In today’s world, everyone is busy. We all have a lot on our plates and demand a lot of ourselves. Unfortunately some people forget to demand a lot of themselves when it comes to their health. We put work, family, friends, social media, and other events ahead of our cooking and shopping. Later on down the road we end up paying for it. We become out of shape, tired, and pissed off at ourselves that we let this happen.
No matter who you are and what you do, this will happen at some point in your life. You once were someone that worked out 5 days a week for 60-90 minutes. You felt great about yourself and felt like you could conquer the world. Then, life happened. Maybe you graduated from college and started a new career. Maybe you had a kid and now you put him or her ahead of your workouts. I get it, those things are very important, but so are you.
You don’t need to work out that often, or for that long to get results. If you are eating fairly well, 80% of the time, you just need to get a few hard workouts in a week too see results. At this stage of your life, it’s all about quality, not quantity. You have to balance out your everyday habits in order to get it all done, so let’s start with a simple program that produces results, even for the most advanced fitness enthusiast.
Give me 3 days a week and 30 minutes. With the right mix of exercises, we can make it happen. So, let’s go burn some fat and build some muscle!
The Workout
You may not have a ton of equipment, or access to a gym. We can deal with this obstacle as well. You just need a few kettlebells, a couple pair of dumbbells, and maybe a pull-up bar and we are good to go.
You will notice that there is a set of kettlebell swings between each set of a strength exercise. I learned this technique from the Strong First group. They will squeeze in sets of kettlebells swings, calling them a “swing sandwich” in order to produce some great conditioning and fat loss. I have also done this with myself and many of my women clients. This allows us to get our strength work in, as well as power and conditioning, making it an efficient and effective workout.
Perform each workout once a week on non-consecutive days. Rest no more than 60-seconds between each exercise. Move through the workout as fast as possible without having to use too little of weight or breaking form.
Before you start your workout, perform a quick dynamic warm-up similar to what I demonstrate in this video.
Note: this is an old video, ha-ha!
Day 1
3-4 rounds of:
DB bench press x 8 reps
15 KB swings
DB reverse lunge x 8 each leg
15 KB swings
1-arm db row x 8 each side
15 KB swings
Db RDL x 8
15 KB swings
Ball rollouts x 8
15 swings
Day 2
4-5 rounds of:
Push ups x 10
10 KB swings
Air squats x 20
10 KB swings
Chin ups x 3 or pulldowns x 10
10 KB swings
1-leg bench hip thruster x 10 each leg
10 KB swings
Side plank x 30 seconds each side
10 KB swings
Day 3
2-3 rounds of:
2-KB overhead press x 5 20 KB swings Goblet squat x 10
20 KB swings
1-leg rdl x 5 each
20 KB swings
TRX OR Bar inverted row x10
20 KB swings
Front plank reach
20 KB swings
Front plank x 30 seconds
Justin Grinnell is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, as well as a Certified Personal Trainer,and a Crossfit Level 1 Trainer. He is also the Owner of State of Fitness in East Lansing, Michigan. State of Fitness opened up just four years ago and is already one of the leading training facilities in the Midwest. State of Fitness has over 450 members who train every day under his leadership. In addition to being a facility owner, Justin has his own blog at www.grinnelltraining.com (link below), and has been a featured writer for over 6 years in the magazine Healthy & Fit and is a writer for Muscle & Fitness.
