IRON Series 30 Min Upper Body Workout – Shoulders, Back, Chest | 2

30 Min Upper Body Workout – Shoulders, Back, Chest is Day 2 in Caroline Girvan‘s Iron Series. This was an excellent upper body strength workout. The long intervals and rests, as well as repeating each exercise 3 times, really gives each muscle group worked some very focused attention. By the 3rd set of every exercise I was struggling! But in a good way! My upper body definitely feels pumped afterward. Even though there are no exercises isolating your biceps and triceps, they are still being worked in every exercise. And since this workout is so short and has no warm up, I used Heather Robertson‘s new No Equipment Arms Workout as my warm up. It is only 15 minutes but it does a very good job warming up your entire upper body.

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.

30 Min Upper Body Workout – Shoulders, Back, Chest is 35:58 minutes; 2 minute intro, no warm up and 2:30 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells and fitness mat. Caroline is using 17.5kg/38.6 pounds, 10kg/22 pounds and 4kg/8.8 pounds dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.

1. Chest press (25# DBs)
2. Repeat #1 two more times
3. Chest flys (20# DBs)
4. Repeat #3 two more times
5. Alternating renegade rows (27.5# DBs)
6. Repeat #5 two more times
7. Pullovers (one 40# DB)
8. Repeat #7 two more times
9. Shoulder press (arms in goal post) (20# DBs first set, 18# DBs last 2 sets)
10. Repeat #9 two more times
11. Bent over rear delt flys (8# DBs)
12. Lateral raise (9# DBs)
13. Repeat #11 & 12

Finisher: (1:30 minutes, no rest/recoveries)

1. Alternating frontal raise for 45 seconds (10# DBs)
2. Frontal raise for 45 seconds (hold one DB in both hands) (one 20# DB)

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