Health and Fitness at Home: Another high intensity workout

As I write this, I have cycled, rowed and ran over 2000km in just 21 days, with another 1000km plus to cover in the coming week. I’ve been doing this alongside our daily classes for Elevate (online on Facebook (@elevatefitnessukgym) and Instagram (@elevate_fitness_uk) Its been a crazy couple of weeks!

The endurance distances are part of our fundraising challenge, ‘Elevate Around the World in 28 days’! This has seen 36 of us attempting to virtually circumnavigate the globe in just 28 days, covering 41,075km between us. We’re now over 3 weeks in and well ahead of target in terms of distance, which means we’ll hopefully finish a day or two ahead of schedule. The rest will be welcome!

We’re undertaking this challenge to raise money Medecins San Frontieres (MSF), who do some great work for those in need, particularly at this difficult time. We’ve raised about £8k which is brilliant and we’re really appreciative of the support. Our target is £10k so we are not far off.

Please support us! To donate to this worthy cause, please visit our Just Giving page here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/elevatefitness

We’re keeping people updated daily on our Facebook (@elevatefitnessukgym) and Instagram (@elevate_fitness_uk) and our blog on our website here: http://www.elevatefitnessuk.com/aroundtheworld/

As I said, all our usual classes are running as normal and we’re still getting great feedback for those. We’re now looking at running free bootcamp style classes in July (for small groups of 5 or less) so I’ll let you know a bit more about that next week. In the meantime, I’ve got another home work-out for you..

Warm Up

You’ll know our usual warm up techniques by now to loosen yourself up.

AMRAP Workout

AMRAP stands for ‘as many reps as possible’ which is what you are going to be doing on each of these exercises. That means you can take things at your own pace if needed, but as with any of these classes you’re going to get the most out of it if you push yourself. There are 2 different rounds of exercises to do, with each round made up of 3 exercises, lasting a minute each. Take a minute rest between each round and aim for 6 in total (but 4 if you are struggling). Its all bodyweight, so no equipment needed.

Round 1 consists of...(don’t forget it’s a minute for each one, with as many reps as possible).

Alternating Lunges

From a standing start, step forward with 1 leg and lower your hips until both knees are bent at a 90degree angle. To maintain the right shape, don’t let your front knee go out past your toes and keep your back knee down towards the floor. Once your knee has gone as low as it can, bring yourself up to a standing position and swap legs. Keep your upper body nice and upright throughout, looking forward and staying strong through the trunk. That helps aid posture, but it’s your upper legs that are getting the real workout here.

Burpees

Stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Bend your hips and knees into a squatting position and place your hands on the floor, kicking your feet back into a plank position drop your chest to the floor, all in one fluid movement. Then when you’ve got your chest down, press up with your arms and jump your feet forward, bringing the body up and jumping straight upwards to finish the move. Keep pushing yourself to the end of the minute to do as many as possible, as it’s a great all over body worker.

V-Sits

Sitting on the floor for this one, put your legs out in front of you in a V-shape and lay backwards with your hands touching the floor above your head. Bring your body up to the full sit up position and touch your feet. Lower the body back down to the floor and repeat.

Round 2 consists of...

Press ups, with a rollout

Starting in the usual press up position, lower yourself down as you would with a normal press up. As you start to come back up, lift one hand off the floor and rotate your body until both arms are vertical (one arm directly above the other). Bring yourself back down to the press up position and follow the same process (press up included) on the other side.

Air Squats

Standing with your feet shoulder width apart, squat in a smooth movement. As you bring your hips down, make sure you sit back into your heels and keep your chest as upright as possible.

Try to get your thighs parallel to the floor, or as far down as you can go. Once you hit the bottom, bring your hips back up to a standing position and repeat.

Jumping Jacks

Starting on your feet, stand with arms at your side and feet hip width apart. Jump off the ground and spread your legs so that your feet land wider than shoulder width apart, simultaneously taking your arms out to the side and above your head. As soon as you land, go into another jump and keep going for the full minute.

Warm down

I think that’s a really good workout and high intensity with 3 mins off and 1 minute off. I bet you are feeling it now!

Good work getting it done, now you can stretch out, relax and take on some water. Don’t forget that I will be doing this, as well as cycling 100km a day, almost every day!

As usual we’ll be doing our usual range of classes online on Facebook (@elevatefitnessukgym) and Instagram (@elevate_fitness_uk), while also doing our Around the World challenge to raise money for MSF.

It’s a great cause, so please do help support us: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/elevatefitness