Good Old Fashioned Weightlifting (Sunday july 26th)

If you're in the LA area and you feel like getting fit, staying fit or becoming more fit reach me at: jbthefitnessguy@hotmail.com or jbthefitnessguy.com

Today was good old fashioned, time tested, age old weightlifting-upper body. I only moved through 4

rounds today. Gimme a break it was Sunday after all. The added bonus was that my wife worked out with me as well. Below are my numbers…my wife's are a secret.

The Workout: Upper Body Weights. 4 Rounds

1. Push ups 25

2. Lawnmowers (1 arm dumbbell side row)

3. Curls 40lbs. dumbbells. 10 reps. (alternating, unison, alternating hammer)

4. Tricep raise  25 lbs. dumbbell--15 reps (from lying down)

5. In & Out shoulder raise 15 lbs dumbbells--10 reps (In front of the body, then out to sides=1 rep)

Time: 32 minutes

harness for knee raise

Music: ACDC. Back In Black!

Bonus: hanging knee raises 2 sets 15 reps/ set


**Hanging knee raise. Put arms through the harness and hang on to upper part of the harness. Elbows now rest in the cradle. Raise knees up in front, side and other side. This exercise is great for the lower abs which can be tough to hit.

Music: Back In Black would be in my top 5 albums to take if ever stuck on a desert island.

self explanatory right?

Agility Etc…(Friday July 24th

If you're in the LA area and looking for a personal fitness trainer please email me at:

Agility baby!

jbthefitnessguy@hotmail.com. Also, check my site: jbthefitnessguy.com

Even though this workout has only 5 exercises and was only 31 minutes long I found this one to be tough. The tough part comes in the form of a little exercise I made up called the "action hero rope roll under". Done on its own is no big deal but moving from it onto the next 4 exercises takes it's toll on a brother. I've also got to point out that once the round of 5 exs. was complete I only stopped for a sip of water. So essentially: no breaks!

Ok just one more thing. It was about 77 degrees out when I tackled this puppy.

Primitive but it works

Anyway…The Workout: Agility and then some…

1. Action hero rope roll under (rope low point 13''--20 high knee sprint, roll under rope 6X)

2. Battle rope (single set-25/ arm…or double handed set 25 total)

3. Bear Crawl 80 feet

4. Dumbbell walk 160 feet 40lbs. dumbbells

5. Box jumps (22'' high--15X)

Do 5 total rounds of above exercises

Time: 31 minutes

Music: Goldfinger

** The action hero rope roll under is as follows. The rope is tied between two chairs. The lowest point in the center is 13'' high. Stand to one side of the rope. High

Battle Rope

knee sprint on the spot for 20 high knees. Roll under the rope without getting caught up on the rope. (That's the action hero part). Pop up and do the high knees on the other side. Repeat until you've rolled 6X then immediately proceed to the battle rope.

Goldfinger is a punk/Ska band. I listened to the self titled album from 1990. This isn't usually my type of music but these guys actually have great melodies and cool harmonies.

The box that Jonathan built

Kick, Punch Repeat…(Thursday july 23)

Still sore from Tuesday's lunges and Wednesday's Pilates/yoga I rolled right on into Kick boxing and boxing. In short, striking, striking, striking. For the boxing portion I put on my 45 lbs. weight vest and boxed 5-3 minute rounds. For the kickboxing I used all of the strikes for the Thursday july 16th workout. I removed the weight vest for the kicks/strikes.

Workout: Kicks, boxing

--kickboxing with MMA gloves--3 minute round

--boxing with 16oz. gloves and 45 lbs. weight vest--3 minute round

repeat alternating rounds until I did 5 rounds of each.

Music: Best of Dio Sabbath. Ronnie James Dio's vocals make it easy to strike the heavy bag.

**If you notice my weight vest has a bunch of duct tape on it. It is not to look cool, ha ha, in fact it pisses me off that I had to resort to that. The vest has little compartments for each weight. The material is coming apart, thus the tape. It's frustrating because I only use the vest for boxing, walking and crawls. It just goes to show that when it comes to gear like this it's best to go to a fight shop or professional store as opposed to your big box chains…which shall remain nameless.

Comfort Zone Shmomfort Zone

Wednesday's workout was real simple. Yoga. Although it carried a slight twist. The youtube video I chose actually was heavier on the pilates side of the fitness coin. Pilates is not really within my comfort zone. Still the workout, like the show, must go on. And then on to the next, right?

Workout: Yoga (Pilates based)

Time: 47 minutes

Tools: Yoga mat, Ipad

Source: Youtube. Caroline Jordan

**The workout had a ton of hamstring and glute exercises which was a little tough after having done a bunch of capoeira lunges the day before. Movin' on!

Crawl Baby Crawl...

