by Cori Lefkowith | Nov 25, 2017 | Blog, Bodyweight, Travel Workouts, Workouts
It isn’t about how long you spend working out…It’s about the QUALITY of the time you spend.
Sometimes we get so focused on needing to spend a certain amount of time working out that, when we then don’t have “enough time,” we end up doing NOTHING.
Or we just put ourselves into a “run out the clock” situation and don’t actually maximize the time we do spend at the gym.
Stop focusing though on the length of your workout and instead pick moves and workout designs to maximize the time you do have. And give yourself options for those busy days when 5 minutes may be all you have!
Something is better than nothing ESPECIALLY if it is quality.
That is why I do a Friday Five Workout each and every week. And now I even have a Library of all my Friday Fives in my App Redefining Strength On Demand!
Check out this awesome 5-Minute Full-Body Burner from my Friday Five series below. And get even more of my follow alongs with RS On Demand!
Join Redefining Strength On Demand for access to all of my Friday Fives, Bodyweight Burners, Travel Series and MORE wonderful follow along video workouts!
by Cori Lefkowith | Nov 20, 2017 | Blog, Exercises, Workouts
Often I get asked, “Is it better to do strength or cardio training? How many days of each should I do?”
But workouts aren’t necessarily only one or the other. Strength workouts can have cardio elements and cardio workouts can have strength elements.
Yes, you can focus purely on one or the other, but there is a huge gray area in the middle where your workouts can be a little of both.
Where you can build strength as you improve your conditioning!
That is why I love workouts that use weights BUT also get your blood pumping with full-body movements and very limited, if any, rest intervals.
That is why I love the 7s workout below!
The lower reps in this workout allow you to use heavier weights, which, combined with limited rest and full-body exercises, really gets you breathing hard and your blood pumping!
So if you’re ready for a workout that is both strength and cardio, try the 7s Blast below!
The 7s Strength-Cardio Blast
You will complete 7 rounds of 7 reps of each of the 7 move below. Choose weights that challenge you and barely allow you to complete the 7 reps. Better to have to rest or put down the weight briefly toward the end than to be able to easily complete the 7 reps in a row just to get done faster. Time how long the workout takes you and try to beat that time next time. It is a combination of trying to rest as little as possible while also choosing weights that really challenge you!
CIRCUIT:
7 reps Goblet Squats
7 reps Pull Ups
7 reps Kettlebell Swings
7 reps Burpees (with push up)
7 reps Knees to Elbows
7 reps Wall Ball
7 reps Sit Ups
Record your weights and times to try to beat next time! It is great to include this workout in your routine for 3 weeks straight so you can see improvement before switching things up!
For more about each move and modifications, check out the exercise descriptions below!
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EXERCISE DESCRIPTIONS:
Goblet Squats – To do the Goblet Squat with a kettlebell, take one kettlebell and turn it upside down, holding it on the bell. Set your feet between hip-width and shoulder-width apart. Keeping the kettlebell in at your chest, draw your belly button in toward your spine and sit your butt back. Squat down and keep your chest up and don’t let your back round forward. Sink your butt down as low as you can, keeping your heels on the ground. Try to touch your elbows to your knees, but not at the expense of really leaning forward or rounding over. Then, driving through your heels, come back to standing. Do not lean or rock forward as you stand up. Come all the way up and squeeze your glutes at the top then sink back down. If you don’t have a kettlebell, you can sub in a dumbbell. You can also do a Barbell Front Squat if preferred.
Pull Ups – To do a Basic Pull Up, stand with a pull up bar overhead and in front of you. Grab the bar with your palms facing away and about shoulder-width apart. Hang from the bar with your body hanging straight down. Press your chest out and even lean back ever so slightly. Then pull your chin up above the bar, leading with your chest. Drive your elbows down as you lead with your chest. Once you get your chin above the bar, lower back down, fully extending your arms. Try not to swing a ton or kick. Repeat, pulling yourself back up to the bar, leading with your chest. Beginners can do foot-assisted pull ups, jumping pull ups or, if needed, Inverted Rows. Do not sub in lat pull down because it won’t get your core working the same as the others will.
Kettlebell Swings – To do the Kettlebell Swing, set the kettlebell (or bell) down on the ground and slightly in front of you in between your feet. Hinge over, bending your knees slightly and pushing your butt back as you lean forward. Keep your back flat and then reach your arms out and place both hands on the handle, tilting the bell back toward you. Hike the kettlebell back between your legs like you would a football. Pull it back and up between your legs toward your butt. To power the bell out, forward and up, squeeze your glutes and drive your hips forward as you stand up nice and tall. Pop your hips forward and propel the kettlebell up off your hips. Do not worry about how high the bell goes. Squeeze your glutes as you stand tall. Then wait to hinge back over as the bell comes back down. Your forearms need to connect with your hips before you hinge back over and bring the bell back down and through your legs. Do not lean forward and hinge over before the kettlebell comes back down. You want to hinge in response to the kettlebell not before. And you do not want to turn it into a squat. You want to hinge at the hips and push your butt back and soften your knees. Then squeeze your glutes again and thrust the kettlebell back up as you come back up to standing. You can also use a dumbbell or even sub in a band hinge instead.
