Workout of the Week

Time for another challenge for all of you health pursuing crazies!  Actually, this will be great for all of you, crazy or not.  Our focus in all of the workouts that I provide here, are to achieve some level of metabolic conditioning, which means the workouts need to be short enough that you can really push yourself hard, yet enough work that you tax the systems in your body that produce energy.  These are metabolic pathways, therefore: metabolic conditioning!

So because of this, I like running, but I also like testing your other physical capacity.  So today we will give you a combination of activities that involve moving your body weight over distance.  First will be running, and as before, if you cannot run, then walk fast.  If you cannot walk fast, then walk slow.  Just push as hard as you can.

The next movement is going to be a bear crawl.  This is hard to do if you don’t have much shoulder strength, so let me describe it as well as the alternatives.  The bear crawl is basically a crawl with both feet and both hands on the ground.  Keeping knees off the ground, and leaning in a way that puts your body weight through your shoulders.  If you can crawl this way, for only an instant before dropping to your knees, then still attempt to do the crawl as it is prescribed.

After Bear crawls, we will add one more movement to “rest” your legs and arms, sit-ups.  If you cannot do a sit-up, then a crunch will suffice, but just know, I think a crunch is a wasted movement in a workout, unless it is used as a stepping stone to sit-ups.

So here is the work, you should use a grassy area for the bear crawls and the sit-ups, but run on the road/sidewalk.  You will do 4 rounds of 400M run, Bear Crawl 40M, 20 sit-ups.  I will plan on doing this over the weekend, and posting my time to get it done to the comments of this post.  To measure your 40 Meters, step off 40 long steps, or 10 and just go back and forth.

400 Meters is a quarter of a mile, you could use a treadmill, or if you drive 1/10 of a mile add just a little bit, and that would be your turn around point to be close to a quarter mile.

Remember to do this as fast as you can (but please don’t kill yourself), while maintaining good technique in the bear crawl and sit-ups.  Feel free to post your time to the comments, then you can come back, do it again, and post your new time to comments, and use this post on our web-site as your journal of sorts!  Be well, BE FIT!