Some thoughts and discussions from me.

Good morning! I hope everyone’s having a great week so far. Thankfully, the weather over the weekend was sunny and warm for our friends who were visiting, but now it’s back to snow.

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I swear, it changes seasons here on a weekly basis!

I’ve mentioned in the past couple of my posts, than I’ve switched gears and focus when it comes to training, and am scaling back, doing a lot of bodyweight stuff, and working on form and a couple muscular imbalances that have crept their way through the cracks.

Right now in my training I have two goals:

  • maintain muscle mass and weight
  • work on any muscular imbalances

I prefer full body workouts, and have had only full body workouts for the past year. Since I’m already switching things up, I figured I’d switch up that aspect of my program, too. So here’s what I’m doing:

Day 1=Upper Body

Day 2=Lower Body

Day 3=Full Body

That’s about as much of a split as you’ll see me do right now.

From there, I just break it down by movement patterns, to make sure I have 2-4 of each movement pattern in my upper body day:

  • pull
  • push
  • mid-back/shoulder stability
  • core stability/anti-rotation
  • and if I have extra time, energy, and a wild hair, some arm work

And for my lower body days, I make sure I have 2-4 exercises each of the following movement patterns:

  • hip dominant
  • knee/quad dominant
  • straight leg hip dominant
  • core rotation

Really, if you think about it, there’s only a few basic movement patters – push, pull, hinge, squat, and rotation. But from those five movements, there are hundreds upon hundreds of exercises, variations of those exercises, and progressions of exercises. It’s really pretty fascinating. In fact, just the other day I had a client ask me how in the world are there so many different exercises?!

I told her that really there’s only a few basic movement patterns and exercises, and just ways to progress them from there. (Although I use a lot of different exercises with my clients, I’m pretty basic in my training.

So having an upper body day is going to be a little weird, but I love the flexibility it gives me in terms of variations of lifts I have time for. My favorite right now? bottoms up kettlebell press

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It really challenges not only shoulder strength and stability, but it’s also an awesome exercise to improve grip. You’ll feel it in your forearms! And it’s not one to do quickly Winking smile

What’s your favorite upper body exercise right now?