Monday, February 27, 2012

BIGGEST LOSER "15" -- WEEK SEVEN

This marks the end of Week Seven and we still have very high participation. Of the remaining 30 people, 22 made the weigh-in, and 20 made the workout.

If you’ve been reading the articles over the last few weeks, you know they’ve been doing some pretty high intensity workouts, and I wanted to continue with that. This week we combined 60 second cardio intervals with 60 seconds on the Maxicam weight machines.

Group One started in the cardio area while Group Two started on the weight machines. They could use any piece of cardio equipment whether it was a treadmill, elliptical, recumbent bike, Schwinn Air Dyne, Stepper, or Rower.

After 60 seconds, they switched places and Group Two hit the cardio machines. After another minute, they switched again. The goal was to minimize the transition time and to get on a different cardio machine each time. On the weight machines, they moved through them in a circuit, hitting the next machine in line each time.

They did 10 rounds, 60 seconds cardio, 60 seconds weights, for a total of 20 minutes. It was probably 25 minutes if you count travel time between the machines, but as I said, they were moving quickly back and forth.

I told them to hold back a bit the first couple rounds to get completely warmed up. Then they cranked up the levels or speed in the cardio area. On the weights, the goal was to keep using the machine the entire 60 seconds, even if they had to lower the weight a couple of times.

This is the kind of workout that really starts adding up, and by the halfway point at the end of the fifth round, everyone was feeling it. To their credit, they kept pushing, and the last ten minutes were pretty tough.

Afterward, we talked about how to use the concept, and make up different workouts. I also gave them a few ideas from my own workout log during the last week:

• Run ¼ mile, Leg Press, Calf Raises, Leg Extension, and Leg Curls. 5x. (A leg workout).

• Ride the Schwinn Air Dyne for 5 minutes, and then row on the Concept 2 Rower for 5 minutes. 8x. (A cardio workout that can be scaled back both in minutes, and total rounds).

• Ride the Schwinn Air Dyne for 5 minutes, and then do 25 Pushups, 25 Body Squats, 25 Sit-ups, and 25 Hyper-extensions. 6x. (A total body workout that also has a lot of cardio. Modify it any way you need to).

• Run ½ mile, Row 1000 meters, Ride 1.5 miles on the Air Dyne. 6x. (This was a wicked cardio workout that uses a ton of muscle! Again, feel free to modify it for distance, or total workout time).

This week’s winner was Laken Pennington, who lost 2.5% of her body weight and 3.8 lbs. Sandra Soberg was second, losing 1.5% and 1.8 lbs. Jennifer Abernathy and Beverly Weger tied for third, both losing 1.4%, and 2.6 lbs and 2.4 lbs respectively.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me through Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tomdolanfitness !

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