Workout and Nutrition Update AND Killer Leg Workout!!
Hello everyone, and Happy March! I have been so busy catching up on homework and reports and whatnot, but I am back! I have posted about my personal workout splits and nutrition before, so I thought a little update would be nice! At the end, I will also post a killer leg workout I did yesterday ( warning: my friend did this with me, and she is unbelievably sore now!!!!)
I had previously posted that I was doing a mini bulk followed by a mini cut. Now that those four weeks have ended, I have a new plan. Since eating well is the hardest part of fitness for me, I just wanted to focus on eating good foods- just eat around my maintenance calories. This means that I eat around the same number of calories I burn everyday. I am not trying to lose or gain weight, just create a healthier relationship with food so I can fuel my body right. It's also worth mentioning that I am gradually increasing my calories every week or so by 50-100 calories; this is my own kind of reverse diet, to increase my metabolism!! Basically, by eating more food (and exercising enough!) gradually, your body will adapt and increase how many calories you can burn each day at rest. Adding muscle is also a fantastic and very effective way to increase your metabolism, and burn more calories while doing nothing.
Now in addition to this reverse diet, I am still continuing to lift heavier and heavier, and training for a marathon! For the month of March, I am focusing on progressive overload- each week increase the weight or reps for a particular exercise to build muscle! This is a very effective technique many weight trainers use to increase muscle mass and also strength. I am using a hypertrophy style approach, so in my main compound movements (Squats, Deadlifts, Bulgarian Split Squats, Presses, etc.) I will lift a challenging weight for 8 to 12 reps (or 45-60 seconds), which will cause me to be close to failure. Each week I will record the weight for each exercise, and lift more the next week! After four weeks, I will spend two weeks doing "deload," to give my muscles a break and train them in a higher rep range with lower weights- think 15-20+ reps. I was inspired to do this type of workout routine by Stephanie Buttermore!
And now for that leg workout! Like I mentioned, I did this with my friend who does not do heavy weight workouts, and this about killed her!! I was aiming to make her sore, so when she came up to me today saying she hated me because her legs felt so dead, I felt pretty accomplished! The equipment we used were 1) Barbell 2) Dumbbells 3) Resistance Bands and, 4) Bench. However, you could easily perform this workout with only one or two of these pieces of equipment, or even none at all! If I had to only pick one, I would recommend using dumbbells. You can even use cans or water bottles as weight, so there are no excuses! Here's the workout:
AT HOME Leg Workout:
I had previously posted that I was doing a mini bulk followed by a mini cut. Now that those four weeks have ended, I have a new plan. Since eating well is the hardest part of fitness for me, I just wanted to focus on eating good foods- just eat around my maintenance calories. This means that I eat around the same number of calories I burn everyday. I am not trying to lose or gain weight, just create a healthier relationship with food so I can fuel my body right. It's also worth mentioning that I am gradually increasing my calories every week or so by 50-100 calories; this is my own kind of reverse diet, to increase my metabolism!! Basically, by eating more food (and exercising enough!) gradually, your body will adapt and increase how many calories you can burn each day at rest. Adding muscle is also a fantastic and very effective way to increase your metabolism, and burn more calories while doing nothing.
Now in addition to this reverse diet, I am still continuing to lift heavier and heavier, and training for a marathon! For the month of March, I am focusing on progressive overload- each week increase the weight or reps for a particular exercise to build muscle! This is a very effective technique many weight trainers use to increase muscle mass and also strength. I am using a hypertrophy style approach, so in my main compound movements (Squats, Deadlifts, Bulgarian Split Squats, Presses, etc.) I will lift a challenging weight for 8 to 12 reps (or 45-60 seconds), which will cause me to be close to failure. Each week I will record the weight for each exercise, and lift more the next week! After four weeks, I will spend two weeks doing "deload," to give my muscles a break and train them in a higher rep range with lower weights- think 15-20+ reps. I was inspired to do this type of workout routine by Stephanie Buttermore!
And now for that leg workout! Like I mentioned, I did this with my friend who does not do heavy weight workouts, and this about killed her!! I was aiming to make her sore, so when she came up to me today saying she hated me because her legs felt so dead, I felt pretty accomplished! The equipment we used were 1) Barbell 2) Dumbbells 3) Resistance Bands and, 4) Bench. However, you could easily perform this workout with only one or two of these pieces of equipment, or even none at all! If I had to only pick one, I would recommend using dumbbells. You can even use cans or water bottles as weight, so there are no excuses! Here's the workout:AT HOME Leg Workout:
- 10 Back Squats (4-5x)
- 12 Bulgarian Split Squats (3x)
- 30 Squat walks TO 10 Deadlifts (3x)
- 15 Lunges To 30 Hip Thrust (3x)
Finisher HIIT portion (legs and core) - 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest:
- Jump Squats
- Lying Leg Raise
- Jump Squats
- Plank
- Jump Squats
- Reverse Plank with Kicks
- Jump Squats
- Walk-outs (standing to plank to standing, etc)
And that's the whole workout! It took us an hour (exactly!) but it will take less time if you do this by yourself and/or use lighter weights! I like to do two heavy compound movements in the beginning (after warming up, of course!), move into two or three supersets, and then complete the workout with a finisher or burnout to fully exhaust the muscles! The reason for this is largely inspired by the three ways to grow muscle- Mechanical Tension (lifting heavy), Metabolic Stress (lifting until momentary failure aka the pump/burn), and Muscle Damage (increasing the amount of time spent on a rep). Those are just my basic explanations I use to remember which is which, but read all about The 3 Essential Workout Methods for Muscle to gain a better understanding!! I highly, highly recommend you read this if you are interested in gaining some muscle, as the author does an a amazing job explaining it all!!!
Thank you guys for reading and supporting my blog! Try this workout out, and let me know what you think!
Hannah
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