Three Great Compound Exercises

A compound exercise is a multi-joint movement which utilizes multiple muscles at the same time so you get all the physical benefits of weightlifting / cardio for those muscles.

Unlike a bicep curl, which is an isolating exercise, and only works one muscle at a time, a compound exercise works two or more muscle groups. The classic example of a compound exercise is a bench press which utilizes triceps, deltoids and pectorals.

However, not all compound exercises are geared towards weightlifting. There are compound exercises that seriously raise your heart rate, burn fat, and still strengthen and tone the body. Example: Bicycling uses multiple leg muscles, raises your heart rate dramatically, while building muscles in your legs and burns calories like crazy.

Another example is boxing, which although it is a sport, it utilizes muscle groups in the whole body and makes for a great cardio exercise - and requires great balance and agility.

As such compound exercises are great for people who want more time efficient workouts and want a workout that is more geared towards weight loss, while simultaneously building muscle. Being able to work more than one muscle at a time cuts down on the overall time requirement for your fitness regimen. Such exercises also tend to work the core from having to balance, change levels, and twist / turn.

Here are three great compound exercises for you to try at home!

1. For your lower body, back, and core try Side Lunges + Rowing

In a wide stance holding a dumbbell in each hand, turn the toes out, with your body facing forward. Lunge over to one side, keeping the knee over the ankle and behind the toe. As you lunge row the weight back like a one arm row with your opposite arm. Then place that weight on the floor. Repeat on the other side so that both weights are now on the floor. When you lunge back to the first side pick the weight up and row. Go to the other side and do the same. Alternate between pick up, drop off and rows. This one will really make you sweat!

2. For your lower body, biceps, shoulders, core try Squats, Curls and Raises

With one heavy weight held with both hands go into a squat. Remember to keep all of the weight on your heels, and push your bum far back. On the way back up to starting position curl the weight like a bicep curl and as you stand, raise it over your head. Get the weight back down hanging in front of your body before starting the next squat, curl and raise rep.

3. For your lower body, chest, triceps, shoulders, core try Lunges + Push Ups

Stand in a wide stance. Point one toe away from your body and go down into a lunge, placing your hands onto the floor. Sweep your forward leg back into a plank position and do a push up. Bring the same working leg back in between your hands and lunge back up to staring position. Change sides.

Note

The above three exercises also go well with cardio intervals (like jumping jacks or skip rope), alternated between isolating exercises, or on their own. If you grow bored with them try making up your own compound exercises that focuses on the muscle groups you want to work with the most.

Boxing Footwork 101

Boxing footwork is a fundamental way to improve your skill in boxing.

Think of a successful boxer at a stool with multiple legs. The legs are Chin, Power, Technique, Footwork, and Strategy/Mental Discipline. If just one of these legs are lacking the stool is more likely to fall over, but hopefully the boxer is facing a chump who lacking even more. If several of the legs are bad the stool is much more likely to fall over. Thus a good boxer should have a good balance in all 5 key areas in order to be successful.

Quality footwork allows a boxer to stay balanced and on their feet, and also gives them an advantage because they can move in closer faster and weave around / fade from punches more easily. This gives them both an offensive and defensive advantage.

A boxer with poor footwork will get hit more often, knocked down more easily, and if their chin is poor also (or suffering due to being given a beating) will be less likely to get up within 10 seconds and lose a match due to a technical knockout. (And being KOd many times looks bad on your record if you want to get into amateur or professional boxing competitions.)

Examples of great boxers who were really good at footwork: Manny Pacquiao, Joe Calzaghe, Oscar De La Hoya. Watch some of their videos on YouTube and you will see some amazing examples of footwork. Watch it on a big screen so you can see better and pay close attention to how they move their feet.

Boxing Footwork Basics

#1. Use footwork to get out of range (fading).

To get good at this practice running backwards. Try to get really good at running backwards.

#2. Use footwork to weave sideways.

A good way to practice footwork is to position yourself in a room with your left side against a wall. Move sideways to your right by moving your left foot forward and to the right, and then your right foot behind and to the right. Then your left foot switches and goes behind and to the right, followed by your right foot forward and to the right. Continue alternating which foot is forward and which is behind until you reach the opposite wall. Then switch directions and go left, each time alternating which foot is in front and which is behind. NOTE: Make sure your shoes are tied properly and fit okay. This is an easy exercise to mess up and you can trip yourself if you get confused. The exercise is often used by football players as sideways footwork is also important for football.

#3. Step forward into punches.

Regardless of whether you are doing a straight punch, a hook or a cross you want to step in with your punch to add your body weight and additional momentum with the punch. A way to train for this is jogging or sprinting, while using your arm motion during jogging so you look a bit like rock-em-sock-em robots (if you remember that old 80s toy). I admit that is a weird analogy, but it works as you should be able to visualize it.

#4. Get better balance by doing Balance Exercises

There are a number of ways to build better balance using footwork, but the one I like to recommend to beginners is to practice hopscotch. (You may feel silly doing this, but it really works.) The trick is to challenge yourself physically so you can do hopscotch routines quickly on either one or both feet.

Another good balancing exercise for your feet is rope skipping. Learning to skip rope both fast and stay coordinated will build your leg muscles, coordination and speed.

#5. Keep exploring more footwork exercises.

I have only covered the basics here. The examples above will help a boxer gain muscle memory in their legs, more balance, more speed, more coordination and give them an added edge in the boxing ring. A nimble boxer who is well rounded and can pack a punch - or float like a butterfly, sting like a bee (Muhammad Ali quote).

I will go into more detail about some of these footwork drills on later dates but for now I recommend doing the exercises listed above.

