Oftentimes I get questions on how to work out a certain section of the body…and other times, what to do for full body fitness. Usually I answer these people individually, and in doing so recently, I realized that I might as well share the information in a 4-part series so that more of you out there could benefit from it. So for starters, before going into the specific routines I’ve developed, here’s some info simply worth knowing.

General rule: Get in a mixture of cardio with strength training, as both combined will help you loose fat and gain lean muscle. Also, try and eat 5 small meals a day instead of 2-3 large ones. Don’t ever get hungry. When you get hungry, your body HOLDS ONTO fat because it’s afraid of starving. You want to eat smaller and more regularly, because that’s the best trick to raising your body’s metabolism. Ideally, you’d get 8 hours of sleep in a day and 16 hours of awake time. In that awake time, you’d eat something small once every 3 hours and 12 minutes (that times 5 = 16 hours perfectly). Start your day off with a glass of warm water and an apple, instead of coffee or soda. The warm water will travel through your body and loosen you up. The apple has enough natural sugar that you can replace coffee with it.

And now for the first routine…

Day One:

Get in some light cardio for 15 minutes and work out at a medium level of intensity…suggestion: jogging. Take the number 220, subtract your age from it. If you’re 25, then the maximum your heart rate should be is around 195. Then, for this cardio workout, try and have your heart rate stay at 65% of 195. That’s about 127, or double a normal, healthy, resting heart rate. This will warm you up for your workout. (You could wear a heart rate monitor, but don’t have to. Another way to find what’s “moderate cardio” is to see if you can still talk fairly clearly while jogging. If you can and it’s not interrupted too much, that’s moderate-ish).

Get in some upper body. (Get 30-60 sec or so of rest between these numbers)
1) Hop on the floor and do as many pushups as you can.
2) Stand up and do 20 jumping jacks.
3) Go down to the floor again and do as many pushups again.
4) Stand up and do 30 alternating leg kicks, kicking forward.
5) Go to a nearby bench and get in 20 dips. Start off with your left leg in the air for 10 and then switch.
6) Hop on the floor and do 15 reps of narrow (military) pushups (3 sets).
7) Between each of the sets of pushups that you do, hope up after a little break, and do 20 jumping jacks.
8) Lie on your right side and do 15 reps of side tricep raises and then 15 reps on your left side (3 sets on both arms). How you do this move on your right side, is lie down, put your right hand across the left side of your neck, and your left hand beneath your right elbow. Now, with your left hand, push up, so that your body lifts off the floor, and you crunch up at the oblique.
9) After each one of those sets (of both arms), stand up and do 30 alternating front kicks.
10) Continue again with 15 minutes of light cardio exercise (no more than that 65% that we were talking about earlier) of jogging.