You received a little prelude to the Friday bootcamp workout with Red White and BE on Canada Day.

For Fundamentals and Fitness you have 3 – 8 minute density tri-sets. A density set means you are attempting to get as much work in the 8 minute time period as you can. Of course, your goal is to always lift as much as you can for the desired rep range with perfect form and taking rest where you feel you need to.

A tri-set means you have 3 exercises that are rotated (essentially a 3 station circuit). In an 8 minute tri-set, typically you would complete about 3 sets of the exercises. I think that is a good minimum to work towards for this workout. If you don’t get 3 sets, that’s no big deal. Quality in today’s workout is more important than quantity.

In the first circuit, you’ll see 15 trx face pulls. This is a great exercise for balancing out your push and pulls in a workout and trains you to keep your shoulder blades down and back while raising your elbows to your sides. As the exercise sounds, you are pulling the trx handles close to your face, and is a similar movement to trx high row except you finish with your hands closer to your face.

Here’s a movement demo:

In the 2nd circuit, you’ll see a tri-set that you saw last Friday with rope slams, trx row, and plank to pushup (or pushup for fitness). The exercise selection should leave you relatively fresh to maintain a high intensity as you essentially have an upper body cardio exercise, a upper body pulling exercise, and an upper body pushing exercise. I’m a fan of tri-sets like this because you can really go for emptying the tank due to opposing muscle groups getting rest when the other ones are working. As for getting tired aerobically or out of breath… we’ll that’s what we are here for isn’t it! The more you push, the bigger foundation you build and the more you are able to push in the future, but that effort of pushing is a little easier…. YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING!?

In the 3rd circuit, you’ll see trx y row, which is an amazing exercise for shoulder rehabilitation, but a tough one in my opinion for the general population to execute. It works the mid traps which are weak on a lot of individuals which in turn will balance out the upper traps which are overactive on a large majority of people.

The most important thing is keeping your shoulders away from your ears and staying tight through your glutes, abs, and shoulders!

And lets talk about Circuit 3:
Band assisted pullups for 5 reps makes an appearance for the fitness level on Fridays. At 5 reps this is a strength based rep range, so this should be 5 challenging reps with great form. Use the thickness of the bands to your advantage, if a thicker band feels easy move down to a thinner band. If you find you are in between bands use the thinner and more challenging band and work a smaller range of motion.

What I mean by this is pull your chin above the bar, then do not lower as much. The lower you go, the harder it will be to get back up. In addition to this, if you are managing shoulder issues don’t go to full extension or lock out on the joint and keep your shoulders pulled back at all times. Your biceps and forearms are used more in the top of the pullup and your lats are used more in the bottom of the pullup. Use this information accordingly to work on your weaknesses.

And of course if you have any questions ask a bootcamp coach!

Befit
Having done this workout last week with you, I didn’t want to change a thing…. except taking out the run at the beginning (you have enough running on Saturdays) and adding 100 du’s after your 3rd set. If you are not proficient in double unders grind it out!!! You’ll only have a few minutes to complete them, and your shoulders will be heavily fatigued.

The befit track has lots of big technical exercises. I would not do this if you don’t have a solid base of strength and technique or it will wreck you. Rx’s or Recommended Maxes are provided but please don’t attempt them if they feel too heavy. With 21 reps in your first set, you should be able to UNcomfortably complete 21 reps without stopping. You’ll find in all these 21-15-9 sets supersets that the set of 15 will offer the biggest challenge to complete.

The objective with these is always to do all the reps unbroken, but you will find that difficult in the first set with the pullups, the second set with the bench press, and the 3rd set with the pushups. Please start at the top with pushups and pushpress.

With the bench press, rep out as many as you can do then get off the bench to give someone else a turn. You’ll need the rest to be able to come back to complete your reps and your fellow bootcamp member will appreciate the spot and support!

With the finisher, the fitness option is actually the hardest option, but due to the difficult of the befit workout we wanted to give your arms a rest. Use your judgement here and have a great workout!

Committed to your success,
Josh Saunders
The Bootcamp Effect