Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Fitness to your front door!

Hello fitness friends! I'm off this week, but slipping in some time for "Workout of the Week" because I love it (and you) so much. :)

This week's segment is perfect for those of you who find yourselves skipping workouts because you don't have time to go to the gym or you stop the exercise DVD five minutes in because there is no one there to motivate you. Sound familiar? If so - you need to meet John Willer. "I was overweight and I started doing aerobics tapes at home," says John, "then I went to school to be a personal trainer because I wanted to help others and make them feel better." John started his own personal training business - with a twist. "You don't have to leave your house - it saves time," he explains. "You go to the gym, it's 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back and you wait on sweaty equipment... I come to your house and we're done in a half hour."

For us, john visits the station where we have some empty office space - perfect for working out. "A lot of people have resistance bands or exercise balls at home - if you have it I'll use it, but if not it's no big deal." All we need besides our bodies, is a towel and a blanket ... more on that in a minute.

We start with a dynamic warmup - arm circles, knee lifts, hamstring curls - then the hard work begins. Push ups are first, and John has us working in a pyramid format. "So we do five reps first, then ten, then fifteen... then we go down to ten, then five...." And that's the plan we follow for every exercise - plyometric lunges, dead lifts, one legged squats - all using body weight. We use the blanket and towel to create resistance for bicep curls - just loop them underneath one foot and press down! We also do a move John calls "upsie doorsies" - you just grab a door knob or door frame and pull yourself toward it - a great way to work your back!

The first round doing five reps of each exercise flies by, the second round of ten feels rough, by the third we are sweating. It's surprising how much are hearts are thumping without any fancy equipment or heavy weights. And if you want to add more weight to moves like dead lifts of lunges John says just look around the house! "You can grab milk jugs, bags of kitty litter, canned food..." Since we're in an office setting, I snag a phone book and it works pretty well!

We finish the body circuit and John has a surprise for us. "At the end, if you have any juice left... we do a four minute Tabata cycle." We've done this before with lots of different trainers so we know what's coming - twenty seconds of work followed by ten seconds of rest. However, we have never done the ab move John calls the "dead bug." We are on our backs with our arms and legs flailing around and we think this should be called the "ugly bug." Regardless, this move is hard and it's causing me pain because of my back injury. John gives me a different move - I flip onto my stomach and do "swimmers" - another great core exercise. We look ridiculous, but before long Sonya's abs are on fire and my back and butt are burning. We're shocked that we've gotten such a great workout in just thirty minutes. "That's probably one of the shortest workouts we've done!" exclaims Sonya. "And hard!" I reply. "Yeah ... who wants to waste time?" asks John. Good question!

If you're interested in having John bring fitness to your front door, check out his website. www.willerprotraining.com. You can also call John at (641)891-0500 or email him at wptraining@live.com.

Thanks for stopping by the blog - remember, we want your workout ideas!!!
EEK
Erin.Kiernan@whotv.com

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