Day 1 of Chalean Extreme was the burn circuit 1 video. During this circuit, you select weight so that you can make it to at least 10 reps and at most 12 reps. Once you can easily reach 12 reps, then you increase the amount of weight. Every single exercise, with the exception of push-ups, are compound moves that combine an upper-body or core-focused exercise, like shoulder flys, shoulder presses, bicep curls, side bends, etc., with a lower-body exercise or an ab exercise like squats, lunges, leg-lowers, or the like. You target the weight to what the primary move in the exercise is, for example, when it is shoulder flys you select a lower weight, and if it is squats you select a larger weight. The big thing that Chalene Johnson, the trainer for the videos harshes on is to go slowly through the reps so that you do not use momentum to complete reps and are really focusing on the muscles. Because of that, you may have to use less weight for some exercises in this program than you did for similar exercises in a program in which you were lifting the weights more quickly. For example, in this workout, I was using 17.5 lbs for bicep curls whereas in P90x I could do 10 reps with 22.5 lbs. On some moves, Chalene does a breakdown set in which after you do the 10-12 reps for the regular compound move, then you will do three ultra-slow reps for the primary move (or a different move that targets the same muscle group as the primary move), to really fatigue the muscle. Ultra-slow means about 8 counts up and 8 counts down.
Overall, the workout went well. I definitely picked lighter weights for this workout. Some I was dead on with my guess and for others, the weight was a bit light so I will be increasing it for the next workout. One thing I do like about this program is that there are multiple modifiers. One modifier uses bands, and another uses very light free-weights and does modified versions of some of the moves. So, it can really be tailored to your fitness level and level of strength.
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