Even though it’s been a short work week, I’m more than ready to enter weekend mode. Matt and I are starting our weekend by going to an 80s cover band concert tonight. I’m kind of STOKED because I love all things 80s, despite being more of a 90s child. Bahaha.
Since the weekends tend to be hit or miss with my workouts, I started today extra early with my Lower Body Blast workout (also because I find Fridays nearly IMPOSSIBLE to workout on because of the aforementioned weekend mode). Although…I do plan to get my dance on later to 80s music, so that’s got to count for something, right?!
I wanted to share a weight lifting routine today that I’ve done a few times recently, which was inspired by a mixture of workouts from LiveFit Trainer. I thoroughly enjoyed the change in workout structure and type during that bodybuilding program—what with the heavy lifting and all—so I’ve been messing around with different routines to utilize our growing dumbbell collection.
This workout focuses on the chest and back, specifically, and involves supersets, which I didn’t even know the meaning of before starting LiveFit. To complete a superset, you perform the designated number of reps for an exercise, followed by the next exercise in the grouping. Then take a break (I often take anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on how much I’m challenging myself). Repeat until you’ve made it through the designated number of sets. Then move onto the next superset.
So for this workout, I complete one superset at a time. For the first one, I complete 12 reps of the dumbbell bench press and immediately go to doing 12 reps of the one-arm dumbbell row—then rest. Repeat for a total of 3 sets. It’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it, and I think it makes better use of time and energy, rather than taking breaks after each set or exhausting your body by not taking any breaks at all.
Here’s the routine:
If you’re curious how I do some of these exercises without gym equipment, hop over to my LiveFit Without a Gym post, which explains how I vary up common gym-based exercises. I’ve got a system down to where exercises like these are easy to do with a little modification at home. So it’s totally doable!
A lot of these exercises are new to Gettin’ My Healthy On, so I’ve updated my exercise guide. For quick reference, here are video demonstrations I found: Dumbbell Bench Press, One-Arm Dumbbell Row, Dumbbell Fly, Bent Over Rear Delt Fly, Incline Dumbbell Press, Back Extension, and Narrow Pushup.
