Hot on the heels of Shea Jonzana’s park workout comes the next in our Sundried series and this time it’s fitness in five. Five exercises, five rounds…it couldn’t be simpler. You can even do your reps in your front room this time.
Fitness in Five by Vicky Gardner
Vicky Gardner is a writer and personal trainer at Sundried, and though she’s normally obsessed with the gym, she’s created a five round workout that can be done anywhere.
This is all about whole body integration…that’s working your entire body to crank up your heart rate, burn the most calories possible and kick start fat burning. Warming up before exercise is key, so use these dynamic stretches to ensure you’re hitting each muscle group in varying ranges of motion.
Diagonal Crossover Dynamic Chest Stretch: Stand with your hands together, arms extended directly in front of you. This will be your starting position. Keeping your arms straight, quickly move your arms back as far as possible and back in again, similar to an exaggerated clapping motion or a chest fly. Repeat 10-20 times, taking your arms out in different directions with each stretch to fully activate the pecs.
Lunge with Torso Rotation: Step one foot in front and sick into into a lunge position, whilst doing so twist the torso as far as you can from left to right and visa versa. Repeat for the opposite leg.
Deep Squat with Overhead Reach: With your feet slightly outside your shoulders, perform a deep squat, extending the arms back behind you. As you rise from the squat, raise your arms up above your head – a bit like you’re fanning someone.
Now you can jump into five rounds of these five exercises.
Push Ups
Start in an extended plank position off your hands, with your arms slightly outside of shoulder width.
Lower down to the ground by flexing your elbows. No half reps, we want you
to sink nice and low, so your nose (almost) scrapes the floor.
If you can’t do the full push up, allow your knees to rest on the ground to make the move easier – but don’t forget, if it’s easy, it’s probably not working!
10 reps.
Tuck Jumps
Start with your feet just outside shoulder width, bend your knees to sink into a shallow squat and then explode up.
As you jump off the ground bring your knees up to your chest and into a tucked position.
As you come to land, bend your knees slightly to soften the landing.
10 reps.
Sit Ups
These are an oldie but a goodie. Start by laying on your back with slightly bent knees, now cross your arms over your chest.
Without using your arms, brace your abs to sit your upper body up towards your knees and lower yourself back down.
10 more reps counts as a round.
Sprints
For sprints you can either run from a to b, or if you’re lacking space, sprint on the spot.
Now because you may be running on the spot I’m not going to give you a rep count here, instead we will be working with time intervals – 5 bursts of 15 seconds sprints.You can rest in between if you need to.
Dips
To complete a dip you can either use a chair or bench, or if you’re lucky like us, a dip bar.
Facing forward with your chair/step/bench behind you, place your hands on the unit with your fingers facing forward.
With your legs out straight in front of you, bend at the elbow to sink your weight down into a dip.
The hardest dips are off the bar as here you’re lifting all your weight, if you are using a bench, bringing your legs in bent will make the exercise a little easier by easing the weight off your triceps.
10 reps.
Once you’ve completed your 5 rounds your body will be calling out for a cool down – so don’t skip it! The aim of a cool down is to drop your heart rate back down to resting and stretch the muscles to reduce your risk of aches and strains. Typically my cool down will be 5 minutes of walking followed by static stretching. Examples of static stretches include:
Chest stretch: Clasp your hands together behind your back and push your chest forward. Hold.
Shoulders/Back/Hamstring stretch: Reach your hands over your head in front of you and extend as far as you can whilst bending at the waist. Now bring the hands down to touch your toes, stretching the hamstrings. Gently bring your head back up.
Quad stretch: From standing, bend one leg so that your toes are tucked up by your bum. Squeeze your knees together and pull your foot into your bottom using your hand, you should feel the stretch pull across the front of your leg – the quad.
Sophie wears the Tour Noir Tank, the Breithorn Bra and the Ruinette tights, with Stuart in the Dom tee and the Furgler short. Get 25% off at Sundried with the code ‘LOTI’, valid until Sat 11th February 2017.