Week 2: Daily move it challenge

mamarundrc

Sunday: Jumping Jacks: How many can you do in a minute? Rest 30 seconds in between sets... how many sets can you do?

Monday: Walking lunges: Set a distance (or number of lunges you want to do) and alternating sides do walking lunges to your destination or desired number. Not challenging enough, add some weight

Tuesday: Planks: How long can you hold it?

Wednesday: Leg lifts: Laying on your back, legs straight out. How many can you do?

Thursday: Wall sits: How long can you hold it?

Friday: Burpees (Since I didn't end up doing any yesterday I need to put this in for this week)

Saturday: Push ups.

mamarundrc

Why do jumping jacks?

From boot camp classes to circuit training, jumping jacks are showing up in many hardcore workouts. The trend of doing back-to-basics calisthenics reflects the philosophy of multitasking. Many vigorous calisthenics, including jumping jacks, do more than burn calories. They function as cardiovascular, strengthening and stress-relieving exercises. Make jumping jacks part of a daily or weekly fitness plan and modify them to meet your fitness goals.

Aerobic Benefits
The primary benefit from doing jumping jacks is that it elevates your heart rate. You breathe more deeply while jumping, which delivers oxygen to your bloodstream and ultimately to your muscles. You burn fat at a rapid rate, promoting weight loss. If you weigh 130 lbs. and do vigorous jumping jacks or other calisthenics, you burn 472 calories per hour. If you weight 155 lbs. you burn 563 calories per hour, if you weigh 180 lbs. you burn 654 calories, and if you weigh 205 lbs. you burn 745 calories.

Strengthening Benefits
Jumping jacks provide a full-body workout. You move all of your large muscle groups. Breathe deeply to engage your core so that you target your abdominal muscles as well. You can modify jumping jacks to make them a more intense muscle-building activity. After jumping with your feet wide, instead of returning to a standing position, assume a deep squat to target your calf, thigh, gluteal and abdominal muscles. Keep your pace as brisk as possible to maintain the aerobic benefits of doing jumping jacks.

Relaxation Benefits
Doing jumping jacks for an extended period sparks a chemical effect in your body. You release endorphins, which act as pain relievers and give you a sense of well-being, In addition, the deep breathing you do while exercising vigorously clears your mind, sharpens your focus and energizes you. To maximize the stress relief power of doing jumping jacks, maintain an elevated heart rate for at least 20 minutes. If you cannot do jumping jacks the whole time, alternate between jumping jacks and marching in place

Interval Training
Jumping jacks fit perfectly into an interval training session. Do a one-minute session of jumping jacks or other calisthenics to spike your heart rate before you slow down to a recovery rate for up to one minute. Your heart rate will stay elevated during the recovery period, continuing a high-level of fat-burning and improving your stamina. Use jumping jacks to make moderate exercise more challenging. For example, walk briskly for five minutes, do jumping jacks for one minute and return to walking. Repeat this cycle throughout your walk.

Information taken from livestrong.com

mamarundrc

Jumping Jacks will wait until tomorrow, my bike ride killed my ability to lift my legs. So Jumping Jacks and walking lunges for me tomorrow!

mamarundrc

Jumping jacks (2 sets of 50) and 4 X 50 ft of walking lunges done (as well as 2 X50 ft bear crawl, 4 X 50 ft bucket carry 3X 50 ft sprint with attempted rope climb and 15 minute leisure bike ride)

mamarundrc

How does the walking lunge differ from the stationary lunge—is one better than the other for leg development?

A: The walking lunge works the same muscles as the stationary lunge, but the emphasis and involvement of those muscles differs significantly between these two popular leg movements. Incorporate both variations into your leg routine to avoid plateaus in muscle growth and keep your training fresh.

Lunging Forward

The lunge is a great movement for developing the thighs and strengthening the hips. Lunges target two primary muscles groups:
1) the hip extensors, comprising the gluteal muscles (glutes) and hamstrings
2) the knee extensors, made up of the four muscles collectively known as the quadriceps.
The muscles used in the lunge are the same as those utilized in the squat, but the lunge provides greater range of motion, allowing more substantial glute and hamstring development.

Bodybuilders are known to sometimes neglect less obvious muscle groups, especially as they become so focused on training the larger and more noticeable ones. The hip adductors (inner thigh) and abductors (outer thigh) are prime examples of overlooked muscle groups. Although they're relatively small and barely visible, they add to hip stability and overall thigh mass and are critical to athletic performance. Lunges contribute significantly to their development.

