Chest & Back Workout is Day 3 in Heather Robertson‘s Fierce 14 program. This was intense! Though the focus of this workout is chest and back, your entire upper body is getting well worked–especially your shoulders. The real killer of this workout is the fact you only get 10 seconds of rest between exercises. 10 seconds felt like nothing to me this morning! So you will note below that I was dropping to lighter dumbbells by the 3rd set of some of the exercises because my arm were burning out. You do each weighted strength exercise for 3 sets then you do one body weight exercise for the same muscle group (so 3 weighted back exercises followed by one body weight back exercise then you do 3 weighted chest exercises followed by one body weight chest exercise). The short rest periods make this workout pretty metabolic. I was wasted by the end. Since this workout is only 40 minutes, I used a body weight back finisher to round out my morning workout. It was much easier than this workout but still did a nice job of finishing off my back. All of the exercises are all done interval style: 40 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of recovery. There is a timer in the lower right hand corner of the screen counting down your intervals and recoveries. During the recoveries Heather previews the next exercise.
Chest & Back Workout is 40:45 minutes; 3 minute warm up and 2:30 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells and fitness mat. Heather is using 5, 10, 15 and 20 pound dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.
- Narrow & wide press (alternate a normal chest press with a tricep press) (18# DBs)
- Repeat #1 two more times
- Push ups
- Underhand row (bent over double arm row with palms facing forward) (20# DBs)
- Repeat #4 two more times (25# DBs)
- Swimmers
- Chest flys (lay on mat with knees bent and close to glutes, raise hips into bridge and hold isometrically while doing chest flys) (18# DBs)
- Repeat #7 two more times
- Plank taps (in straight arm plank, alternate tapping one hand to opposite shoulder)
- Pullovers (lay on back with legs raised off mat and knees bent at 90 degrees, keep legs raised while doing a pullover) (one 35# DB)
- Repeat #10 two more times (one 35# DB for first set and one 30# DB for last set)
- Super woman (superman)
- Single arm row (bent over row, alternate arms passing DB to other hand at bottom of row) (one 35# DB)
- Repeat #13 two more times
- Inchworm (stand at end of mat, hinge forward and walk hands out to plank, do one push up, walk hands back to feet, stand and raise arms overhead)
- 30 seconds rest
- Triple press (chest press variation: lay on back with both arms extended to ceiling, lower one arm out to side then lower the other arm out to side, push both arms together back to ceiling) (20# DBs)
- Repeat #17 two more times (20# DBs first set and 18# DBs last set)
- Push back push up (do one push up then push glutes back to heels keeping knees elevated)
- Scapular squeeze (hold DBs with palms facing forward in front of thighs, raise arms out to sides in a T then pull elbows behind ribs, push DBs back out to a T then lower arms/DBs back to start) (7# DBs)
- Repeat #20 two more times
- Super V squeeze (lay on stomach with arms extended in front of you, raise arms and legs in superman, hold and pull elbows behind back, push arms in front of you again then lower hands/legs)
- V press (lay on back holding DBs so palms face each other, press DBs to ceiling while also opening arms out wide in a V) (16.5# DBs)
- Repeat #23 two more times (16.5# DBs first set and 15# DBs last set)
- Walking plank (alternate straight arm plank with elbow plank)
- Rear flys (bent over single arm rear delt flys, alternate arms) (8# DBs)
- Repeat #26 two more times
- Star fish (lay on stomach, arms extended in front of you, raise arms/chest and legs off floor, hold isometrically while opening straight arms to side and bringing them down to hips while also opening legs)
- Renegade row (alternate arms) (25# DBs)
- Repeat #29 two more times
- Lay down push up (alternate one push up with one superman)
For more info on Heather Robertson’s workouts and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.
TGIF my friend!
As I mentioned yesterday, today I did a two-fer of Heather’s new H12 workouts – Day 1 and Day 3 which were both upper body push and pull. I don’t know if you’ve previewed any of these yet, but her goal with the series is to increase strength and fitness. She has new lighting and camera angles which I liked and she mixed dumbbells with body weight and metabolic/compound exercises to keep things interesting. I lifted heavy where I could but backed off some for biceps so I could ease my right elbow into weights again. Both were excellent workouts! She mentioned cardio as part of the series. I haven’t seen any of those come out yet but I’m really excited to see what she does with that aspect to mix it up. ☺️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Actually I have previewed them and they look great. I like how she shows low impact modifications for all of the high impact exercises. I generally do not modify but if don’t feel like jumping, I like that she gives that option.
LikeLike