Thursday, June 10, 2010

BIGGEST LOSER "12" WEEK SEVEN "OUTDOOR WORKOUT #2"

This week we went outside again. That’s one of the benefits of doing Biggest Loser in the spring and summer. The last time we went outdoors, the group did the park-to-park run, with four stops along the way. At each station, they also did a bunch of jumping jacks, pushups, sit-ups and body squats at each stop.

This week they jogged down to the park at Main and Jasper St. Once they got to the water tower, they did three sets of burpees and sit-ups.

Here’s how you do a burpee—from a standing position, bend down and put your hands on the floor, kicking your feet out into a pushup position. Do the pushup, and then hop back to a squatting position before jumping straight up in the air with your arms stretched out overhead. That’s a burpee!

They did 10 burpees in a row, which is tough, because you’re using almost every muscle group. That puts quite an oxygen demand on the body, especially after jogging first. Once they finished the burpees, they hit the grass and did 20 sit-ups. This actually helped them catch their breath, because they were lying on their back.

Once they finished the sit-ups, they did 10 more burpees, 20 more sit-ups, and finished with a third set of 10 burpees and 20 sit-ups. By then, everyone was feeling it.

At that point, I split the group in two and had the stronger runners take a lap around the park before heading back. The others simply started back from there. The run/walk back is always much harder than people expect because of all the work they did in between.

From start to finish, the workout took less than 30 minutes, and everyone agreed that it was more intense than they were used to. My goal is to teach them that they can do almost always do more than they think they can do. It’s also to show them what they should be feeling like in their workouts during the week.

If my workout is the only one that gasses them that much, then they need to step it up during the week. The challenge is to keep raising their level of intensity each week. That will help them keep taking the weight off, especially when their body gets used to what they were doing.

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. In fact, your body might even get weaker! You need to keep changing it up. Next week, we’ll teach them how to do High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to help them get more out of their cardio workouts.

If you’re already working out and doing pretty well, and want a more advanced version of the combination workouts, here’s another one for you. Run a ¼ mile, and then do 25 pushups, body squats, and sit-ups. Then repeat the whole thing three more times.

That’s one of the most talked about workouts we’ve done, and the group just might see it sometime in the next couple of weeks! Another challenge they’ll be facing is to do a 5K (3.1 mile) walk/run. Again, the goal is to keep up the intensity.

Someone who’s done a good job finding more intensity is Karen Brown who took first place this week by losing 1.6% of her body weight and 3.4 lbs. You may recall that she lost 42 lbs in Biggest Loser “9” some months ago. She’s continued to work on it, and this week, she walked 9 miles three different times!

One of those times was right before we did the outdoor workout I told you about, so she actually did closer to 11 miles that day! With that kind of effort, I’m not surprised she was the Biggest Loser this week.

Second place went to Michelle Clark, who’s also been pushing hard in the gym. She lost 1.3% of her body weight and 2.0 lbs. Third place was a tie between Vanessa Becker and Janice Johnson, who both lost about 1.0% of their body weight. Vanessa lost 1.0 lbs and Janice lost 1.6 lbs.

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