Burpees – To do the Basic Burpee, start standing with your feet together. Then bend over and place your hands on the ground as you jump your feet back into a high plank or top of a push up position. From that high plank position, perform a push up, dropping your chest down to the ground. Then push back up to the plank position and jump your feet into your hands. Come back to standing and jump up off the ground before repeating the movement. If you can’t perform a full push up, you may drop to your knees for the push up or stick with the Beginner variation. If you want to get more of a cardio workout, you will want to keep the movement quick so skip the push up if you can’t do a full one. If you want more of an upper body workout while still getting your blood pumping, put in the push up even if you have to do it from your knees and it slows you down. Beginners can put their hands to a bench instead of going all the way down to the ground. They can also take out the push up or do the push up from their knees.
Knees to Elbows – To do the Hanging Knees To Elbows, hang from the bar with your palms facing away. Then pull down on the bar and draw your shoulder blades down and back as you tuck your knees up toward your elbows. You should really feel your lats engage as you bring your knees up toward your elbows. Then slowly lower your legs back down. Beginners may not be able to raise their knees all the way up to their elbows and that is ok to start. Just focus on engaging the lats!
Wall Ball – To do Wall Ball, hold a med ball in both hands at your chest and stand with your feet about hip-width to shoulder-width apart. You can stand facing a way to throw up at or you can simply throw up toward the ceiling.
Then squat down with the ball at your chest. As you explode up out of the squat, press the ball from your chest throwing it as high up as you can. It is ok to explode out of the squat and jump as you throw the ball from your chest up as high as possible. Make sure that as you throw you extend your body and your arms up toward the ball. Then catch the ball either straight off the throw or after a bounce on the ground and sink right back into the squat and repeat. Do not round forward as you sink into the squat while holding the ball at your chest. This also doesn’t have to be a squat where you sink your butt all the way to the ground, but you do want to make sure to sit your butt back and down. Throw the ball as high as you can. Add weight if you can easily throw it super high or as high as your space allows!
Sit Ups –To do the Full Sit Up, you can do a variation where you reach up overhead as you sit up or you can reach toward your toes. Reaching toward your toes can help if you struggle to roll up and keep your abs engaged and working. To do the Full Sit Up (with a reach toward the toes), lie back on the ground with your legs out straight and your arms overhead. You can also reach your arms up toward the ceiling if you want to limit the assistance you get from “swinging” your arms. Then roll to sit up, first lifting your shoulder blades then the rest of your spine and finally your low back. As you “roll” up, reach your hands forward and toward your feet. Then lie back down, reaching your arms back overhead. Repeat, sitting back up. If you struggle to sit up, you can hold light weights in your hands. The weights actually can make it easier.
by Cori Lefkowith | Nov 12, 2017 | Blog, Butt, Core, Functional Fitness, Pain Relief
“My low back hurts…How do I strengthen it?”
But what if strengthening it isn’t really the issue?
What if working it more won’t fix your problem and may actually make it WORSE!?
Low back aches and pains are one of the most common issues out there. About 80% of the population will at some time or another complain that their low back is “bugging” them.
I mean who hasn’t gotten low back soreness from sitting too long? Or we’ve known someone who’s “thrown their back out” picking up something as freaking light as a pencil. Heck, it’s may have even happened to us!
So what do we often do when this happens?
We go “rest up” on the couch or sit and don’t workout. We avoid moves we think may have caused it.
But rest and avoidance don’t really solve the problem.
Because we then go back to repeating the same poor movement patterns and compensations that caused it in the first place.
So maybe in an attempt to prevent yourself from getting injured again you think, “I’ll add in more moves to strengthen my low back.”
I mean it got injured cause it was weak, right?
WRONG!
Yes, sometimes weakness does lead to injury.
But guess what!?!
It may not be low back weakness that is the issue…
Actually working your low back more may only PERPETUATE the pain!
Often with low back injuries, we are ticking time bombs.
We spend way too much time seated with our hips in flexion hunched over a computer, driving in a car, watching TV…
This hip tightness and constant flexion can make our glutes, and even abs, under active and cause our low back to want to work during exercises and movements when other muscles should actually be doing the work.
It leads to compensations, imbalances and overuse injuries.
It causes our low back to become OVERWORKED!
Which is why simply working your low back more, thinking it is weak, isn’t the answer.
Too often when we get injured, we only focus on the point of pain. When the actual problem causing the imbalances and compensations that lead to our pain, aren’t exactly where we hurt.
That’s why you may want to give your low back a break and start addressing these other issues:
If you can get your glutes and abs working as they should, they will help prevent your low back from becoming overworked. They will PROTECT YOUR LOW BACK.
But often to get your glutes and abs working correctly, you also need to address hip flexor tightness and any imbalances you have between, not only your right and left sides, but even between different muscle groups.