There are a variety of other exercise drills out there aimed at boxers who want to improve their footwork. In the video below is an example of an exercise designed more for kickboxers and muay thai boxers, but is beneficial because it trains the abdomen, shoulders and legs - and improves balance

Types of Archery Sports

There are many types of archery sports...

Archery Biathlon

Bow Running / Archery Running

Clout Archery

Field Archery

Flight Archery

Gungdo / Korean Traditional Archery

Indoor Archery

Kyūdō

Popinjay

Target Archery / Olympic Competitive Archery

The Piecemeal Workout

The concept of a piecemeal workout is simple. Divide however much time you have to workout into 1 minute segments and then do X different exercises, wherein X is the total number of minutes you have available.

So for example if you have 20 minutes available, you are doing 20 different exercises for 1 minute each. Or if you have 60 minutes to workout you are doing 60 different exercises (possibly with a few minutes break during that time).

I recommend including a couple minutes of doing different kinds of stretches in there too, closer to the middle and the end of the workout. That will reduce muscle fatigue and act like a relaxing exercise in-between harder exercises.

For fun you can also make it into an interval training workout, whereby you alternate high intensity exercises with low intensity exercises.

Or whatever you want to do. Just keep it simple and avoid too many pieces of equipment. It is better if you can limit yourself to say 4 dumbbells, a skip rope and a yoga mat.

You can make the focus of your piecemeal workout on weightlifting, or it can be cardio, or it can be a mix of cardio and weightlifting (like perhaps 70% cardio and 30% weightlifting). It all depends on whether your goals are more to lose weight, build endurance or build muscle or all three.

So for example lets say you did the following...

1. Yoga, 1 minute.

2. Burpees with push ups, 1 minute.

3. Squats with weight, 1 minute.
 
4. Push ups, 1 minute.

5. Mountain climbers, 1 minute.

6. 2 arm bent row, 1 minute.

7. Punches, 1 minute.

8. Alternating front kicks, 1 minute.

9. Bicep curls on knees, 1 minute.

10. Lateral raises, 1 minute.

11. Walking lunges with weights, 1 minute.

12. Jump rope, 1 minute.

13. Jumping jacks, 1 minute.

14. Side kicks, 30 seconds each side.

15. Overhead extension, 1 minute.
 
16. Wall sit, 1 minute.

17. Five Sun Salutations, 1 minute.
 
18. Alternating low back extension, 1 minute.

19. Bicycle Crunches, 1 minute.

20. Front plank, 1 minute.

If you are doing longer workouts you will need a longer list of exercises to do. In which case please browse CardioTrek.ca for more examples of exercises you can add to your list. I have hundreds of different exercises listed on here, especially in the Frugal Exercises section since most of those are bodyweight exercises.

After your workout remember to do some light stretches. Helps reduce muscle fatigue.

Is it possible to lose 5 lbs per week doing yoga?

Q

"Hello!

Is it possible to lose 5 lbs per week doing yoga? I read somewhere that this was possible, but I have to wonder if it is a gimmick or something. I want to know if it is actually possible to do.

:)
Helen S., Toronto"

A

Hello Helen!

Well yes, technically it is possible.

But it really depends on how much a person weighs, how many calories the person is burning due to how vigorous you are doing yoga, how long you do yoga and how often you are doing yoga.

For example lets say a 300 lb person does gentle yoga for 30 minutes.

Using a calorie calculator we can determine that would burn 178.6 calories. That isn't really a lot.

In contrast the same person doing vigorous yoga for 30 minutes burns 478.65 calories. That makes a huge difference in terms of calorie burn.

However in order to burn 5 lbs of fat per week doing any exercise you would need to burn 17,500 calories per week. (There is 3,500 calories in 1 lb of fat.)

So to lose 5 lbs per week a person would need to burn 2,500 calories per day, every day, above and beyond their normal routine - all while maintaining a healthy diet!!!

So that means that a 300 lb person would need to do vigorous yoga for roughly 157 minutes to burn 2,500 calories. 2 hours and 37 minutes of vigorous exercising sounds like a ridiculously tall order for a 300 lb person to do.

Even if you did so called "gentle yoga" it would take 420 minutes to burn 2,500 calories per day. 7 hours of gentle yoga per day also sounds pretty ridiculous for a 300 lb person to do.

Now lets pretend you don't weigh 300 lbs. What if you weighed 200 lbs instead?

Well it changes the numbers. Gentle yoga would be 119.07 calories in 30 minutes, vigorous yoga would be 319.1 calories in 30 minutes.

So to burn 2,500 calories every day you would need to do 10.5 hours of gentle yoga (every day!), or almost 4 hours of vigorous yoga (every day!)...

So I think the point I am trying to make here is that the math gets pretty ridiculous.

So in conclusion, yes, it is possible to lose 5 lbs of fat per week doing yoga - but the number of hours per week you would need to do yoga gets pretty ridiculous if you do the math based on your own weight. Find a calorie calculator for yoga online and do your own calculations and you will see my point.

Plus I would like to point out that losing more than 2 lbs of fat per week can result in sagging skin. You have to give your skin more time to adjust its elasticity and shrink down a bit to match the flesh underneath. See my various posts about preventing loose skin to learn more about why it is best to lose weight slowly so you don't end up with excess loose saggy skin.

Now don't get me wrong. Yoga is a great way to exercise and lose weight, but don't expect it to be a "lose weight fast" solution.

If you are looking to use yoga to lose weight then I recommend at most 60 minutes of yoga per day - and pace yourself with respect to how gentle or vigorous you want to go depending on your personal needs and goals.

Later as you get better at yoga you might increase to 90 minutes per day and try more daring yoga postures, but you should not be trying to burn fat in an hurry. Just take your time, do it properly, learn patience and self-control - these are things that are integral to the whole yoga experience.