CGX: Iron Program Day 2: Upper Body

This is a workout from Caroline Girvan‘s CGX app. For more info on Caroline’s App, see the CGX App page.

This is Day 1 of the Iron program for me, since I always work my upper body on Mondays (I’ll do Day 2 tomorrow). This is a solid, straight forward upper body workout. You focus on the chest, back and shoulders and you do 2 sets of every exercise. Your arms get worked, too, even tho there are no arm isolation exercises. My arms were so fatigued by the finisher that I had to drop to a lighter weight for the last exercise. My arms simple refused to diamond press 25 pounds.

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 right 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.

Upper Body is 33:08 minutes (this time does not include the optional 6 minute warm up or the 2:55 minute intro, also optional) with a 2:50 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells, a chair or bench and a fitness mat. Caroline is using 30kg/66 pounds, 17.5kg/38.5 pounds, 10kg/22 pounds and 4kg/8.8 pound dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.

1. Landmine row (hinge forward so back is flat, hold one heavy DB by bar w/ both hands, pull DB up to chest) (one 60# DB)
2. Repeat #1
3. Pullover (one 47.5# DB)
4. Repeat #3
5. Chest press (32.5# DBs)
6. Repeat #5
7. Chest fly (25# DBs)
8. Repeat #7
9. Shoulder press (arms are in goal post) (20# DBs)
10. Repeat #9
11. Rear delt fly (sit on a bench or chair, hinge forward so chest is on thighs and do rear delt flys w/ palms facing each other) (8# DBs)
12. Repeat #11
13. Seated lateral raise (8# DBs)
14. Repeat #14
15. Rear delt fly (same as #11 except palms face behind you) (8# DBs)
16. Repeat #15
17. Lateral raise (standing this time and done at a faster pace than #13) (8# DBs)
18. Repeat #17

Finisher: (2 minutes; each exercise is done for 60 seconds w/ no rest/recovery)

1. Chest flys (25# DBs)
2. Diamond press (similar to a chest press, but DBs are pressed together over chest and arms/elbows are kept close to sides the entire time) (20# DBs)