Wow!  Its hot!  Hopefully it will cool off soon.  If you are doing any outside exercise this week (or for the rest of the summer for that matter) be sure to do it in the morning or evening when the air is cooler and more importantly, the air quality is better.  Running outside when the air quality is in the orange or red zone is pretty darn close to sucking on a tailpipe or having a cigarette.  Why?  Well we consume a lot more air than if we were sitting on the back porch sipping tea and we often breathe through our mouths which bypasses our natural air filter, the nose.  For more information read this article.

For the rest of you, who prefer to suffer under the iron, I have a lot of fun in store for you this week.  Continuing with our undulating periodization schedule, here goes:

Monday, June 7th

Medium Intensity, Barbell Complex:
8 reps of each, 5 rounds
Deadlift
Hang power clean
Push press
Front squat

Tuesday, June 8th

Medium Intensity, Intervals:

You can take two approaches here.
1.  Set timer to go off every minute and rotate from one activity to the next, resting 1 minute before repeating.  5 rounds.
2.  Do a set number of reps for each activity that will amount to 4 minutes of total work for all four activities.  I will put suggestions in parenthesis.

Jump Rope (50-100 reps)
Kettlebell swing (25-30 reps)
Medicine ball slam (25-30 reps)
Push Press (20-25 reps)
Rest 1 minute

*You can also do this with a partner and instead of jumping rope, run 40 yard relay sprints.  (3 each)

Wednesday, June 9th

High Intensity, reminder, this workout is short and very intense and so you want to have a relatively long warm-up.  This is a good day to choose 6 full body exercises to use as your warmup.  Perform 20-30 reps of each exercise after your general warm-up and dynamic stretches.  Examples:  squats, pullups, lunges, pushups light kettlebell deadlifts, kettelbell/clubbell swings, broomstick snatches

You can do these with a partner and rest while your partner is working.  Otherwise, take 2-4 minutes rest between rounds.  Choose a weight for the thrusters that is challenging, but that you can finish your thrusters continuously.  15-30 lbs for each dumbbell is probably adequate for most.

Dumbbell thrusters (front squat to push press) 15
Sprint 50 meters (not jog, not run fast, SPRINT!)

Looks easy, doesn’t it?  🙂

Thursday, June 10th

Low intensity or rest day.

Bike, jog, swim, row, do something fun and relaxing.

Friday, June 11th

Low intensity

Complete 30 reps of the following exercises at a relaxed pace.

Overhead lunges
Body rows
Sit-ups
Light deadlifts (85-135 lbs)
Pushups
Full contact twists
Dumbbell split squats
Dumbell curl and press
Hanging knee raises
Dumbbell cleans
V-sit russian twist
Barbell roll-outs

Saturday, June 12th

Optional Bench Press