A dreary, drizzly day made for a slow-moving and unmotivated workout today. I had originally planned to do a run today but my laziness took over and I instead opted for 15 mins on the elliptical for my cardio warm-up. I did manage to push through a 2 mile run on Sunday though so perhaps tomorrow I will be able to get back into my run routine. Thursday is the early registration for a 5k race in July I had thought I may do. I'm not sure if I want to commit to that quite this early on but we'll see!
I've been feeling like my workouts are so routine lately that I need to start incorporating some new moves before I hit a serious plateau. Thus, I decided to write down the three major workouts displayed in last month's issue of Muscle & Fitness Hers on note cards to take with me to the gym this week. Yesterday I did an upper body workout (back/chest/bis tris/shoulders) which consisted of all moves I would normally do but with reverse grips on every one of them. Unfortunately I'm not really sore today like I thought I would be but at least it was something different! The one I did not enjoy very much was the reverse grip bicep curl (both barbell and preacher). It just felt very awkward and straining but I guess that probably means I should do it more often!
Today's workout was a glute routine. I didn't follow the card exactly because a) I wanted to incorporate some ab moves, b) I was being super lazy, and c) I totally wore the wrong shorts for a glue routine! I started with 3 sets of 8 on the standing glute press machine. The routine called for bent-over glute presses (sans weights) but I don't really feel anything from those so I switched it up. Next I threw in standing calf-raises (12-10-8) which I know have nothing to do with glutes but I hadn't done them in a while so I figured, "why not"? Then I moved on to plie squats (3 sets of 8) with two 15-lb dumbells held between my legs. I probably should have added the heel-raises from my photo shoot but like I said, L-A-Z-Y! The other moves on the card included standing leg kick-backs with a cable attached to your lifted leg as well as lying leg raises where you lie on your stomach on a flat/wide bench and just lift your legs enough to squeeze your glutes but we don't have a bench like depicted in the magazine at World's (or Planet for that matter) and this majorly creepy old man who I try my best to avoid was hanging around the cables so I opted to avoid that area today.
Moving on to abs I did tee-pees (3 sets of 8), kneeling on the ball in between sets, and 4 sets of 30 stability ball crunches (2 sets forward and 2 sets side-to-side), doing v-sits on the ball in between sets. Overall, I guess it wasn't really the glute-focused workout I had intended but at least it was a well-rounded routine. Maybe when I turn on The Biggest Loser finale in a few moments here I'll get back some of my lost motivation and bust some real ass in the gym tomorrow!
Reverse grip and regular grip isolate different parts of your biceps and forearm muscles. For instance, regular grip will isolate the bicep brachii (the peak of the muscle) and the pronator in the forearem (among other muscles - there are a lot in this area of the body - a lot that we don't know or name unless we are in the A+P lab - that's how we get the 600+ muscles in the body....for everything we name street terminology, there are 5 to 10 to 50 little nuances and scientific names)... and the alternate/reverse grip will isolate the brachialis (bicpes) or length of the muscle and supinator (forearm) muscles.
ReplyDeleteYou can test this by cupping one bicep with your hand and simply pronate and supinate your wrist and feel the muscle move to a 'peak" and a "long" position - back and forth. There's a difference because you are actually using different muscles.
What are your goals for training? There are so many different variables to isolate...strength, power, endurance, hypertrophy, energy system development, performance, appearance, etc. Each one dictates a different prescription. Then the key is to follow it for awhile (4 weeks) and then switch to something new....for 4 weeks...and after awhile you get crazy results with no plateaus (mentally or physically)!