Friday 15th December
Core: 3 sets of:
10-30s McGill Sit up holds
Max Side Plank e/s
5 x Bird Dog, e/s
Main Effort:
All done at Zone 2 or a pace you could maintain for an hour:
One round is
25-calorie row
25 Hanging knee raises / toes to bar
25 Light Goblet Squats
25 Light KBS
25 Shoulder to overhead (bar, DBs or KBs your choice)
50m Suitcase walk each hand
Volume
S: 1 round
M: 3 rounds
L: 5 Rounds
XL 6 Rounds
Scale weights/ gymnastics appropriately.
Why are we doing this workout? One of the biggest predictors of long life and good health is your aerobic capacity. This workout will build your aerobic capacity.
We get aerobic capacity by doing zone 2 efforts (like this one), which are executed at the hard side of easy or the easy side of hard. Or, we go max effort and do zone 5 pain cave workouts. Both work different aspects of metabolism, both have a place.
Why mixed modality rather than steady state cardio? Steady state cardio will totally build your aerobic capacity, and if we're being honest are better for training you for a specific modality or sport E.g. if you want to get better at cycling, doing your Zone 2 on a bike will have better transfer to race day. However, most of us will get bored out of our tiny minds by an hour of steady state cardio, let alone the minimum of 3 hours a week recommended. We'll also actually benefit from the mixed up nature of the workouts. The chances are you aren't just training for a race and may want to be better at anything life throws at you. Hence the mixed modality type workout. Now, that isn't to say we don't do steady state workouts, just not all the time.
Today we've got some steady state, rowing for 25 calories. We have gymnastic toes to bar for the lats, abs and hip flexors. Goblet squats and KBS for the lower body and shoulder to overhead for the upper body. Or to put it another way, we have a push/ pull combo (the row), a reverse hinge (Toes to bar), a squat, a hinge, (KBS) and a vertical push (Shoulder to over head) all in one scalable workout. Damn!
Photo by Ivan Pergasi on Unsplash