min.) Total = 56 1/2  min.

My thoughts:
I am fairly sore this morning but not too terrible. Although Jason and I were getting tired half way through this. Since this workout isn't crazy jumping around like some of my other workouts, I like to take advantage of that and really focus on each exercise. Sometimes I close my eyes to really concentrate too. 
I really love the Pyramid workouts and every time I do them, I keep thinking I need to do them more often. I will try but I have a feeling since we've been busy with house stuff, we might not get back on our regular workout schedule until we move and settle in. Hey, moving is exercise right? :-D


~BLIX

Exercise for 9-9-10 Cathe Pyramid Lower

Ouch! My legs are sore this morning.

Video preview:

Pyramid Lower Body:Designed to increase lean muscle mass, shape, and sculpt your legs, this lower body weight training program focuses on the full pyramid system as well as super sets to maximize your potential. As an added bonus, the workout is divided into two parts (standing work and floorwork) which conveniently lends itself to be done on different days if preferred.  Also, the floorwork will incorporate the use of a stability ball and ankle weights to uniquely challenge your muscles in new ways.

Pyramid Lower Body Format: warm-up (4 1/2  min.), lower body weight training (28 min.), Stability Ball- Legs & Glutes (13 min.), Stretch (4 min.) Total = 49 1/2  min

http://shop.cathe.com/default.asp 

My thoughts:
Again, ouch! This workout is hard. I love it though. There's a little step routine in the warm up that always cracks me up because my husband just can't do it. He is so uncoordinated. Hee hee.
So this morning I notice that my hamstrings and calves are sore, but the tops of my legs (quads) aren't sore at all.  My butt is only a little sore too but not very much. I'm used to working my butt pretty hard with squats so I'm thinking that's why my quads aren't sore and my butt is barely sore. But I might be more sore later today... so I could be getting ahead of myself.
This workout doesn't have an ab/core exercise included so we did our own at the end. 


I'm planning on doing the Pyramid upper on Saturday since tonight we are having dindin at a friends house. The first time I did this set I did upper first and tried to do lower the next day. That was a bad idea because my upper body was so sore I could barely lift my barbell to work my legs! Was horrible! So now I do legs, then upper body. And that works just fine. :-)


~BLIX

Exercise for 8-17-10 Kick, Punch & Crunch (kickboxing) with Cathe

The past few days have been quite busy for me and will continue to be, so I won't be posting as much this week. I probably won't have to time to workout let alone do post-worthy makeup looks. My parents-in-law are visiting this week (they should be here this afternoon) so I don't want to take time away from them by working out all the time or doing makeup looks. As soon as they leave, I will get back on track with kicking my butt and making myself look prettay.

This is the workout I did yesterday. Kick, Punch and Crunch

Kick, Punch & Crunch This workout is 68 minutes long. It starts with a warm up of 7 minutes and gradually moves into a faster paced warm up which I refer to as intermediate intensity (since it really starts to pick up the intensity toward the end of it). After the 13 minute mark, you will really kick it up to high intensity levels for another 20 to 25 minutes. During this time you will be doing kickbox conditioning drills which are put in an interval style format of pushing hard, recovering briefly and pushing hard again. This segment is mostly high impact, however, there are also some high intensity low impact drills included (the last drill, one of the hardest, is HIGH intensity, LOW impact, at its best,....Hammer Punch with a drop lunge into a Knee Smash....24 per side, yikes). After this segment, you are good and fried, however, the show must go on You/we will then do three punching and kicking combinations. Each one consists of a punching combination (ex: double jab high, double jab low, a triple jab/cross/jab and then a cross punch with hesitation), followed by a kicking combination (ex: knee chamber, into roundhouse kick, into drop squat back, into jump roundhouse kick forward). This segment also keeps the heart rate up because each combination features jump kicks. Now we move on to ab work on the stability ball. We will do crunches, wood chops with weight (optional), and pikes with knee rolls. Finally, its time to enjoy a nice relaxing stretch with a soothing Asian melody. By the way, the other parts of the soundtrack are all instrumental with a strong downbeat to suit the mood of the movement. I brought the ever so motivating song "I WANNA ROCK" into this workout and you will hear it on your first punck/kick combination. Get ready to SWEAT!!!!! 

 

Kick, Punch & Crunch Format: Warm- up 7 min., Intermediate intensity drills 7 ½ min., High intensity drills 18 min., Combo #1 8 min., Combo #2 7 min., Combo #3 6 min., Stability ball abs 7 min., Stretch 5 ½ min., Total = 68 min


Video preview:

My thoughts:

I love this workout! I'm not a huge fan of cardio but I love this DVD so much. It's fun and full of energy. I've done this one so much that it's not a huge challenge like it used to be. I used to dread doing it as it usually burned me out and I felt like I would need to sleep for 2 days to recover. Now it's a normal workout for me and I can do it all the way though without feeling like I'm going to die. Afterward I'm left feeling energized and pumped. I'm not even sore from it today but it's still an awesome workout for me. The abs part with the ball is fairly evil though (as you can see from the video). But I love kicking my own ass...or abs. Hee hee. 

Check her stuff out if you are interested! http://shop.cathe.com/ 

Cathe just came out with some new DVD's but I'm not sure if I will order them just yet. Thanks to a post by  Betty Ray, I just got Insanity with Shaun T. So I wanted to try that for a while before getting more stuff I won't be able to use for some time. I just watched some of it yesterday and it looks fun and promising. Oh yeah, it looks insane too...weee!

~BLIX