Jul 2 2012

3 Weeks to Awesome – 10 Minutes to Shape Your Shoulders

Today is day 8 of my 3 week program to hit your fitness goal. Today we’re going to hit shoulders. Yesterday was a rest day, when you focused on your super power of mental training independently, so you should  be refreshed and ready to go. I hope you have been really focusing on your mental training so you’re prepared for when it gets hard, because it is going to get hard!

This is a great workout if you’re a beginner. More advanced exercisers will want to check out one of my more advanced routines. There’s a link to one I recommend below. Lift yourself up with some awesome arms!

VIDEO: BPM 3 Weeks To a New You – Fitness Program Day 8

VIDEO: BPM 3 Weeks To a New You – Fitness Program Day 8

If you are more advanced, choose another workout from BPM.Tv that focuses on the same muscle group. Today we are hitting shoulders, so if you are more advanced pick a workout from the Lift Yourself Up: Achieving Awesome Arms section or the Shoulders section.

This is one of my personal favorite advanced shoulder workouts: Fire in Your Eyes – Shoulder Workout

Here’s the most important part of the routine today. During this 3 week program, in addition to the workouts, you also have a super power to develop each day. Todays super power is to learn how to actively make time for your new focus, your health and fitness.

xoxo ~ Cori

Workout Breakdown

	Time: 10 minutes.
	Workout Type: Time challenge.
	Workout Exercises: 4.

Get your gear:

No gear needed. Just your own body and a decision to get it done.

Buy the same nutrition products as me:

	PROTEIN Get your protein here
	SUPER GREENS Get your super greens here
	Peanut Butter Get your PB2 here
	EGG WHITES Get your egg whites here
	Tea Get your tea here

Invoke Your Super Power: Make Time

Have you ever wanted to exercise and eat healthy, but feel like you just don’t have the time? Today your super power is to learn how to actively make time.

I want you to choose to take something out of your daily lifestyle. Choose something that typically takes 30 minutes to an hour . Here’s the trick to make it stick; make it something that you don’t particularly like doing. Choose paper plates over regular plates so you’re not stuck doing dishes. Let the laundry pile up. Choose to take something out of your life that you’re not going to miss terribly.

Decide that you are going to let this particular responsibility go while you learn to make time for your new focus, health and your fitness. Decide to truly let it go. Start today.

Follow Through

I like to post something about cardio and nutrition at the end of every post because it is important.

Cardio and nutrition are going to be two of the most important parts of achieving your results, no matter what what your goal is. You can not work off your nutritional decisions with exercise. What? You can’t eat a donut, then just do 2 hours of cardio and *poof* it will be like it never happened? That’s what I’m saying. Come on. No. You can’t.

Your body doesn’t work like a simple addition or subtraction problem. It is not calories in vs. calories out. What you eat has a chemical effect on your body. Even if you do cardio to ‘burn it off’ the chemical effect is still present. Different sugars have an affect. Different proteins have an effect. Different fats have an effect. When you take a vitamin, you understand that it has an effect in your body that cardio will not ‘work off,’ right? Food works the same way. Different foods have positive and negative chemical effects within our body. You can’t just work them off.

You have to unlock and unleash the body fat by working with your body in every aspect. Your body works in harmony like a symphony. When one instrument is off, the entire song doesn’t sound right. A good steady drumbeat can’t make up for a guitar that’s out of tune. 2 hours of cardio cannot make up for a donut. Or pizza. Or macaroni and cheese. Or wine and a baguette. Got it?

Cardio

I recently cut my cardio to a minimum of 30 minutes of stairs with intervals as cardio 5 days per week.

When I’m trying to lose fat I usually do two separate 45 minute cardio sessions a day, but one session is really more like light activity and less like cardio.

I love my cardio and I like to stay conditioned. I personally prefer to do a little more cardio than the average figure competitor, then also eat a little more. It takes more time and effort, but I feel the pay off is well worth it.

The pay off is that I feel awesome. It might take me a little longer to build muscle because I do love my cardio, but it’s the cardio that helps me to keep focused and positive for the long haul. It’s important to know what keeps you motivated for the long haul too. I feel energized by cardio. I love it.

Post Workout Nutrition

When I was trying to gain muscle I finished every workout with a protein shake, animal protein, and some complex and simple carbs. These are healthy choices for gaining or for performance. These are not the right choices for me for trying to lose fat, define and sculpt muscle. Trying to define and sculpt muscle is different from gaining muscle. This means I need to eat something different.

When I am trying to lose fat and sculpt muscle, I am much more strict with my diet. Only true food sources. No protein powder.

I finish up every workout with lean protein from true food sources (a little red meat, white chicken, white fish and egg whites are best) and some dark green veggies or Super Greens mixed with water only. Again, no protein powder. If you are a vegetarian you would most likely need to supplement with protein powder. If you are not, let me say again that true food sources work best for losing body fat.

Even when I am trying to lose fat, I still FEED my body.

Want more information about nutrition? Check out BPM.tv Nutrition 101.

You can also look at my current personal fat loss diet in order to get ideas on how to develop your own nutrition plan.

Cori Ann’s Prepping Fat Loss Diet:

You can click on the image above to link to my fat loss diet to get details about what works for me, but here is the basic breakdown.

This is my meal plan while I am trying to lose fat and define muscle. My carbohydrates come from complex sources only and are kept to about 100 grams per day.

My sugar is kept at about 18 grams per day. That’s it. That is less than what is in one banana. That means fruit is not in my fat loss nutrition plan. My sugars come from minimal amounts that naturally occur in veggies and in the complex carbs I eat each day. No matter what your goal, I highly recommend you watch your sugar intake, even ‘healthy’ sugar like fruit, and moderate it to a minimum based on your own personal goals.

My protein is kept at about 250 grams per day and comes from high quality, organic, free range (or wild) lean animal sources. My fats are kept at about 40 grams per day and come from my protein and complex carbohydrate choices (not additional plant sources like olive oil, coconut, nuts, or avocado).

That equals about 1800 calories per day. I don’t drop it much lower than that.

I eat natural, organic, whole foods that I cook myself, or if possible I eat them raw. I drink 1 to 2 gallons of water and a couple cups of either coffee or tea. There is no mysterious, magical diet. If you want to lose bodyfat you need to eat a fair amount of lean protein and A LOT of green veggies at every meal. Period.

Did you like this post? Tell me in the comments!

Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments. Don’t be shy! Your comments may help to inspire another. Your questions may help someone else who has the exact same question, but is too shy to ask. I love hearing from you!
Try to come up with a way to make the exercises even more challenging! Try to have better form than me! Let’s inspire each other.

By Cori Ann Lentz • Workouts • 14 • Tags: Delts, Lift Yourself Up: Achieving Awesome Arms, Motivation, Rotator Cuff, Shoulders, Workout