CGX: Intent Program Day 6: Longest Bicep Finisher Upper Body

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

When I saw the title of this workout I was definitely nervous and felt more than a little dread about the finisher. But it wasn’t just the finisher that was brutal! This is a fast paced circuit workout. There is one circuit of upper body strength exercises that you do 4 times. By that 4th circuit I was struggling. Luckily you do not do any bicep isolation exercises until the finisher. But the finisher will still completely fry your biceps. It was nice to know I was not the only one struggling during this workout. Caroline was, too! She took quite a few mini breaks in the course of some of the intervals. Luckily, between each circuit you do get a longer recovery and that helped me a lot. This was pretty metabolic for an upper body workout. I burned 488 calories!

This workout is done interval style. Most of the interval’s are 40 seconds of work followed by 20 seconds of recovery. When the interval or recovery is different, it is noted below. There is a timer in the upper right hand corner of the screen counting down your intervals and recoveries. During the recoveries Caroline previews the next exercise(s). There is also a progress bar at the bottom of the screen, counting down the workout time as a percentage.

Longest Bicep Finisher Upper Body is 47:19 minutes (this time does not include the optional 3:55 minute warm up or the 4:11 minute intro, also optional) with a 1:45 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells and a fitness mat. Caroline is using 10kg/22 pound, 7.5kg/16.5 pound and 4kg/8.8 pound dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.

1. Supine row (bent over double arm row, palms face forward) (30# DBs)
2. Diagonal press (hold one DB w/ both hands by bar in front of chest, push DB straight in front of you but also upward on a diagonal) (one 20# DB)
3. Renegade row (alternate arms) (30# DBs)
4. Diagonal raise (cross between front raise and lateral raise–arms raise in a wide V) (9# DBs)
5. Skull crushers (15# DBs)
6. Tricep press (narrow chest press, arms kept close to sides, push DBs to ceiling) (20# DBs)
7. Plank ladder (alternate wide leg straight arm plank with elbow/forearm plank)
8. Cobra push ups (lay on mat, hands on mat under shoulders, keeping legs and hips on mat, do push ups cobra-style)
9. Momentum diagonal raise (repeat #6 but lift with power, assisting with upper body) (9# DBs)
10. 60 second rest
11. Repeat #1-8
12. Repeat #9 for 60 seconds
13. 45 second rest
14. Repeat #1 for 60 seconds
15. 15 second rest
16. Repeat #2-8
17. Repeat #12
18. 45 second rest
19. Repeat #14-18

Finisher:

1. Palms up bicep curl, 10 reps (16.6# DBs)
2. Hammer curl, 20 reps (hold one DB in both hands) (one 20# DB)
3. Repeat #1 & 2 as many times as possible within 5 minutes; #1 is done ladder style, so each time you repeat it subtract one rep