Hey everyone,

Today I wanted to chat about smart training.

This morn­ing, I subbed a mus­cle class for another instruc­tor, at a club where I don’t nor­mally teach. From the very first set of shoul­der presses, I could see that this crowd was used to a much less intense, rou­tine, close-​my-​eyes kinda work­out. Now it’s not that these women (it was an all-​female group) had never taken a class before, or were true begin­ners. Not at all. They had just never actu­ally pushed them­selves to the point of fatigue or at least mild dis­com­fort. In fact, one lady very gen­tly said to me, after we com­pleted sev­eral sets of a vari­ety of box squats (squat butt all the way down to the step and back up again) that she needed to be able to sit tomor­row at work with­out being in any pain. News flash every­one — you SHOULD feel mus­cle sore­ness after a work­out! That’s your body telling you, good job!!!

For those of you who take my classes, or train with me, you know that I always say to go at your own pace or do what you can and rest when you NEED to. There’s no shame in not being able to com­plete a tough set but there IS when you don’t even try for fear of only being able to do a few reps or, none at all. I didn’t get fit by doing the same work­out every day, lift­ing the same weights, time after time. Fit­ness is about push­ing your body to the edge and chal­leng­ing your­self on a reg­u­lar basis. Thats’s truly the only way you’re going to see the results and feel the amaz­ing ben­e­fits (phys­i­cal and men­tal) of all your hard work. Remem­ber every­one, noth­ing worth hav­ing ever comes easy!!

On that note, I had to squeeze in a short leg work­out today and thought I’d share it with you. It’s sim­ply 4 sets of each of the fol­low­ing super­sets (2 sets per­formed back-​to-​back). If 4 sets each is too dif­fi­cult for you, then just do 3 or 2. My weight selec­tions are suit­able for my body, so choose a weight that feels best for you. Keep in mind that the last few reps of each set should be tough.

Super­set 1

squats (I used 20lb) - 12 GOOD reps

squat jumps (touch­ing hands to floor) — 15 slow reps, 2 counts down and power up

Super­set 2

stair-​climbing hold­ing 15lb DB’s (up and down stairs 10 times)

walk­ing lunges (I used 20lb), about 24 lunges per set

Super­set 3

stiff-​legged dead lifts (I used 30lb) Keep your feet together, butt back and back flat

lunge jumps — 2 — 2 count jumps, fol­lowed by sin­gles . Do 12 times.

Good luck!!