Ever feel one side more than the other during exercises?
Or maybe you only feel your hamstrings or low back during glute bridges?
Or maybe you only ever feel your quads (the fronts of your legs) during leg exercises and never your butt?
These are all imbalances that need to be corrected! And often we ignore these things when we workout and continue to push through because these things seem like they have nothing to do with our low back pain.
I know I know…It’s not where it hurts.
BUT THEY ARE THE REAL PROBLEM!
And they all relate back to getting the RIGHT MUSCLES working. AKA your abs and glutes!
Using isolation exercises that require little to no resistance for higher repetitions, you can activate your abs and glutes and improve your hip mobility to prevent further low back aches and pains.
The key is to use these moves to rebuild that mind-body connection and get the right muscles working BEFORE you do other compound moves.
That way when you run and lift, your abs and glutes will work as they should!
If you’re ready to stop suffering from low back aches and pains and wasting time overworking your low back, it’s time to start my 28-Day Booty Burner Challenge.
These quick workouts will help unlock your hips, correct imbalances and get your abs and glutes working correctly!
Join my 28-Day Booty Burner Challenge to activate those glutes —> https://goo.gl/FWYnzd
by Cori Lefkowith | Nov 5, 2017 | Blog, Diet
Ever heard the phrase “Yo-Yo Dieting?” Every wonder what it was or why Yo-Yo Dieting is so bad for you?
Yo-yo dieting is that horrible cycle all too many of us have gone through when it comes to weight loss and dieting…
We want to lose weight so we go on a diet.
We find a diet that promises the fastest weight loss possible…makes losing weight sound easy. And we start losing weight, sometimes rather quickly in fact.
We start was is commonly called a CRASH DIET!
But in the process of losing weight, we start “habits” that are really unmaintainable. We maybe even feel low energy and crappy.
We cut out the foods we love. We start eating these bland, boring tupperware meals of chicken and broccoli. We slash our calories and maybe even start two-a-day workouts.
And guess what happens?
It may happen a week into the diet, or a month…But we fall off.
We end up binge unable to maintain the unrealistic habits we were trying to instill.
And then we can’t seem to get back on track.
So we gain the weight back…and then some.
We lost weight only to gain it right back – we “yo-yo-ed.”
And the thing is…we aren’t alone. When we use a “short-term diet” aka a crash diet to lose weight, up to 65% of us will regain the weight we lost within 3 years.
Not only that, but only 5% of people manage to lose weight on a crash diet and actually KEEP IT OFF.
5%!?!
All that deprivation only to regain the weight and then some? No wonder we get frustrated with trying to eat well!
And the worst part is that the scale doesn’t even tell us the full story. It isn’t just “a few pounds” we are gaining back each time we repeat this yo-yo dieting cycle…this cycle many of us have fallen victim too more times than we’d like to admit…
Each time we cycle we are actually making it harder on ourselves to reach our goals!
Each time we crash diet to lose weight quickly, we may see that number on the scale drop . And it may seem super satisfying to see it go down quickly.
The problem is…well…that AMAZING weight loss?…It isn’t necessarily only fat being loss.
Actually, crash diets can cause you to lose a surprising amount of muscle mass. And when you lose muscle during your diet, your metabolism can also slow to conserve energy.
That can make you hit a plateau in your crash diet weight loss.
And when that happens?
Well that is often when we binge. And then we feel guilty. Which often leads to another binge. Until we end up back where we started, again putting ourself through another restrictive diet.
The other problem is, when we gain the weight back…well we don’t gain back muscle near as easily as fat. That means every time we yo-yo, we are not only gaining more weight, but actually increasing our body fat percentage.
AKA our body composition is getting worse and we could be adding more belly fat!
That is the yo-yo dieting cycle has to end.
If you want to not only lose weight but actually lose fat AND KEEP IT OFF, you’ve got to start a sustainable diet.
A diet that allows you to truly make lifestyle changes!
But what the heck would a diet like that even look like?
Well…
A sustainable diet:
- Would have to let you enjoy the foods you love
- Help you feel good and ENERGIZED
- Let you make slow, steady change and build true HABITS
- Not make any foods off limits
- Let you enjoy time with friends and family
- KEEP THINGS SIMPLE!
You need to find something that allows you consistent progress, but WHILE you are developing something you can maintain long term.
You need something that teaches you balance. Because there will be events. Vacations. Stressful times.
Times you are more motivated and less motivated.
And eating according to your goals can be balanced around them all.
Plus it should make you FEEL AND LOOK GOOD. Note…The FEEL GOOD part. Too often we just accept that we will feel crappy and low energy on a diet when that really shouldn’t be the case!
If you’re ready to get started with a sustainable diet and leave the yo-yoing behind, and you need some help knowing how to eat according to your goals, it’s time you checked out my Macro Cycling program!
Say GOODBYE to the restriction of crash diets and the rebound of the yo-yo dieting cycle!
