The ReEvolution Quick and Easy Workout Program
The ReEvolution Quick and Easy Workout Program is a 35 minute, 3 day per week total body workout based on the above principles. This program is written on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule, but you can do these workouts on any schedule you like. The warm up and cardio portions of these workouts are the same on all three days. The weight lifting portion is different on each day and, over the course of all three workouts, will target all of your major muscle groups.
Warm Up - 5 Minutes
Jump on an ellipse machine, precor, or other cardio machine, and start jogging at a medium pace. Hold this pace for 1 minute, then slow down to a walk for 30 seconds, then run at a fast pace for 21/2-3 1/2 minutes and get yourself out of breath. Really push yourself through the last minute. After 4 or 5 minutes, stop, and sit down to catch your breath for about a minute before diving into resistance training.
Resistance Training - 15 Minutes
The resistance training portion of this workout involves circuit training, meaning you will perform three different exercises back to back without resting in between. Each exercise is performed for 10-15 reps through 4 total sets. For instance, your Monday circuit workout targets your chest, shoulders, and abs with exercises like chest presses, side laterals, and ball sit ups all done back to back (Don’t worry if you don’t know what these exercises are. Our Weight Lifting Form Tutorial provides an illustrated guide to all of the exercises in this program). Performing exercises back to back in a circuit saves time, and also provides a bit of a cardiovascular workout while you're lifting, since doing these exercises in rapid secession will get you out of breath and raise your heart rate.
The Quick and Easy Circuit Program looks like this:
|
|
Monday Circuit: Chest Press, Side Lateral, Ball Sit Up
This circuit targets your chest, shoulders and abs. Feel free to substitute other chest, shoulder, and ab exercises from our Weight Lifting Form Tutorial for the exercises above.
Wednesday Circuit: Lat Pull, Side Crunch Right, Side Crunch Lef
This circuit targets your back and obliques. Again, feel free to sub in other exercises.
Friday Circuit: Squat, Triceps Pull Down, Standing Biceps Curl
This circuit targets your legs, triceps, and biceps. Mix up the triceps and biceps exercises you do every 6-8 weeks, but stick with squats year round. |
To help you get a better idea of how to perform these circuits, we'll go over the Monday circuit in detail.
Your Monday circuit targets your chest, shoulders, and abs. The exercises involved are a dumbbell chest press, a side lateral, and a ball sit up. You'll want to set up the equipment for these exercises before you start. You'll need an exercise ball, one set of dumbbels for your chest presses, and another lighter set of dumbbells for your shoulder presses.
This circut starts starts with one set of chest presses for 10 reps. For this first set, you should push yourself hard enough to fatigue your chest muscles, but you shouldn't push to failure (the point where you can't possibly do another rep). Choose a weight that leaves your chest muscles tired after 10 reps. As soon as you finish your 10 reps of chest presses, immediately grab some lighter weights (because your shoulders aren't as strong as your chest) and perform 10 reps of side laterals, again choosing a weight that leaves your shoulders tired after 10 reps, but not completely exhausted. When you finish your 10 reps of side laterals, sit down on a ball and do 10 ball sit ups. This constitutes one "lap" through your circuit.
As soon as you finsih your first set of sit ups, you'll start the second lap of your circuit (take a 30 second break if you're really tired after the first lap). After completing your last sit up, grab the heavy dumbbells again, and perform another set of chest presses. This time, push the set to failure. If you've chosen a weight that fatigued your chest muscles after 10 reps, you should hit failure at about 15 reps. When you finsih 15 reps of chest presses, do 15 reps of side laterals, and then another 15 sit ups, completing the second lap. Repeat the whole cycle of chest presses, side laterals, and sit ups through a total of four laps (four sets of each exercise). Once you've doen four full laps through your circuit, you're done with the resistance training portion of your workout, and you should move on to cardio.
Your Wednesday and Friday circuits follow the exact same pattern, but feature different exercises targeted at different body parts. Your Wednesday circuit targets your lats and obliques with lat pulls and cable rotations. Your Friday circuit targets your legs and arms with squats, triceps nosebreakers, and biceps curls.
The circuit format can be a bit confusing at first, but you'll quickly get the hang of it. One of the keys to getting a good circuit workout is to set up the equipment you'll be using before you start (usually a ball, a few different weights of dumbbells, and sometimes one big piece of gym equipment like a lat pull machine) so you can move quickly between each exercise. We've chosen exercises for all of these circuits that will make this as easy as possible. The exercises involved generally only involve a ball, dumbbells, and/or a cable machine, so you won't have to worry about running back and forth between different pieces of equipment all accross the gym. Of course, the exercises we specify are just suggestions. You can substitute any exercises form the proscribed body parts into these circuits. For instance, you could do your mondy chest, shoulders, and abs circuit with cable crosses, overhead dumbbell presses, and abdominal bridges. Feel free to substitute any of the exercises from our Weight Lifting Form Turorial into this circuit program. Look to change the specific exercises you do in your circuit every 6-8 weeks.
|
