Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Lower-Impact Full Body Workout

I wanted to start including some lower impact workouts that you could do in the comfort of your living room but were also modified without sacrificing the sweat! 

I know that a lot of people might have various injuries or weak spots on their bodies that are prone to injuries. For me? Shins and knees get me every time! I have to be careful because running comes first for me so I need to make sure I'm preserving those joints. Like I've said before, I want to be one of the 80 year-old ladies you see kicking butt in the races! I'm a runner for life so I need to make smart decisions about my body now. I like to do short HIIT circuits that are about 10-15 minutes after an easy run about 2 times a week. It keeps things interesting for both me and my muscles! 

This is a great workout, though, for when you need to give your body a break from those higher impact workouts or for others who simply can't handle a million high knees and jump tucks in a row!

I picked some lower impact moves that were modified from more intense ones. I swapped out jumping squats for pop squats, jumping lunges for switch lunges, and the knee-tuck kind of mountain climbers. I don't know if you've noticed this or not but there are two types of mountain climbers that come up when you google the exercise. The main one (at least how I think of them) is when you sort of push your leg up towards your hand in a more explosive movement. That's shown in this video. The second is more of a knee tuck while in a plank position. Which is the kind I'm talking about in this workout since it's lower impact. You can reference this video here!

The switch lunges aren't a jumping lunge but more of a faster lunge if that makes sense at all. I tried finding videos of what I wanted but nothing was coming up! Probably because I was making it up in my head to call them switching lunges haha! Rather than an explosive jump from one lunge to the next, it's more of a little hop in between switching to the next leg. Your feet don't ever actually come off the ground at the same time like they do in a jump lunge. That way it's easier on your knee and hips! Instead you do a lunge on your right leg then quickly bring your right leg back up so that you're in a standing position before quickly pushing back your left leg. That's why I ended up doing a little bit of a hop while I was switching legs in between the lunges. Here's a picture of what I mean that I hope will help:


Here's the rest of the workout! I went through it three times but do it as many times as you want! You don't need any extra weight, just your body weight. If you try it out, let me know how it goes!


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