Author: ramin32

The Ultimate Full Body Workout Routine

After reading books and articles on proper exercises that workout your body entire I believe I have come up with the ultimate routine:

All the exercises here can be done with the Complete Home Gym for Under $100.
I use cardio to kill two birds with one stone: Cardio in and of itself and a full body warm up. Jogging around your neighborhood for 15-20 minutes should be enough.
Regarding stretching there is a lot of controversy of whether you should do it before or after you work out. To avoid any issues I simple don’t do any stretches on Day 1 and Day 3 and simply stretch my entire body with yoga on Day 2. I found the P90x version masculine enough for those of you who feel that yoga is too feminine. I can finally reach my toes!
Check out this page for a complete list of yoga poses if you do not feel like purchasing the dvds: http://www.sheerbalance.com/brettsblog/p90x-yoga-poses-tony-horton/
 

The Outline

Day 1 – Cardio + Abs/Core

15-20 min cardio

Core Excercises

  • 20 kettlebell swings
  • hip thrusts on the swiss ball
  • Plank for 50 seconds
  • 10 Side plank rotations on each side
  • 10 Leg raises on the iron gym (requires the straps)

Swiss ball exercises

  • 20 swiss ball myotatic crunch
  • 20 swiss ball back crunch
  • 20 swiss ball side crunches
  • 30 swiss ball russian twists
  • Super Man on the swiss ball for 30 seconds
    20 swiss ball jack knives

Ab exercises

  • 20 plain crunches with legs on the swiss ball
  • 20 V situps
  • 10 reverse crunches
  • 50 bicycle crunches

It might look like a lot but each set of repetitions takes under 1 minute or less so one complete round takes about 20 minutes if you don’t rest in between reps.

Day 2 – Yoga from the P90x series

Day 3 – Cardio + Strength Training

Shoulders

  • Pull ups
  • Military Presses
  • Lateral Raises

Legs

  • Calf Raises
  • Lunges
  • Squats
  • Swiss ball wall squats
  • Dumbbell Dead-Difts

Chest

  • Pushups
  • Incline bench press using the swiss ball
  • Swiss ball push ups
  • Swiss ball dumbbell flies

Back

  • Rows
  • YTWL back exercises on the swiss ball

Arms

  • Dumbbell Kick-Back
  • Curls
  • Dips

For videos of the above exercises check out part 2 and part 3.
There you have it!

The Perfect Diet/Meal Plan – 3 Meals/3 Snacks

We all struggle with our food intake to some extent. For those that need help I suggest you try the following diet. After trying different things I came up with a maintainable diet that is easy to keep and works great with a workout schedule:
The idea is simple 3 Meals with 3 snacks in between.

  • 8am: Oatmeal, add eggs on alternating days.
  • 10am: Snack
  • 12pm: Salad
  • 2:30pm: Snack
  • 5pm: A dinner of your choice, but try to keep it healthy.
  • 7pm: Snack

For snacks I have 1 or 2 servings of  fruit, vegetable, yogurt, or nuts.
You may swap the salad with dinner on days where your workout is closer to lunch time.
Be sure to eat slowly and enjoy your food, that way you will stay full for longer periods of time. Any amount of coffee, tea, or water can be had during the day.
Other than that you should stick to the diet unless you begin to starve. In that case you should have another snack since starving is unhealthy and push the next meal forward by an hour or 2. But this should be rare. No sweets/junk food, except once a week.
The point of this diet is to be aware of what you eat and how often. Sometimes we just eat out of boredom, by sticking to a schedule this problem may be mitigated. I also try to eat only natural foods that haven’t been processed much.
There you have it, I hope that you can benefit from this diet just as I have. Please comment on your progress.

Delicious Salad Recipe


Who said salads are tasteless? With the right ingredients salads can taste great and fill you up at the same time.
Try out this recipe instead of one of your daily meals:

  • A handful of baby spinach leaves.
  • Dice up 1 cucumber.
  • Dice up 1 tomato.
  • Handful of almonds.
  • Handful of craisins.
  • Some feta cheese diced up.
  • If you’re feeling particularly hungry you can add 1 carrot stick diced up for extra flavor.
  • Olive Oil with Balsamic Vinegar, a drizzle of each.
  • Optionally you may season, the ingredients above are more than enough for flavor.

Toss the ingredients together and enjoy!

The Ultimate Oatmeal Recipe


Everyone knows that oatmeal is good for you. It is made up of slow digesting carbs, fiber, and 5g of protein per serving!
But eating plain oatmeal everyday can get boring and I must admit it doesnt taste that great.
I stumbled upon this recipe online and modified it to my liking:

  1. Place 1 cup of milk (for extra protein–8g) into a pot on maximum heat.
  2. Add a dash of cinamin, half a teaspoon of brown sugar and a drop of vanilla extract to the milk.
  3. As soon as the milk starts to bubble lower the heat to medium.
  4. Add 7 tablespoons of oatmeal.
  5. Add a handful of raisins and some nuts (I prefer walnuts, but almonds work too.)
  6. Stir the oatmeal for 3-5 minutes and enjoy!

Protein count: 1 cup milk-8g, 1 ounce walnuts-4g, 1/2 cup oatmeal-5g=17g of protein!! If this breakfast follows a workout add 2 hard boiled or scrambled eggs as a side for another 12g, leaving you with 29g of protein! Not too shabby. Skip the whey protein and stick to natural.
For a pleasant crunchy nutty flavor, try out steal cut oats. The ingredients stay the same but the cooking time goes up to 30 minutes–you can only add milk in the end to avoid burning.