Dead Arms & Shoulder Workout is Day 39 in Caroline Girvan‘s EPIC II program. Caroline definitely delivers on the title of this workout–my arms were dead by the end of this workout. In fact, I hit failure right away with my shoulders. I started with my 16.5 pound dumbbells for the first exercise and it was harder than usual. Then during the second set I had to quickly swap them out for my 15 pound dumbbells. I stuck with the 15 pound dumbbells for the shoulder work for the rest of the workout and even that was frying my shoulders! But I have chronic shoulder and cervical spine problems, and some days they just don’t feel very strong. This was a tough but excellent upper body strength workout. Though the focus is definitely on the arms and shoulders, your chest gets some work, too. My biceps are still feeling pumped and I fear I will have some serious DOMS tomorrow.
The exercises in this workout are done interval style: 40 seconds of work followed by 20 seconds of recovery. There is a timer in the upper right hand corner of the screen counting down your intervals and recoveries. Caroline previews the next exercise during your recoveries. There is also a little bar at the bottom of the screen that counts down the entire workout time as a percentage.
Dead Arms & Shoulder Workout is 53:50 minutes; 1:35 minute intro, no warm up and 2:30 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells and a fitness mat. Caroline is using 9kg/20 pound dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used. I also used my weight bench for all of the lying down exercises.
- Shoulder press (arms in goal post) (16.5# DBs)
- Repeat #1 two more times (15# DBs)
- Arnold press (15# DBs)
- Repeat #3 two more times
- Palms up bicep curls (16.5# DBs)
- Skull crushers (11# DBs)
- Alternating lateral raises (8# DBs)
- Repeat #7 two more times
- Single arm bent over reverse fly (one 10# DB)
- Repeat #9 on other arm
- Repeat #9 & 10
- Repeat #5 & 6
- Alternating cross body curls (hammer curl in front of the body, raising DB toward opposite shoulder) (16.5# DBs)
- Repeat #13 two more times
- Tricep press (laying narrow chest press) (16.5# DBs)
- Repeat #15 two more times
- Repeat #5 & 6
- Alternating hammer curls (16.5# DBs)
- Repeat #18 two more times
- Tricep push ups
- Repeat #20 two more times
- Repeat #5 & 6
- Wide bicep curls (15# DBs)
- Repeat #23 two more times
- Diamond press (narrow chest press with DBs pressed together) (16.5# DBs)
- Repeat #25 two more times
- Repeat #5 & 6
- Single arm shoulder press (one 15# DB)
- Repeat #28 on other arm
- Repeat # 28 & 29
- Alternating front raise (8# DBs)
- Repeat #31
Finisher: (2 minutes–each exercise is done for 30 seconds)
- Pike push ups
- Diver push ups
- Skull crusher push ups (in forearm plank with hands clasped, raise elbows)
- Cobra neutral position push ups (push up into cobra)
For more info on Caroline Girvan’s workouts and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.
This is another one I’ll be adding to my rotation next week. You gotta love it when Caroline finishes with push-ups … 🤨☺️
Today I did a couple workouts from Heather (https://youtu.be/9aaPze7LqUw and https://youtu.be/PNbNeIIDiCQ). You might have done the first one last week? in any case, both were great workouts that hit a lot of body parts. The second workout was different than her usual no talk with music. She talks you through each rep (12 of most exercises). Every 5th exercise is a cardio burst so it wasn’t all strength. Old school retro for sure but kind of refreshing for a change of pace.
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I have not done either of those workouts. I am familiar with Heather’s 12 week program though, which is what the second workout is from. I was never interested in it because it lacked music. She has so many excellent workouts with great music and graphics so I never saw the point.
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