Killer 10-Minute Workouts - Sandbag Complexes

Complexes, chains, or hybrids have been used by Olympic lifters for decades to help prevent overuse injuries and build better general physical preparedness and improve all round fitness levels. You can also use complexes to prepare for the real work of your training session. The goal with complexes is to do a wide array of functional movement patterns to develop muscle balance, explosive power, strength while training in multiple planes.

When it really comes down to it, complexes are a great way to get a lot of work into a short amount of time which at the end of the day turns your body into a metabolic fat-burning machine!

The video below demonstrates 3 complexes with a sandbag, which are perfect for a quick workout. Check out this 3-tier complex:



There's no excuse for not having a sandbag to train with!

BRING IT!!

-AR

The Inspire Millions Challenge - Friday Fun Day 2-Minute Challenge

Do you have 2-minutes to squeeze in a quick workout? Of course you do. I mean, who doesn't have 2-minutes out of their 24-hour schedule?!

C'mon....it's only 2-minutes!

The cool thing about this 2-minute challenge is that the only equipment you need is:

• a sports cord/resistance band
• a few books
• 120 seconds of your free time
• your body and a smile!

It can be done anywhere - at home, in your backyard, at the park, at the beach.....you name it, you can do it.

To compliment yesterday's blog post about 'The Inspire Millions Challenge', this 2-minute challenge was designed and created by my friends & colleagues Sean Croxton, CMTA - of Underground Wellness and Brett Klika, CSCS - of Fitness Quest 10 and brettklika.com. 

The workout consists of 4 exercises:

1. Reverse Lunges w/ Resisted Retractions - 40 seconds
2. Resisted Wood Chops - 20 seconds each side
3. Book Agility - 20 seconds
4. Surfers - 20 seconds

Check it out:

Let's do this & get it done!

-AR

The Inspire Millions Challenge

As most of you already know, we have a big epidemic that's happening in our country. An epidemic that's killing us & our children. It's making us fat, weak, lazy and sedentary. It shows no mercy and will keep doing so until we 'decide' to do something differently. It's time we so something about it!

We need to create change for the better.

We need to get healthy - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

We need to start moving the way our bodies were designed to move.

We need to start living for ourselves.

We need to educate ourselves about the dangers of the toxic, poisonous, processed, man-made foods that are wreaking havoc to our bodies.

We need to 'make the time' to incorporate exercise into our lives on a daily basis.

Simply put....

WE NEED TO STOP MAKING EXCUSES AND START TAKING ACTION TO BETTER OURSELVES!

So, what can you do about it? Here's a start....

Check out this guest blog & video that was created by my friends and colleagues, Sean Croxton, CMTA - of Underground Wellness and Brett Klika, CSCS - of Fitness Quest 10 and brettklika.com.

Sean & Brett present to you "The Inspire Millions Challenge"!
__________

Americans are no longer chubby, portly, or overweight.

We are corpulent, obese, and rotund. We don’t move like humans are supposed to move.

We don’t eat like humans are supposed to eat. We are not just merely dying from this plight, we are suffering.

What would happen to a Cheetah if we fed it Cheetos and made it sit idle? It would get sick. It would get depressed It would develop pain. And it would die.

Why? Because Cheetos are not what Cheetahs are supposed to eat, and sitting idle is not what cheetahs are supposed to do.

As cruel as the above treatment may seem to an animal, many Americans live, embrace, and defend their “right” to this scenario. After all, there is a robust, nearly unchallenged industrial machine to support it. Unchallenged, until now.

This is a call to action.

A much higher calling than sculpting a six-pack, toning thighs, selling gym memberships or slinging miracle supplements.

It’s a call for our society to lift each other up off the couch and move.

It is a call to educate each other to eat food instead of chemicals.

It is a call to INSPIRE MILLIONS to stop suffering and live like humans are designed to live.

You don’t have to be a personal trainer, life coach, or physician to grab a loved-ones hand and say “let’s go for a walk”. How do you know if you are walking fast and far enough? When someone no longer needs to pull you off the couch to go for a walk. You don’t have to be a dietician, nutritionist, or chef to select food that is actually “food” and not merely a chemically-induced taste. How do you know what “real food” is? The ingredients list should be the food itself. For meat, well, if you know what the animal’s name was prior to being on your plate, it’s probably safe to eat.



