bored with your workouts? Read this!

A NEW WORKOUT EACH DAY! BORED WITH YOUR WORKOUTS? Try this program with new, exciting and challenging exercises! Keep your muscles confused and guessing by doing a new program with completely new workouts everyday! I could go on and on but do any of these things sound familiar?

As a certified personal trainer that is very passionate about fitness and how to approach it correctly and safely, I feel it is my duty to talk about the the newest, most exciting workout fad that is coming out about 3 months or so. I see highly paid, possibly not even CPTs talking about the newest way to tone up or get stronger with their new workouts. Workouts that they probably don't even do themselves. I see girls performing exercises that are dangerous to their backs, or doing odd motions with weights that put their joints at risk or just terrible form in general that leads you very susceptible to injury. I want to go back to that second sentence in this paragraph. The newest way to tone up or to get stronger...well there is no new way. Our body can only move in so many directions or planes at one time. Squatting, lunging, pushing, pulling and rotating (and deadlifting because I think that should be the 6th movement) are the 5 basic movement patterns that our body does to complete any daily task, including exercise! 

I want you to know that you can get stronger without confusing your muscles or without those fancy new exercises/workouts each day. What if I told you the best thing you could do for yourself is to stick with ONE exercise program for 6 months to a year? I know most of you are probably already like, goodbye! In several months to a year you can truly  learn how to move the way your body is designed to in exercise and throughout the rest of your day. This is not only important for the muscle you are isolating in your workouts but also to your core strength. Let me tell you about that last part real quick...

Our core is not just the 6 pack we all dream of having. {Why tho? I love carbs and sweets too much to even think about getting one of those.} Our core consists of muscles in our pelvis, upper legs, our back and the front of our abdomen. Learning how to brace, breathe and move for all 5 movements is vital to everyone's core strength and health of their spine. I hope you will continue reading to learn more about the movement patterns, as well about how you can effectively and safely change your workouts to get stronger and even tone up! Now let’s dive into each movement below..

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I have several images above to show you that I do many of the same exercises over and over again. Just adjusting them slightly while still performing the movement patterns. It's not to say you can't do a lunge, twist and overhead press as one movement but until you have mastered the lunge in all planes (forward, back and to the side) it's not a good idea to add those other movements yet.

​Focusing on really learning true body mechanics during the squat whether it is front squats, goblet squats or barbell loaded back squats is fundamental and very important to the health of your body. Figuring out how to breathe, foot position and angle of your torso are also important factors. How can you make the right adjustments and know what is best for you... if you don’t do it each week?

Learning how to lunge forward, backward and laterally is functional and something that should be in all of your leg day workouts. Why? Because we lunge in all directions each day. We need to be able to lunge, then stop the motion with control and then have enough power to push us back up safely. Slow and controlled is best with these babies!

Pulling with your biceps and back muscles are how we pull open doors or pick up our kids, pets and other things. No need to get fancy here, just learn the appropriate way to do bicep curls and a few back exercises such as row variations, lat pull downs or assisted pull ups. 

Pushing through a door to go outside, or pushing a cart, a wheelchair or lifting something over our head are very realistic movements that we can help ourselves with by doing overhead shoulder presses, chest press and tricep extensions during upper body workouts. No need to get fancy either, just grab some weights and push ‘em baby! Slow and controlled of course.

Rotational movements such as kneeling or standing wood chops or the lunge forward, twist and reach help us in real life situations such as picking up boxes and moving them to a shelf on the other side of the room. Ever been holding a heavy object and trying to twist and reach up to set it somewhere? This is that movement. Master it and then keep doing it in your workouts.

Deadlifts. Ever need to pick up something heavy off the floor? Like a child who is throwing a fit and just likes to go limp?? Need to move a couch or a big chair? This is where learning how to deadlift even with dumbbells, will come in handy. Don’t try to master deadlifts until you have built up good strength in all the other movements consistently for about 3 months.

Now that we have gone through all those basic movements I want to go back to what I was saying at the beginning of this blog. Keep it simple, move the way your body is supposed to move. If you feel the need to get fancy with your workouts or get bored easily with the basic movements here are some ideas of how to switch up the 5 movement patterns;

• Squatting- front loaded, barbell back squats, squats with dumbbells at your sides, goblet squat, sissy squats, heel elevated squats.
• Lunging- forward lunges, lateral, backward. Split squat lunges-stay in a lunge and just move up and down. Forward to backward lunges without tapping your feet
• Pulling-bicep curls, hammer curls, preacher curls, sidebody curls, slow lower curls, wide rows, low rows, bent over rows, lat pull overs, lat pull downs, seated rows with a cable or resistance tube, pull ups, chin ups. Seated bent over rows, chest supported rows
• Pushing- military press, neutral press, lateral raises, reverse flyers, upright rows, chest press, narrow chest press, chest flyers, neutral chest press, incline chest press, incline shoulder press, around the worlds, tricep pull downs, tricep extension, tricep kickback, skull crushers
• Rotational movements-wood chops, kneeling or seated with dumbbell or cable machine. Lunge, reach and twist to the left and right. Plank reach throughs, plank rotations, windshield wipers hanging or laying down.

Besides switching up the movements you can also;

• slow down the reps during the lowering portion of the exercise
• more reps
• more sets
• less rest between sets
• supersets, drop sets or compound exercises

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Are you wanting to start a training program that has all these qualities that I just talked about? I have the solution for you! I will leave you with information about my digital strength training guide. I made this because I wanted girls (or guys) to be able to train effectively, safely and in LESS TIME{most workouts are 40 minutes or less!}.  
It's called The Busy Girl's 4 week Strength Training Guide. You can make it as many weeks as you like because it has so much offer! All you need is a pair of dumbbells to get started. It has 20 strength training workouts, 2 cardio and 2 core workouts with instructional pictures of each exercise, demo videos of all workouts. PLUS 5 full length recorded workouts with me leading you through them. 3 full length strength workouts and 2 recorded low intensity steady state cardio videos to do without ANY equipment. All for only $45. Can be purchased here on my website. Click on the links below to learn more or to purchase.

I'm ready to purchase!

Strength Training guide demo