Q3 Overview

Your Change Your Body Boot Camps is different than most boot camp, group exercise, work out of the day and personal training programs and is more similar to a college or professional sports strength & conditioning program or even a business plan in that it is pre-planned and designed for a specific niche (body transformations for busy people who are out of shape and/or overweight looking to get into their best shape), not just written on a napkin, piece of paper or dry erase board, 5minutes before you walk in the door.  And to prove it, here is our Q3 Overview for 2012.

Themes

The theme for the 3rd quarter is to continue training your beach muscles for beach season and to prepare you for fall sports like soccer, football, mud runs and the last triathlon races of the season.  This should be your most physically challenging quarter of the year b/c the weather is the warmest and the majority of you will be decreasing your stress and work time and increasing your fun and vacation time.

Translation.

Work Stress Down = Training Stress Up; Work Stress Up = Training Stress Down

Splits

We will continue your Lower Body, Upper Body and Total Body workout splits, before returning to your traditional all total body workouts.  The LB, UB & TB splits are better for building muscle definition and strength to give you the harder & more tone bodies most desire to show off on the beach.  The total body workouts are better for weight loss, metabolism and fitness, which are great for when busy people are managing increased stress & temptations.

Testing

We’ll start the Quarter off with Physical Performance Testing on Monday, June 18.  Here we’ll track your progress in the areas of:

Anaerobic Endurance – 60sec Shuttle Run

Upper Body Strength Endurance – 60sec Push Ups

Lower Body Strength Endurance – 60sec Frog Squats

Local Muscle Endurance / Low Back Injury Risk Potential – 2min Side Plank Hold R/L

Aerobic Endurance – 1mile run

…so you can compare them to past results.

Periodization

Your program will also be designed to peak you for Q4 Testing, which is on Monday, September 10, 2012 (put this on your calendar right now!).

The way we’ll peak you is through both exercise selection and manipulation of intensities.  The exercise selection part will include exercises that complement the exercises we test.  You’ll most notice it by all of the push up position exercises, 2-leg exercises and change of direction exercises, you do.  The manipulation of intensities will be most notable beginning in Phase 8 when we introduce metabolic strength (m-s) workouts for every workout vs. our most recent alternation of m-s and metabolic acceleration (m-a) workouts.  Week 2 will be all M-A and then week 3 and 4 will be all M-S.

Workout A Workout B Workout C
Phase 8 UB TB LB
Wk1-Intro M-S M-S M-S
Wk2-Less Sore M-A M-A M-A
Wk3-Progression M-S M-S M-S
Wk4-Challenge M-S M-S M-S
Phase 9 TB LB UB
Wk1-Intro M-A M-A M-S
Wk2-Less Sore M-S M-S M-S
Wk3-Progression M-A M-A M-A
Wk4-Challenge M-A M-A M-A

Total Workouts / Phase

Phase 8 = 12 Workouts; 9M-S: 3M-A

Phase 9= 12 Workouts; 4M-S: 8M-A

Key

UB=Upper Body

TB=Total Body

LB=Lower Body

Wk=Week

M-S=Metabolic Strength

M-A=Metabolic Acceleration

The additional focus on M-S in 1 phase (9M-S vs. 3M-A) will lead to a super-compensation effect in the next phase.  In theory by overloading the muscles and getting them stronger, what should happen is it should be easier for you to do certain exercises (e.g. regular pushups) in the 2nd phase.  Then in the 2nd phase because you’re theoretically able to do regular pushups better, we’ll now switch our focus to Metabolic Acceleration and concentrate on doing the pushups faster and with more total repetitions.  The ability to do more total repetitions will come in handy on testing day when that’s our goal:  to do as many reps as possible in 60 seconds.

Exercises

The ability to perform safely and correctly 1-Leg Squats, Pull Ups, Hand Stand Push Ups, Inverted Rows, Get Ups and Push Ups will continue to be our exercise goals for 2012 as being able to move your own body weight through space is a sure sign you’ve gotten into your best shape.  DB Olympic Lifts (cleans, snatches, swings and jerks) and Plyometric exercises (hops, jumps and bounds) will be our main sources of power training.  Planks will always be a staple to reduce the risk for low back injuries, to help transfer power from your lower body to your upper body or vice versa without having energy & force lost due to a soft midsection and finally b/c it helps your confidence to have a great, hard & flat stomach.

Finishers

Shoulders, Abs and Butt will be our areas of focus for finishers b/c what better time to have a great set of shoulders, good looking abs and a hard curved butt than beach season. Plus strong shoulders through your program will reduce shoulder, neck & head pain and decreased caved chest / rounded shoulder syndrome.  Having hard abs and a hard butt will stabilize your lumbar spine and allow the transfer of power we discussed above under the exercise paragraph.

Conditioning

The triathlon relays will stay at least through phase 9 to help prepare your work capacity for end of season races.  Mirror shuffles will train lateral movements that are required in soccer & football, while the Change of Direction, Red Light Green Light drills will also compliment soccer & football.  Plus each conditioning day emphasizes a different plane.  The triathlon relay is the sagittal plane (front to back), lateral shuffles are the frontal plane (side-to-side) and the change of direction red light green light emphasizes the transverse plane (rotational).  Multi-planar training is great for numerous reasons such as providing more vibrancy to your life (life is mostly walking forwards), correcting muscle imbalances (the walking forward, standing too long and sitting too long imbalances), accessing & building more mitochondria (the muscle cell powerhouses), activating atrophied or dormant muscles and increasing your metabolism (by adding high maintenance lean muscle & having to recover from these multi-planar workouts).

Closing

I hope you’re as excited as I am to experience your workouts as I am to deliver them.  Remember this is not just a quick fix or jump start, but a lifestyle you’re choosing to live.  You already know the old way of doing things doesn’t work and that’s how you found us.  You were an action taker who used courage to sign up AND commit and you’ll be a leader for your circle of influence by adopting this vibrant & rewarding active lifestyle and then teaching it.

Cheers to your continued success.

Your coach,

Mike Alves

Burn & Earn

Newton Boot Camp

Newton Personal Trainer

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