AngieFitnessTV: Fit Over 40 Total Body Heavy Weight Training

Total Body Heavy Weight Training is Day 24 in AngieFitnessTV‘s Fit Over 40 fitness program. This workout is very different from Angie’s other Fit Over 40 workouts that I have done thus far. First, all of her others that I’ve done are circuit workouts. One approx. 10 minute circuit that is repeated once. Second, she did not film this workout specifically for the Fit Over 40 program like she did the other workouts in the program. This was taken from one of her live workouts. She talks about doing other things in the course of the workout other than strength training (some cardio circuits), which have clearly been edited out. Also, though this is titled “heavy weight training” it is not. This is a high rep, endurance level workout–not a heavy strength training workout. In order to truly lift heavy (to lift 60-85% of your 1 rep max), you are lifting far fewer reps (6-12 reps per set) with adequate rest/recovery periods between sets. Nothing close to that happens in this workout. In this workout you are working the same muscle groups for 4-5 minutes straight without any breaks. Impossible to lift “heavy” under those circumstances. You do get breaks between muscle groups but not while working a specific muscle group. However, compared to Angie’s other workouts that I’ve done, she is using heavier weights. So comparatively speaking, for Angie, this might be a heavy weight workout. I say “might” because she has hundreds of workouts and I’ve only done a fraction of them. Maybe she has some where she is doing real “heavy” strength training. She does make comments in the course of the workout that when she goes to the gym she lifts much heavier and then other times she says she hasn’t been to the gym in a while and her strength has decreased and that this workout is really challenging her. She was clearly burning her muscles out in the course of this workout–you could see her struggling at times. That’s what high rep endurance workouts do btw–burn the muscles out. So I am not criticizing; I am just pointing out that the title is inaccurate and misleading. This is a solid total body high rep/endurance strength workout.

I was very challenged by this workout. I have been slowly rebuilding the strength in my left arm. I have even been lifting heavier weights with it than I did in this workout–but as already mentioned, this is a different kind of workout. This is the first time since the surgery that I have done an endurance workout with challenging (for me) weights and I had some serious burn out in my left arm. In fact, by the end of the workout my left arm was weak and trembling. I pushed myself but not to the point of re-injuring my shoulder. My shoulder is healing very well but I still have to be careful with it. So I used a mixture of barbell and dumbbells. For squats and lunges Angie had her barbell on her shoulders. I cannot put a heavy barbell on my shoulders. I tried a moderate one (35 pounds) in another workout and the act of placing the barbell on my shoulders and removing it did not feel pleasant on my left shoulder. So for those exercises I just used dumbbells. There are also a few exercises that my shoulder still isn’t crazy about (upright rows) so I lift lighter on those. For the most part I challenged my left arm but not really my right arm. With the right weights, you will get an excellent workout that will burnout your muscles. But that is the key–choose the right weights. Too heavy and you cannot complete the set (and you might even injury yourself), too light and you will not get the full benefit of a workout like this. I feel like the upper body is hit harder than the lower body in this workout. I wore my 10 pound weighted vest for the first half of the workout to give my lower body some extra work on the squats and lunges but I still didn’t feel like my lower body was worked nearly as well as my upper body.

Since this workout is only 46 minutes long and I used it as my morning workout, I used one of Angie’s 15 Minutes to Fit finisher workouts to round out my hour: Strength Barbell Push Pull. That is an upper body strength workout. So by the end of the hour I had completely burned out my left arm, worked the rest of my upper body (especially my back) nicely and burned 400 calories! I got an excellent metabolic strength workout.

All of the workouts in this program are available for free on YouTube but Angie has a whole program that uses these workouts. There is a link below the YouTube workout that leads to a webpage about this 30 day plan. The plan itself costs $19.99 but the Fit Over 40 Workouts themselves are free on YouTube.

Total Body Heavy Weight Training is 46:21 minutes; 5 minute warm up and 5 minute stretch. Equipment: barbell and step bench at 10 inches. Angie’s barbell has 7 pound plates on each side; assuming her bar weighs 5 pounds her barbell is approximately 19 pounds. The barbell at this weight is used for the warm up. As soon as the warm up is over, Angie adds more plates to her barbell for the first exercise. She increases it to 12 pounds on each side (probably 29 pounds total). I used both a barbell and dumbbells. I also wore my 10 pound weighted vest for the majority of the workout. I removed it after #13.

1. Squats to various tempos (Angie is using 29# BB; I used 15# DBs)
2. Alternating front lunges onto the step (pulse 3x while in lunge); changes to singles (Angie is using 29# BB; I used 15# DBs)
3. Squats (Angie is using 29# BB; I used 15# DB)
4. Deadlifts (Angie is using 35# BB; I used 40# BB)
5. Deadrow (Angie is using 35# BB; I used 40# BB)
6. Repeat #4 & 5
7. Under hand deadrows (Angie is using 35# BB: I used 40# BB)
8. Underhand deadlifts (Angie is using 35# BB; I used 40# BB)
9. Repeat #7 & 8
10. Single arm back row, 16 reps (Angie is using one 15# DB; I used one 20# DB)
11. Bicep curls (Angie is using 29# BB; I used 13# DBs)
12. Alternating hammer curls; changes to double arm hammer curls (Angie used 12# DBs; I used 13# DBs)
13. Repeat #11 & 12
14. Upright rows (Angie is using 35# BB; I used 8# DBs)
15. Overhead press (Angie is using 35# BB; I used 13# DBs)
16. Repeat #14 & 15
17. Overhead tricep extensions (French Press) (Angie is using one 15# DB; I used one 20# DB)
18. Tricep dips off step with one ankle crossed over other knee
19. Repeat #17 sitting on step
20. Repeat #18
21. Chest press (Angie is using 29# BB; I used 11# DBs)
22. Push ups (Angie is on her knees with her hands on step)
23. Repeat #19

Core:

1. Lay on step, head/shoulders raised, knees bent and feet raised off floor, alternate pushing legs out straight
2. Same starting position as #1, extend both legs straight to ceiling, alternate lowering and raising straight legs
3. Still on back on step, hands behind head, knees are bent, one on step or floor, bring other knee in and tap knee to opposite elbow then extend leg straight
4. Lay on back, legs raised straight to ceiling, head/shoulders raised, open and close straight legs, when legs are open, crunch up pressing both arms between legs
5. Straight arm plank with hands on floor and feet on step, step one foot on floor, step other foot on floor (straddling step now), step first foot back on step and step other foot back on step

For more info on AngieFitnessTV and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.