Bold Upper Body Workout with Dumbbells is Day 2 of Caroline Girvan‘s EPIC Endgame program. This is a solid upper body strength workout. Just like in Day 1, the intervals are long (60 seconds). However, unlike in Day 1, Caroline does not do every weighted exercise to a slow and controlled pace. She does with the exercises in which she is using her heavy dumbbells but her lighter set of dumbbells is actually quite a bit lighter than what she normally uses, so for those exercises her pace was quicker. I was using the heaviest dumbbells I could manage for every single exercise, so for those exercises I continued using the slow and controlled method rather than speeding up to keep pace with Caroline. I definitely got an excellent workout! That finisher at the end! OMG–the burn! I could not keep pace with her so I had to pause the workout at the end to finish out my 100 reps. I had only managed 86 reps by the time she finished her 100 reps.
All of the exercises in this workout are done interval style: 60 seconds of work followed by 30 seconds of rest. There is a timer in the upper left hand side of the screen counting down your intervals and recoveries. During the recovery Caroline previews the next exercise. There is also a little bar at the bottom of the screen that counts down the entire workout time as a percentage. I definitely needed that 30 seconds of rest to come back to the next exercise strong! Excellent workout!
Bold Upper Body Workout with Dumbbells is 46:27 minutes; 3:20 minute intro, no warm up and 2:45 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells and fitness mat. Caroline is using 17.5kg/38.6 pounds and 6kg/13.2 pound dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.
- Chest press (30# DBs)
- Repeat #1
- Single arm bent over row (one 45# DB)
- Repeat #3 on other arm
- Diagonal raise (double arm front raise but arms are raised in a wide V) (10# DBs)
- Alternating chest press (regular chest press, but alternate arms) (30# DBs)
- Repeat #6
- Pullover (one 40# DB)
- Repeat #8
- Repeat #5
- Push ups
- Repeat #11
- Landmine row (one 55# DB)
- Repeat #13
- Repeat #5
- Single arm bent over rear fly (one 12# DB)
- Repeat #16 on other arm
- Shoulder press (arms are in goal post) (22.5# DBs)
- Repeat #18
- Repeat #5
- Skull crushers (13# DBs)
- Repeat #21
- Palms up>hammer curl (regular bicep curl for first 30 seconds, hammer curl remaining 30 seconds) (18# DBs)
- Repeat #23
Finisher: Front raise, 100 reps (hold one DB in both hands) (one 18# DB)
For more info on Caroline Girvan’s workouts and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.
Some of the 100 rep finishers are really killer. Before the workout you’re like “oh, I can do that” and then when you get to it you’re like “what was I thinking”!
Today I did Endgame Day 17 Balanced Lower Body and finished with Heather’s Daily 10 Day 24 upper body sculpt. You know how Caroline lists on the screen the weight(s) she is using while she says it? Well, I pay attention to the screen so I can quickly translate into Pounds. The problem is that she was using 1 heavy weight (20kg) and 2 lighter ones (12kg). That’s what she SAID but on the screen she listed 2 heavy and 1 light. I set up for the latter. To complicate things, I couldn’t tell looking at her weights what weight she was using because they were so similar in size. Anyway, I’m following along and getting all confused because she was doing sumo squats with one light weight and lunges with 2 heavy weights. It was at that point where I was like “WTF Caroline, even YOU can’t do lunges with 2 20kg weights and make it look as easy as you are!” That’s when it hit me that she must have had her screen weights mixed up. Once I figured that out things made a lot more sense. ☺️ The finisher was 100 BW Bulgarian lunges, 25 ea leg and then repeat. Very big burn with those.
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That is why I preview everything. I never try to match weights with a trainer. I know what I am capable of and when I preview the workout, I know what to expect and set out my weights accordingly. Her more recent workouts that I have been previewing she has messed up her interval timers. That would confuse me if I didn’t preview it! Especially since I will not be doing those workouts for another month. But now I already have it written up so before I do it I will preview my write up and know that the timers are off and what to look for. I am not a fan of coming to a workout blind. Especially after doing this blog for 10 years now.
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