Oh yeah, look at me get down with my bad self! I wore my fitmarker wristband to parent-teacher conferences AND the boy scouts pinewood derby tonight, oh yes I did!
“This makes me feel just like I did during my c-section! The bright lights, everyone staring down at me, me not knowing what’s going on and pinned to a table…” And with this inauspicious statement from Gym Buddy Allison, thus began the SuperGirl Challenge Workout. We should not have been surprised, this is FitJerk who challenged us after all. First he boosted our booties. Then he annihilated our abs. And now the King of Pain is back for round three with a full-body workout that has the double bonus of kicking our butts in the gym and providing us with a simple benchmark routine we can repeat later on to see if we’re getting stronger.
Quoth he,
“When Charlotte asked me for a third challenge for her workout buddies, I knew I had to come up with something that would inspire women everywhere and would provide enough pain so that she can express her brilliant skills at facial expression photography. I created a pure strength challenge for the fine lovely ladies everywhere. Everything you do will give you points, and in the end you can total it up and earn some serious bragging rights by beating your friends.”
The Rules:
1. Do not substitute exercises for their machine counter parts. This is a purely free-weight lifting challenge.
2. Do only one set of each exercise and rest exactly two minutes between each set.
3. Always use a spotter. Your set is done when your form starts to become shaky.
4. Do one set of warmup with 30-50% of your bodyweight for each exercise before you decide to go all out.
The Scoring:
(weight load)/(your weight) * (# of reps) = points for that exercise
Total up your points for each of the 5 lifts and that one number is your score!
The Workout:
1. Back Squat: “For squat, you have to reach parallel. What this means is that when you go down, you hips have to be in line with your knees. You can even do ATG or “a** to grass” as they call it, just make sure you have a fresh pair of undies, k?”
No need to point out that Gym Buddy Megan is not at parallel, she’s still at the top of her squat. Gym Buddy Krista made it her official duty to watch us all and make sure there was no cheating. Do you see her all creeping over my left shoulder?:
And no I’m not quite to parallel yet either but I had to throw in this pic to show you the back of my super cute workout top! It’s the mullet of gym clothes: business in the front and part-ay in the back!
2. Bench Press: “For the Benchpress, your elbows should hit 90 degrees. Simple. However, here are a few key tricks you can use to keep shoulder joint problems at bay and to increase your bench. First, make sure there are only 3 parts of your body that are touching the bench: your head, your traps and your butt. Second, squeeze your shoulder blades together, this will shorten the distance as your arms will be retracted and will help you have a powerful press by emphasizing your triceps. And finally, keep your wrists straight and elbows under the bar at all times – even during lift off. “
3. Romanian Deadlift: “These are when your legs are slightly bent at the knees and you use leg power along with the rest of your body to lift the weight. Hold the bar at shoulder width and make sure your feet aren’t super wide – that becomes a sumo deadlift. “
4. Hip Thrusts: All I can say is, FitJerk you would stick these in there. (I also believe one of you astute readers mentioned these in the comments of my most embarrassing workout move post.) Here’s a ten-minute instructional video or you can follow along with Allison and I as we drop the bar, get pinned by the bar and dry-hump the bar (I know, I can’t believe I just wrote that either).
Step 1: Sit on the ground with your back to a weight bench (that won’t slide!) and place your weight across your lap. Hmmm… why isn’t this working for me?! Stupid long bar. Musical benches everyone!
Step 2: Squeezing your butt and hips, start to lift the weight off the floor.
Step 3: Continue until you reach a full table-top position. Bonus points for doing the “Ohhh yeah” crotch pump at the top like Allison here.
5. Pull-up. This last move really is a benchmark move and now I finally have photographic proof that I can do it! If you aren’t up to pull-ups yet, just work negatives (jumping to the top and lowering down as slowly as you can), 90 degree pull-ups or use an assisted pull up machine.
Our Scores:
Megan – 20.5
Krista – 24.7
Charlotte – 51.8
Allison – 56.5
Gym Buddy Allison just barely edges me out again! Now she’s faster and stronger! I’d hate her except she’s as humble as she is gorgeous. FitJerk said he is going to complete this challenge too and post it on his site. He also said if one of you can beat him he’ll be your dancing monkey for a month. (What’s that Fit? You didn’t say that?? No fun.) Either way, I’d love to see if you can beat us! Let me know your score in the comments!
Fitmarker Challenge:
Have you ever wished that there was a site like Digg or Stumbleupon but just for fitness stuff?? Well there is! Fitjerk’s pet project – besides beating us into the ground – is called Fitmarker. You can quickly create a username and then you can submit sweet fit content to repped by the fit blogging community! You can submit your own stuff, mine, whomever’s! And then you can vote on which ones you like the best or just read the posts that are ranked the highest.
Want a sweet wristband like mine in the top pic? Go over there and sign up. Leave me your username in the comments. The first 5 people to do so get a free wristband!
What do you do when someone challenges you? Are you like me and can’t turn it down no matter how awful/painful/embarrassing it is? Or do challenges make you want to not do it because you hate people telling you what to do?
Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2011. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything
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