The Movement Warm Up Section

Don’t skip this!

This is 12-15 minutes to switch you on for the main part of the session.

You need to switch on the muscles, brain, and central nervous system, joints etc.

To do this properly the warm-up should be a series of smooth movements that allow you to RAMP the body ready for activity.

RAMP is an acronym for Raise, Activate, Mobilise, and Potentiate.

• Raise: Heart rate and temperature
• Activate: Allow your muscles to respond to larger and quicker movements throughout the warm-up
• Mobilise: Move through full ranges in each of the joints – such as the hips, shoulders, knees, elbows ankles.
• Potentiate: Do a couple of exercises that require coordination, concentration and a little more effort to give the body a taste of the main session to come

The movements you use in the warm-up should replicate the movements in a workout – Push, Pull, Hinge & Squat movements.

The warm-up is your opportunity to practice Thrives first standard of training.

Movement Quality comes first

 

This warm-up saves time and is efficient because it helps you to move well and increases temperature and heart rate without having to use 5-10 minutes of additional cardiovascular exercise.

Do each of the movements below 6-8 repetitions of each – don’t simply hold the stretch – move in and out 6-8 times and then move on to the next movement.

Your Warm Up

Runners Lunge

Seated Glute

QL Lying – Lying twist

Lats Kneeling

Cat/Cow

Down Dog – Cycle

Forward Fold

Hinge (HS)

Squats

Multi-Direction Lunge

Note: For all exercises see the appendix at the end of the E-book for diagrams.

The Strength Section

Don’t be worried about the term strength.

Strength is just your ability to produce and resist force – It doesn’t matter if that is light-weight lifted 15-20 times or heavy weight lifted 5 times.

If you love cardiovascular exercises such as running and you want to do it well then you have to be able to produce force repeatedly for the entire duration of the run. Strength training allows you to do this.

If you want to look better, challenging your muscles with strength training changes their appearance and your shape.

No one weight or a number of reps – high or low is right. They should change through the year month by month.

This program will take you through 3 different rep ranges over the 3 months and you will aim to get the weights a little heavier every month.

This section should take 20-30 minutes to complete.

Frequency

You will have 2 different workouts for the month.

Session 1 & Session 2.

If you are a normal human being then complete Session 1 and Session 2 each week.

2 Workouts per week – Beginner

Monday/Thursday

OR

Tuesday/Friday

OR

Wednesday/ Sunday

For Example

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
Week 1	Session 1			Session 2
Week 2	Session 1			Session 2
Week 3	Session 1			Session 2
Week 4	Session 1			Session 2

Spacing the session out with no longer than 3 days between workouts is ideal as this adheres to the General Adaptation Principle mentioned earlier.

2-3 days between workouts is enough to recover without too long to lose the benefits you got from the last workout.

Remember we want the workouts to build on the last one steadily over time.

If you are more advanced you can complete session 1 & Session two twice each.

3 Workouts per week – Intermediate

 

Mon/Wed/Fri

OR

Tue/Thur/Sat

OR

Wed/Fri/Sun

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
Week 1	Session 1		Session 2		Session 1
Week 2	Session 2		Session 1		Session 2
Week 3	Session 1		Session 2		Session 1
Week 4	Session 2		Session 1		Session 2

 

 

 

4 Workouts per week – Advanced

Mon/Tue/Thur/Fri

OR

Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat

OR

Wed/Thur/Sat/Sun

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
Week 1	Session 1	Session 2		Session 1	Session 2
Week 2	Session 1	Session 2		Session 1	Session 2
Week 3	Session 1	Session 2		Session 1	Session 2
Week 4	Session 1	Session 2		Session 1	Session 2

Be aware that if you choose to do the 4 sessions per week plan the 4^th week should be a download week in which you only complete half of the session plan each day with the extra time in the session given to recovery activities such as yoga, stretching, foam rolling or pool therapy.

The Conditioning Section

The warm-up section prepares the body for movement, the strength section impacts on the muscles of the body directly by using key movements such as a squat, push, hinge, pull.

The conditioning section is responsible for challenging how the body provides the energy to do this work. In other words, conditioning is all about the delivery system to the muscles.

So this is all about challenging the heart and lungs to distribute blood (and therefore oxygen) to the working muscles.

This is what you know as CV or Cardiovascular exercise and should take 12-15 minutes to complete.

The choice of equipment for this program is as follows (in order of technical difficulty)

• Bike
• Rower
• Treadmill or Running Track

You can choose which one you prefer, but as a guideline use the same mode for at least 1 month before changing to a different piece of equipment.

This will allow you to improve your workout over the month.

Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest	Effort
Bike	8-10	30 sec	30 sec (easy pedal)	7/10
Rower	8-10	30 sec	30 sec (stationary)	7/10
Treadmill or Running Track	6-8	30 sec	90 sec (walk)	7/10

The Regeneration Section

This section should take 3-5 minutes and is to allow your body to steadily move back to a steady state before leaving the gym.

To do this choose from

3-5 minutes on the conditioning kit you just finished on at a 4/5 out of 10 effort

OR

Complete the first 4 stretches of your warm up twice through before leaving.

What are you waiting for?

 

Get started today!