Summertime Fitness!

We all want to look great on the beach in the summer right?  We want our six pack on show, our upper body sculptured to perfection, legs lean and shapely. But how are we going to achieve this? What with work and other commitments it isn’t always easy. But with 3-4 one hour gym sessions a week this can be achieved combining cardio vascular exercises with resistance training in the one workout. This is a fast way to drop unwanted body fat and gain the muscle we want in all the right places, plus following a healthy eating lifestyle you can achieve that beach body year round!

The following training plan is one I have used successfully with my clients in London, keeping them in shape year round, which in turn gives them more of a positive outlook in their personal lives and careers. We are going to split the body into two, training the upper body one workout and the lower body in the second workout. So workout one will be working the chest, back and shoulders, workout two will be working the legs and also the arms (I know arms are attached to the upper body, but will be too much adding them to the upper body workout too!). Within these workouts we are going to add in our CV training. This will be broken up into four 5 minute segments during the workout between body parts. This adds up to 20 minutes CV in the workout. Sounds a bit much doesn’t it? This is where super-sets and tri-sets come in for our resistance training. Super sets are 2 exercises done in succession, one set after the other. Tri-sets are doing 3 exercises in succession. For example for chest we can do 1 set of bench press followed with no rest to 1 set of flat dumbbell flye again with no rest to 1 set of incline dumbbell press. This counts as one tri-set which will be done for a total of 3 sets with 60 seconds rest between the tri-sets. After our 3 tri-sets we move on to our 5 minutes of CV, using the rowing machine, stationary bike or whatever you prefer. All sounds confusing doesn’t it?

Let’s lay it out a little more simply:

Workout 1. (Upper body)

CV      -5 minutes (warm up)

Chest - 3 tri-sets (Exercises of your choice e.g., bench press/flat flye/incline press)

CV      - 5 minutes

Back  - 3 tri-sets ( for example, pulldown/seated row/dumbbell row)

CV    - 5 minutes

Shoulders – 3 tri-sets ( for example, clean and press/upright row/lateral raise)

CV  - 5 minutes (cool down)

Workout 2. (Lower body)

CV    -5 minutes (warm up)

Quads/Hamstrings  - 3 tri-sets ( for example, squats, straight leg deadlift, walking lunge)

CV    -5 minutes

Calves  - 3 super-sets (for example, standing calf raises/seated calf raises)

CV    - 5 minutes

Arms  - 3 super-sets (for example, dumbbell curl/lying dumbbell extensions)

Abs    - 3 super-sets (for example, hanging leg raises/crunches)

CV  - 5 minutes (cool down)

Each workout will not last more than an hour, alternate the workouts between upper and lower body 3-4 times per week and you will have that beach body in no time. Combining it with a healthy eating plan and keeping active outside the gym you will have a year round healthy lifestyle!!!

Peter Chown

Natural Mr Universe