We don’t have to be hot, ripped, toned, shredded, sculpted, or beautiful. We need men, women, and children to get off the couch, stop eating poison, and get out of pain. Everyone can contribute. Do something today, right now to change the way you live or INSPIRE someone else to do the same. It may not happen overnight, it may take time. Person by person, household by household, city by city, state by state.

Working together, we can stand up and INSPIRE MILLIONS to be happy, healthy and pain free. After all, that’s how humans are supposed to live.
__________

The time has come to take ACTION! Let's do this!

-AR

Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone

Just over a week ago, my little brother and I decided to hit the gym as I was down in California visiting my family. We were both having a rough week and needed to 'de-stress' in order to shake off the negative vibe cobwebs.

I had a feeling that my brother had formulated in his mind that we'd be counting reps and peforming reps out on the weightroom floor. Little did he know that we'd be knocking it out in the gym's 'training studio'.

In there was a FreeMotion Dual Cable Cross, dumbbells, BOSU balance trainers, stretch/exercise mats, stability balls and medicine balls. Add my interval timer....and we had a recipe for a kickass workout!

To make a long story short, my brother and I cranked out a HIIT workout in under 40-minutes which included soft tissue work, dynamic warmup/movement prep, 3 groups of 4 exercises performed in 40/20 intervals and a 20/10 Tabata Finisher consisting of glute bridge marching, planks and side planks!

When we were done, my bro told me that the workout we did was fresh, new and it was something that he had never seen done before at this particular gym....EVER!!

That got me thinking.

If this type of workout and/or training has never been done before, then what are the majority of the members doing? What are they spending their time with?

I'll tell you.

They're spending their time doing the same thing they did in their last workout session. How do I know? Because no matter what 'big box club' I walk into, I see the same activities being performed and I also see the same look on the faces of the people doing them - boredom, frustration, some even look angry and demoralized.

Funny as it may seem, despite being in another state and seeing different people, the outlook on personal progression in terms of the exercises and protocols that these people are doing in the gym is almost always the same, hence the lack of results! Things such as long, boring, steady state cardio, single-joint isolation or body part training and lots of work on resistance machines that force you to sit.

The problem is quite simple - people have a fear of breaking out of their 'comfort zone'.

I’ll start by declaring your comfort zone – it's not just a physical zone, but also a state of mind – in which you're 'comfortable'. It could be your home, your room or somewhere else. Note that you're not pressured when you're in your comfort zone, and you have total control over the situation. When you’re in your comfort zone, you're familiar with the environment and NOTHING IS NEW!

Self-growth (whether it's physical, mental, or spiritual) occurs OUT of your comfort zone! When you're in your comfort zone, you're not learning nor growing! Doing what you already do will not get you forward. In order to grow, you MUST do the things that you don’t do now.

The way I like to put it - getting out of your comfort zone is 'where the magic happens'!

If you expect to see any type of physiological progress and results, you must step out of your comfort zone - whether it's fat loss, lean muscle growth, losing the 'muffin-top', fitting into your dream pair of jeans, etc.

If you do the same, you get the same! If you want to see change, you need to create change!

Simply put, you need to get comfortable with getting uncomfortable!

In the case of my workout with my brother, I took him out of his comfort zone and we both worked hard! We were huffing it, breaking a sweat and felt our hearts pounding in our chest!

Was it easy? Hardly!

Did we enjoy the workout? Depends on what the exercise was! Just kidding. Of course we did.

However, we both knew that in order to take it to the next level, we had to dig deep and give it our 100% effort as best we could - we needed to go above & beyond to what felt comfortable!

In the end, we survived 40-minutes of mayhem and madness. We also reaped the benefits of the workout as our reward was an elevated metabolism, we torched body fat, stimulated our lean muscle growth potential and we both felt a surge of energy which impacted the rest of our day for the better!

All of this through the simple concept of getting 'comfortable with getting uncomfortable'!

Whether it's your training, diet/nutrition, applying for a job, asking out the girl of your dreams, you need to break out of your comfort zone if you plan to get ahead and see results.

Think about every achievement that you've gained in your life – I bet most if not all of them are the result of doing something new, rather than sticking to your old habits.

So, what experiences will you create today?

-AR

What's Your Excuse?

Did you get your workout in today? If not.....what's your excuse?!


Get it done! NO EXCUSES!

-AR