Simon Says: A Simple Workout

Published by sspt on February 21, 2012February 21, 2012

Simon Says: Keep – It – Simple !!

First of all, too many people believe workouts need to be complicated, full of loads of exercises, yet some of the best workouts can be achieved in just 3 exercises.

If you did just 3 exercises, with great technique, each day, instead of once or twice week doing hour long sessions of many exercises, you would see improvement in far more areas.

Progress, ability, performance, stamina, toning, weight loss, energy, strength, balance.. The List is endless, because..
If you do something everyday, its as they say, practice makes perfect. Also, after just 21 days, you’ve created a new habit, that you most likely won’t be able to go without.

Yes there’s also the issue that if you only do the exact same thing, your results can plateau.. But if you just add a little increase on each exercise every few days, you’ll find you’ll only achieve more..!!

SO TIP NUMBER 1:
Warm Up GOOOOOOD!
exercising on cold tight muscles will only bring you closer to injury, and you don’t want that.. der.. so a light jog, skipping, rowing if you have bands, bike ride, anything for just 2-3 mins to get the blood flowing.

TIP NUMBER 2:
DYNAMIC STRECTHES NOT STATIC.
Don’t know the difference?
Dynamic are basically, rang of motion tests, moving stretches.
Have you seen football teams doing weird leg kicks, reaching down, leg turnovers etc..? these are dynamic (video coming soon to SSPT of dynamic routine)

Static, are the ones we’ve grown up with, where you’re Static, not moving, doing a nice big stretch. But what we need to know is it can actually weaken muscles too. So if you have a big workout coming up, just do dynamics, have your good warm up and then off you go!
Once you’re done, then YES, static stretch away. It’s a way of telling you body, “right, lets check our flexibility.. good.. now lengthen.. and lets go rest and repair these muscles”.

Also, muscles need to be lengthened and stretched, to grow, recover well, and build up strong! If you keep doing tough workouts, and never stretch, you’re only going to tighten up those muscles, get less out of them, performance wise, and then most likely follow with a good old tasty SNAP! because your short tight muscles just couldn’t handle it anymore!
SO, before workouts, Dynamic! afterwards, Static.

TIP NUMBER 3:
Pick 3 Exercises, Core, Arms, Legs!
Keep It Simple is all i can say! If you struggle doing regular body weight exercises like Push Ups, from your toes, not your knees.. then forget doing Anything Else!
From my PT experience, most people struggle with basics – How and Why??
Lets use push ups for this example..
Girls:
+ May not have the strength and can barely reach half way down
+ Arms are always in a position above shoulders where the head reaches hands, so its actually a position causing more harm than good. Where are you hands when say moving a fridge? you push it in with your weight behind your hands, so CHEST height is where hands belong. So often i see “prayer push ups”.. you know what i mean, bum left in the air, head goes down only 🙂
+ Breathing! Oh my, how funny it is, this is one of the most common things people forget, regardless the fact you need oxygen to do Everything! haha i’m always finding myself asking clients.. “are you breathing??” to the response.. “Oops, forgot” 🙂
+ Repetition! If you do Push Ups once a week, say at a PT sesh.. you’ll never get good at them, so by sticking to basics, and making it an everyday ritual, you’ll obviously be kicking ass at them in no time AS LONG as you push yourself everyday at them.
+ Lift and Lower, don’t use momentum! Instead of chucking yourself down which brings force, therefore making it harder to push up, learn to be strong by controlling your weight and lower down slow, then push back up with force. You’ll get better, quicker this way.
Guys: (yes you’re troublesome)
+ EGO. you don’t all do push ups, or any exercise in fact correctly everytime! Guys are too in a rush to prove how awesome they are.. i admit it too.. but technique should always come first, not 10000000 reps. If you can do 10 slow reps or hold your weight for 10 sec, who cares how many ‘sex-ups’ you can do.. yes you’d be surprised how many guys look like them and the ground have been at it before! 😉 So try next time, listen to anyone who’s guiding you to better technique and don’t be too stubborn to take helpful criticism.
+ Quality over quantity. Briefly touched on, but yes, fewer reps better, all the way to ground, without momentum, is far better for growth and strength, than 1 Gazillion reps. No one’s counting, if they look like crap..

SO Back to the 3 exercises.. You could say Pick 1) a Plank Hold, for core 2) Push Ups for arms and 3) Squats for legs and butt. Do each by say 3 sets, because 1 normally won’t be enough, do each as technically perfect as you can, and stick to these for your strength workout. For cardio, either a run, bike ride OUTDOORS (because riding nowhere in front of a telly in air con is NOT riding) or swimming laps, can be ideas for your SIMPLE CARDIO!
When you are Captain Awesome at these simple things, let me know 😀