Efficiency in the gym

I have been adding additional shoulder, ab, and glute work to my base Venus workouts for a while now; I guess it has been about a year.

One thing I have learned is that I can combine similar equipment and body position work for efficiency. I had never really considered this before, and maybe to many of you this may be a no-brainer. But for someone who is really driven by efficiency, I cannot believe that it had never occurred to me! I mean, I blow dry my hair and read my Bible at the same time. 'you would figure it might have crossed my mind before, right? Haha!

The idea really was driven home a few weeks ago when I was travelling and the only thing the hotel gym had was the cable machine. That will really make you think about what you can do with how one or two arms will set up!

It has taken me a while, honestly, to get comfortable with adding my own exercises to a workout plan that is written out. But I know what I need now, and I am reaping the benefit of this additional targeted work. 

*Disclaimer* you need to have been lean (or are) to see what you need before adding extra specific body part work into your routine. The only additional work I can see most any woman needing across the board is additional glute work. Remember too that additional work is to build out areas, not slim as that is driven from fat loss.

Glute, chest, and abs quadset

Here my base workout called for 3 sets of 12 pushups. I needed to add some additional glute and ab work into my day, so I turned that base idea into the following quadset:

1. Banded side lying hip raise

2. Push up *disclaimer* need to pull my head up and get deeper!

3. Banded donkey kick

4. Ab wheel

I did 3 sets of 12 reps each, no rest

Glute and abs superset

This was an addition to the end of a workout that needed additional ab work; the original workout called for reverse hyperextension.

A. Weighted Reverse Hyperextenstion

B. Swiss Ball Crunch

3 sets of 12 each, no rest

P.S. I like to wear the heaviest leg weights I have (these are 10 lbs each) to really ramp up the reverse hyperextensions! On the Swiss ball crunch, really stretch back over the ball to get a full range of motion, and then come up through your knees!

Hopefully, this gave you some ideas if you are adding in additional work to your routine.

My next adventure is trying to go as heavy as possible on two movements per workout. I want to start tracking my strength gains and this seems like a logical place to start. 

I am rotating through doing as many reps as possible on one upper body and one lower body exercise per session. I am pulling enough weight to do 1-5 reps until failure for 3 sets.

Upper body:

Bench

Shoulder Press

Dips

Row

Chin ups

Lower body:

Deadlift

Squat

Hip Thrust

What is new in your workout world?

X- Liss