I got home a little later than I wanted to last night (grocery store, work stuff, etc. kept me out of the house) but I finally hit play on the Endurance Upper Body workout from ESP-XC around 6:30. This is a very cool workout, and was completely different than I thought it would be. I'm in the Endurance Phase of this program. Each month is a different phase, Endurance, Strength and Power, and each phase has the same 4 DVDs with emphasis on whatever phase you're in. So the Endurance Upper Body one was all about building endurance in my upper body (that sounds obvious now that I have it written out).
I'm used to working out and I love lifting, but this was completely different than anything I'd ever seen in an upper body workout. According to Ken, the trainer, there's three parts of any exercise: the lift, the hold and the descent (I may be using the wrong terms here, but that's basically it), and they build muscle from most to least in the order of hold, descent and lift. This sounds different than what I've been told in the past, considering all of the emphasis on my bench/dead/shoulder press/everything else I've put all my effort into the lift. But whatever, I gave it a shot.
The whole DVD focused on stuff I'd done in the past, like chinups and pushups and rows, but most of the exercises put WAY more emphasis on the hold and the descent than anything else. For most exercises I focused on 1 second up, 2 seconds of hold and 4 seconds of decent, and I've gotta say that this was excruciating! Rows and shoulder flys that use that rhythm suck! I mean suck in a good way because today my shoulders feel excellent, but ya, they were really hard. And almost everything was like that. There were a few exercises that were even harder (as in holding yourself at the top of a chinup for 1 minute), but overall that was the scope of this workout. It was great, and I can definitely see how in 4 weeks my endurance will be a lot better.
I haven't really explained the ESP-XC workout too much on this blog. Each phase has a Legs, Upper Body, Core/Balance and Cardio/Combo DVD, and there's three phases. I only know info on the endurance phase, but I imagine Strength uses a lot heavier weights and power ties it all together. But basically you do each DVD once or twice a week depending on what the schedule says, and after 4 weeks you move on to the next phase. The focus is on periodized workouts, which, according to a few websites (ESP-XC.com included) means that you go through different phases and each period has a different emphasis for the workout, all building towards the end result.
So far I like ESP-XC a lot. I'm looking forward to Core/Balance tonight.
Anyways, the last five minutes of yesterday's workout didn't happen because people showed up to lift. Fortunately I was getting pretty tired so I turned the DVD off, took a five minute break and then got started with 300. I did a much simpler version considering the upper body workout I'd had, but I still did some really great work. Pullups (10 total, but all slow from bottom to top), deadlifts (2 sets of 10 at 135), pushups (didn't count. There were a lot), jump squats (3 sets of 10), floor wipers (2 sets of 10 at 135) and that was it. I did more pullups and the clean and press, but not well enough to even mention. Hey, at that point my arms were beat!
So that was Monday in a nut shell. Tonight I'm going to do ESP-XC and possibly some PT 24/7. I'll keep you posted!
Bring it!
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