Combined Power
When time is of the essence, try these four essential hybrid exercises
Exercise Photographs by Beth Bishoff
Allow US to make an assumption about you: When you hit the weight room, you sometimes have trouble focusing on the simple act of working one muscle group at a time, resting, working it again, resting, and continuing for an hour that often seems like five. Sure, you like the results, but you have to wonder if there isn't a faster track to the same trophy muscles.
There is. "You can perform two or three exercises at the same time, and you can handle some heavy loads while you do it," says Alwyn Cosgrove, CSCS, a strength coach and owner of Cosgrove F.A.S.T. Systems in Newhall, California. The tech-nical name for these multipart exercises is hybrid lifts, and Cosgrove uses them successfully with time-pressed athletes and executives.
You can do the following hybrid lifts two different ways: You can hoist fairly heavy weights, lift slowly, and use the exercises as your main muscle builders. Or you can try lighter weights, work fast, and use them to improve sports performance or shift your fat-burning metabolism into the credit column.
Either way, try them two or three times a week for four weeks. You may get so hooked on multitasking that you never go back to lifting weights the old-fashioned way.
1. WORK YOUR ABS AND CHEST
Swiss-ball pushup/jackknife
Get into pushup position—your hands set slightly wider than and in line with your shoulders—but instead of placing your feet on the floor, rest your shins on a Swiss ball. Startwith your arms straight and your back flat.
Lower your body until your chest nearly touches the floor.
Pause, then push yourself back up to the starting position.
Now, lift your hips up as high as you can and pull your feet toward you by rolling the ball as close to your torso as possible.
Pause, then roll the ball back to the starting position. That’s one repetition.
Do two sets of 10-12 repetitions.
To build more muscle: Try the bench press/reverse crunch. Lie on a bench with your feet in the air, a medicine ball or dumbbell between your knees, and a barbell or dumbbells held up at arm’s length. Lower the weights to your chest, then do a reverse crunch—curl your hips up and in toward your torso. Lower your hips to the bench, then raise the bar to arm’s length and repeat.
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Men's Health Philippines - August 2005 Issue
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Swiss-ball pushup/jackknife
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