Making Your Workouts Fun

We’re continuing with part 2 of the TT Abs Q & A seminar I did, and today we’re going to talk about an often overlooked element to fat loss success – following a workout you enjoy. But if you missed part 1 where I laid out the roadmap to a sexy and ripped body, then you’ll want to head back for a read. Let’s jump into today’s question…

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How do I combine ab work with fun fat-burning exercises to tone my abs and my entire body while improving my overall fitness?

That’s a great general all around question because it really leads into what kind of workouts are we going to do.

We want to make sure interval training is included to burn belly fat and we can do some of that abdominal endurance stuff quite frequently.

We’re also going to do some of those traditional, not traditional ab exercises, because we’re not doing sit ups or crunches. And what I mean by that is we’re going to do traditional mindset ab training about getting the soreness.

We shouldn’t do it every day, but just a little bit. We need to do metabolic resistance training. So what we have is, Turbulence Training, and specifically, the Turbulence Training for Ab Workouts. Those are what we want to get into.

So, we want to do our regular body weight warm-up at the start.

Now, here’s a SIMPLE TRICK you can put into your workouts; if you want to get more of that abdominal endurance plank and side plank type exercises, and there’s more advanced versions, there’s side plank with leg raise or plank on one foot, or declined plank, or push up position plank where you’re holding your body with your arms extended.

You can do all types of planks, and what I’m actually doing in Turbulence Training is incorporating more of those types of exercises into the warm up, so that people get that type of benefit while also getting neuromuscular stimulation to help them get ready for the rest of their workout.

So, you’re going to see that more in my warm ups, but you can also put those in your warm up if they’re currently not in there on your program.

We’re going to start with our regular body weight warm up, and notice lots of mobility, we’re getting moving, we’re overcoming what we’re doing right now, which is probably sitting in a chair, whether in a car if you’re listening to the recording or if you’re sitting in front of your computer, or if you’re sitting in front of the TV with the computer in front of you as well.

We’re sitting down, we’ve got rounded shoulder posture, and you can see the shoulders are slightly forward. So, we want to start our workout with those stick ups and prone stick ups, and the new one I have in most of the workouts is the arm crosses and prisoner squats.

We want to open up the chest, bring our shoulder blades back and together. You can do this with me right now. We want to put our arms back so that we get really some tension between the shoulder blades and we might even get a bit of a stretch across through the front of the chest. That’s just one of the many areas that we’re warming up with our body weight warm ups.

Then, like I said, we’re going to get some of the plank stuff in there, we’re going to get some squats and some single leg exercises for beginners, we might get one leg hip extension, that stability ball leg curls, and we’re going to get all that stuff in there so that we can get all our body parts warmed up.

We DON’T NEED to spend 10 to 15 minutes on the treadmill, because we want to get every specific joint that’s going to be working in our Turbulence Training program we want to get some repetition.

When you warm up on a treadmill you don’t get any movement by your upper body, therefore you still have to get off the treadmill and go and do this same warm up anyways. So, in most cases, if not all cases, we can generally skip that treadmill warm up.

So, that’s how we’re going to start the fun, fast, and effective workout. We’re going to do our body weight warm up and then we’re going to get into total body metabolic resistance training, whether it’s circuits or supersets.

We can either do total body or upper body –  lower body.

I love to do the upper body – lower body, which allows me four workouts per week, three off days, and I don’t do as much interval training, because I’m doing a little bit more lifting. So, if you did that, then here’s how your schedule could go…

Day 1 – Upper body

So, you’re going to get every pushing and pulling exercise in there.

Day 2 – Lower body & traditional ab type focused training

Of course, your static endurance stabilization is in the warm up for as many of those workouts as you’d like. That’s my preferred schedule, that’s how I have the most fun.

But, some other people love the total body workouts, so you go three days per week with a total body workout.

If you are ADVANCED and have been training for a while, and you want to do a fourth day then add in interval training, and those static abdominal endurance exercises as well and have kind of a half workout on a fourth day.

Now, going back to the upper body – lower body split…

I’ve found that even on that split you’re really only doing three and a half workouts per week, because you’ve got your upper body two days, and then you have your lower body one day. So really you only kind of get another half day because so much of your abdominals have been worked in those workouts, your shoulders and joints have been trained  two, if not three days already…

…so that fourth day is really not going to be a full on workout with as much as the other ones.

You’re going to see that if you use the TT Meatheads program.
That is one program where you’re going to see the four day schedule, and you’ll see the fourth day is usually only four exercises, maybe six, whereas the other ones are always six exercises.

So, that’s how I have fun with the program and those are the two options generally that you’re going to do.

In addition to that, speaking of fun, we also want to make sure we’re really enjoying our days off from the gym, but we really do NEED to keep active.

You don’t need to go to the commercial gym for two hours and spend time on the treadmill or anything, but you need to have an active lifestyle, because one of the things I mentioned already – the lack of mobility from our terrible posture and being a prisoner of a chair all day.

We want to make sure that we’re getting into some fun stuff, so I highly recommend that you look back at some of the things you loved to do over your life and see if you can’t get them back into your life, into your schedule, such as dancing or sports.

If you had a dog and want to get a new dog, find some time to go walking with the dog. All that type of stuff that will keep you busy and active. Yoga, Pilates, all of these are fine.

In most cases these aren’t going to drastically increase your calorie burning or weight loss, but there’s one HIDDEN BENEFIT from it that most people don’t think of…

The hidden benefit of staying active on your off days is that you’re not eating.

A lot of people eat because they’re bored and they’re at home at night sitting in front of the TV. If you can keep busy with activities, keep yourself out of the house, then you’re not going to consume those late night calories, which is a problem.

I am tirelessly researching new and innovative ways so you can lose fat easier and faster. I want you to love your body and so in part 3 you’ll find out what interesting study I recently came across that will ramp up your results in no time.