3 Powerful Methods for Outstanding Workouts

The holiday season would normally be a time that a lot of my clients would struggle to stay consistent. In fact, the week of Christmas I would off tell clients to take the week off unless they really wanted to train. The stress of the holidays was a lot for most on top of their daily lives. Giving a week off only helped them mentally as well as physically. That is why I wanted to share 3 go to workout ideas for getting great results no matter how much time, space, or even equipment you have available.

Holiday workouts can be pretty awesome as Envision Fitness shows

Smart HIIT Workouts

I’ve written A LOT on how we get HIIT workouts typically wrong! Most go for longer work and shorter rest intervals because they think they are making the workouts more “intense”. However, this does just the opposite! The example I like to give is this…if I asked you to run a mile, or 400 meters (one time around a track) as fast as you can, which one are you going to run harder with? The obvious answer is the shorter 400 meters. In the actual scientific definition of intensity in strength training, the one with the higher speeds, force outputs, and generally loads, are going to be more intense even though running a mile can be plenty fatiguing. These concepts are foundational to what HIIT workouts are and why they can be so successful in many fitness goals.

Instead of doing 45 seconds of work and 15 seconds of rest or so forth, we actually want to do the opposite. We want to use the following HIIT protocols we got from strength coach, Robert Dos Remedios, looking at work then rest times (all in seconds).

30:30

20:40

15:45

60:60

Yes, shorter work to rest, but way more intensity through using more load. This does mean you have to dial in to your technique better and choose proper exercises.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Lina Midla | DVRT COACH (@thesandmaven)

Lina Midla shows some great ideas of a proper 20:40 HIIT workout circuit

Complexes

When it comes to combination exercises, most people think of them as just being for conditioning. The reality is that complexes can be strength based as much as conditioning.  In fact, complexes were popularized by Istvan Javorek who was a former Eastern European Olympic weightlifting coach who came to the states and coached athletics/sports preparation at the university level. Why did he use complexes? According to Coach Javorek, “to try and build up a specific endurance and cardio-vascular capacity, a specific muscle tone, a good muscular coordination, and a perfectly balanced, well-developed, harmonious musculature. Being an athlete, I learned that the coaches do not give too much time and attention for rebuilding an athlete muscular-tendonal system. Also I learned, that after each competition season I had a greater improvement if I introduced in my workout some unusual, non-specific exercises, which were stimulating my whole physiological system.”

Good reason and sad that complexes in their use, prescription, and how they are constructed are usually lost. I am going to write in more depth about this later this week, but here are some great ideas on complexes. They are awesome because the amount of space, time, and equipment needed are so little and yet we can accomplish so much in 15-20 minutes of training.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Greg Perlaki (@greg_perlaki)

In both the examples of above, strength is being trained just as much as conditioning. That is the point of these workouts, you can do so much more with less!

3-6-9-12 Workouts

This was originally created by my good friend Coach Troy Anderson. His idea was that working this ladder of repetitions, you could train strength, stability, power, and endurance all at once depending upon what you wanted to emphasize.

The idea is to perform 3 reps of a movement, then minimal rest, then 6, and so on until 12 is completed. Then you can take a 1 minute rest and try to repeat anywhere for 2-4 sets depending upon goals, intensity of the workout, and so on. It allows you to do so much and again, a lot of time, space, or equipment isn’t needed!

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Robin Paget (@rdpaget)

Coach Robin Paget gives a great example of a 3-6-9-12 workout

Jessica helps me break down a great way to use 3-6-9-12 mixing kettlebells with our Ultimate Sandbags, but how we construct these workouts is still important and I explain below. The point though is the many people believe that stability, strength, and conditioning shouldn’t be done in the same workout or can’t be done. However, life isn’t like that and great strength training gives us solutions to how to make such training not only possible, but really smart. Try some of these workouts or at least the concepts to help people stay strong and healthy going into 2023!

We have 40% off any of our DVRT Online Certifications/Courses with code “give” HERE

We also want to give thanks by sharing 30% off anything else at DVRT. When you save 30% on any of our Ultimate Sandbags/Water Bags you will ALSO get our Metabolic Resistance Training 80 workout program for FREE! All you have to do is use code “thanks” HERE