Walking Lunge

The walking lunge mirrors its stationary counterpart during the downward phase, both in execution and muscle involvement. Yet the upward phase is markedly different, particularly with respect to muscle recruitment. All emphasis shifts to the forward leg, with the glutes, hams and quads of the front leg contracting maximally.

Performing the walking lunge requires that you stand straight up, so you're essentially doing a one-legged squat. The trailing leg is minimally involved, serving only to support and stabilize your body. The walking lunge hits all the muscles of the forward leg harder than the stationary lunge, but doesn't involve the rear leg muscles much at all.

Each leg is alternately used as you literally walk the floor, making the walking lunge the apparent lunge of choice for maximal thigh and hip development. Even so, the significantly different muscle recruitment of the stationary lunge is enough to warrant including it regularly in your leg program.

Info from http://www.muscleandfitness.com/workouts/legs-exercises/lunge-towards-massive-legs?page=2

mamarundrc

Plank Exercise Benefits

You are probably wondering what the craze is all about regarding this great exercise. Well in this post, I'm going to outline all the benefits the exercise provides breaking this down by major muscle groups to show you just how powerful one exercise can provide you with multiple gains which no other exercise can do without using some type of equipment.

Right here goes, here are the plank exercise benefits you have been waiting for:

Strength
It is a strength training exercise so one of the key benefits is obviously to improve your strength in various areas. Lets take a closer look at the actual exercise. If you look closely at the front plank, you will notice the muscle groups being challenged.

If we start at the front, the first muscle being worked is your neck. In order to hold this plank position correctly you must keep your neck straight and not bending down. By keeping it straight you are working major muscle groups in your neck called the traps, this helps your posture especially if you spend a lot of time sitting at desk as it helps support your neck.

Moving along the neck, the next muscle group you will notice being used are your shoulders. Unless you go to the gym, shoulder muscles are generally not directly trained unless you do press ups for example. But who wants to do boring last century press ups? However, If you are a fan of press ups, which many are, performing the plank will also strengthen your shoulder muscles over time and thus improving the performance of your press ups as it uses similar muscle groups.

Holding the shoulders up are the biceps. If you are not into body building and building your biceps, merely performing the plank will help build and tonne your biceps as you are using your biceps to keep your upper body weight off the ground.

Right so that covers your upper body workout. Now if we travel along under the body, the next muscle group we hit is your chest, although I would say this is a secondary muscle group that is worked.

If we continue along we then come to the major muscle group being worked, the abs. Strong abs are vital not only for sport but also for good posture. This exercise will also strengthen your abs and as a result tonne them giving them a much more streamline look.

The muscle groups to the opposite side of the abs are your lower back muscles. These too play a vital role in keeping you in the plank position but also provide other key health benefits which i describe further down.

Moving along, the next muscle group we come to are the ones located in your bottom, yes these too are strengthen! From there you have the thighs and finally the calf muscles.

Mental
It could make you go mental! Na, only kidding, however, what I mean is that the exercise is also quite addictive so on the plus side it will help you wanting to try and improve on your previous performance. Theres never any harm in a little competition in yourself for the greater good. However, as it requires focus in order to keep holding the plank for as long as possible, I've found it mentally builds on my concentration skills while trying to achieve a goal.

As you are probably aware by now, holding the plank position stretches many muscle groups all at the same time. These muscle groups can get stressed during the day when sitting at your desk, however to release the tension from them, holding a plank position can be the ideal solution to help relieve these tense muscles.

Another great thing this exercise provides is good habit and training for your abs. This will help you daily if you are doing any physical activities or sports as you will automatically initially start tensing your abs before carrying out your activity. This is a great habit to develop as your tense abs provide additional strength and balance in your activity, not only that but also greatly protects you from injury, especially injury to your lower back.

Aesthetic
Ok, so now we come to the real reason of why you want to learn about the plank position! Yes you want to streamline that waistline and tonne that belly so it looks like you have a six pack. I can see straight through you! Yes, performing the plank certainly helps in streamlining your waist line, however that doesn't mean its all you have to do to see results. Like with any form of exercise, you will still need to have consistency, a balanced diet and carryout other forms of cardio vascular exercise to complement your plank exercise for the best results.

So there you have it. One simple exercise with multiple benefits. - See more at: http://www.plankexerciseapp.com/guide/plank-exercise-benefits#sthash.9RADHYfB.dpuf

-- See more at: http://www.plankexerciseapp.com/guide/plank-exercise-benefits#sthash.9RADHYfB.dpuf

mamarundrc

I fell of the wagon for my own challenge. I am going to change this up for June and come up with a whole calendar for the month, that way we can have one thread that has all of the exercises and people can pop on and choose when they want to participate or not.

Stay tuned for a new and improved challenge!