I'm back! Due to a family event I took two days off. I'm usually fine with one day off a week but so

Keep movin'

long as I get back in the saddle again it's no big deal. Usually after a flight I like to do yoga seeing as seats on flights these days are barely big enough told hold a muskrat. But I really had an urge to get mobile. Bring on the agility.

The Workout: Agility: Crawls etc. Five exercises, Five rounds.

1) Bear crawl 80 ft.
2) Dumbbell carry (fast walk) 80 lbs. (40 lbs./ arm) 80 ft.
3) Crabwalk 80 ft.
4) Capoeira Lunge 80 ft.
5) Cartwheels (yes…cartwheels) 80 ft.

Bonus round: Dumbbell walk 160 lbs.

Time: 36 mins. 38 seconds

Music: Black Country Communion: "Afterglow" 2012

**The Capoeira lunge: do a standard deep lunge. place lead hand flat on ground beside lead foot. Opposite hand raises up in front of face. This lunge creates a deep crease at the hip.

The gear of the day

Saturday On The Road...

Let's take it outside!

Many years ago, say 30-ish my absolutely amazing track and field coach said, "Jonathan you need to add hills to your workouts."

"What?" I protested. "I run hills all of the time!"

She tilted her head to the side, put her hands on her hips and said, "Jonathan, I'm talking steeper hills and way more of them."

Being 19-ish and knowing everything I considered telling her that I knew what I was doing. But I
stopped myself because up to that point she had never ever been wrong. I was a 400 meter runner at the time. So, I said 'fine' and did what she told me to do. As you may have guessed my 400m times started dropping like boulders from a plane. I was cleaning up at track meets.

I even got to the point that I'd finish a race and barely be puffing. When I told her this and thanked her for the 'hill sprint'' advice she told me that if I wasn't tired at the end of my races then I wasn't moving fast enough. Once again she was right. We changed up a few other things at that point and my times continued to dive.

Her name was Margaret Kalaski and to this day she is without question in my top 5 most influential people in my life. In addition to this she introduced core work to our team circa 1983 before the core was referred to as such. She was a pioneer on many levels.

Simple tools today!

So today I decided to head to the hill (1 block in length) and get back to it.


The Workout:

Hill Sprints:

Objective: run to the top as fast as my rock n roll legs will take me then jog back to the bottom. Simple!

Sets: 12X

Time: 19 minutes 38 seconds. No breaks!

Music: KXM

**KXM will get you up any hill faster than you can say F-F-For Pete's sake am I fast!

Debut album!

Old School Weights-Old School Yoga

First things first: if you're looking for a fitness trainer reach me at: jbthefitnessguy@hotmail.com. Today I combined good old fashioned weight lifting with age old yoga. Not at the same time mind you.

 What I like about working out this way is that the yoga serves as a sort of lengthy cool down. And believe me this cat digs cooling down. I usually like some sort of hard driving rock music or heavyweight funk music to go along with the weight lifting but today I changed it up. I headed over to youtube and listened to motivational speaker Kyle Cease.

This isn't the first time I've done this nor are the messages anything new or ground breaking but having positive messages floating around in the background can't hurt. Even as I tune out from time to time I tell myself that the positive words are seeping into my cranium through osmosis. As I said, it can't hurt right?'

Part I

The Workout: 3 cycles

Time: 26 minutes

Music: None. Motivational speaker/Comedian Kyle Cease

Upper body weights:

Bench press (alternating dumbbells) 40 lbs. dumbbells--20 reps/ arm

Tools of the day

Lawnmowers (dumbbell row) 40 lbs. dumbbells--16 reps/ arm
Cable pull downs--high tension 16 reps/ arm
Curls 40 lbs. dumbbells--8 reps/ arm
Shoulder press 25lbs. dumbbells--16 reps

**If you're wondering why the weights I use aren't that heavy its because those days are behind me. When I was a young knucklehead it was all about getting bigger. Today its about staying strong and maintaining what I've got and being able to remain mobile. Mobility is WAY high on my list of priorities! BTW I use the swiss ball as my bench for bench press. It brings in a balance aspect to the alternating bench.


Part II

Yoga

Time: 35 minutes (Total combined workout: 61 minutes)
Youtube: Donna from theyogavine.com

**I've been doing yoga off and on for about 10 years and I'm here to tell you that it should really be more on than off. There are so many benefits to yoga that there are too many to count. Besides, I'm sure you've heard it all before. I don't belong to any yoga studio and have only done about a dozen (or less) studio classes to date. I either use videos at home or more recently I hop on youtube and plug in 'yoga' and a time length. Gotta love youtube! Donna from 'the yoga vine' has some great videos on youtube. I highly recommend her.
If ever you're in need for a fitness trainer leave me a message here or reach me at: jbthefitnessguy@hotmail.com
See y'all tomorrow!