Fitness Destinations

Dips are a classic upper body exercise that people have been doing for years, and there is a reason why. Dips get the job done, they are a body weight only exercise, and they help to sculpt firm, sexy arms for men and women alike.

Dips primarily work the Triceps muscles that are on the back of the arm, and they also work the shoulder muscles. Dips can be done as part of a body weight only exercise program, or they can be incorporated into a program that uses weights, exercise bands, or other exercise equipment.

The proper way to do a dip is to put your hands on something sturdy such as a chair, a bench, or even a windowsill or the side of a desk. As long as the object is flat and won’t move, it will work fine.

Keep your back as close to the chair or other object as you can, because otherwise you will put undue strain on your shoulders, and you will lose some of the benefit to the Triceps muscles.

Drop down until your upper arms are parallel to the ground, and then go all the way back up until your arms are completely straight. To keep constant tension on the muscles – which helps you to get faster results – don’t lock your elbows at the top of the movement.

Three popular dip variations, in order of difficulty, are:

• Knees bent with legs closer to the chair
• Legs fully extended
• Legs fully extended with one leg raised in the air.

No matter how you do your dips, use good form, maintain full control on the way up and on the way down, and mentally focus on the muscles as you do your repetitions.

Dips are an integral part of the P90X Extreme Home Fitness Program as well as the Insanity 60-Day Total Body Conditioning Program. Both programs use dips in combination with many other effective exercises in order to get people REAL results! Click on through to see my personal P90X results.

The Table Dip Raise is another excellent upper body exercise that can be done without any exercise equipment of any kind. This body weight exercise very effectively works the Triceps muscle group at the back of the arm.

The table dip raise is done by starting from a seated position with the feet flat on the floor, and the hands on the floor on either side of the body, fingers pointed forward.

To begin, raise the hips off of the floor and raise one leg into the air as high as possible. Unhinge the elbows and drop the hips all the way to the floor, but without actually touching the floor. Raise back up until the arms are fully straight, and repeat.

Perform 5 repetitions per leg before switching to the other leg. Continue to alternate 5 repetitions per leg for as many total repetitions as you can do.

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The supported push up is one of the most misunderstood, yet incredibly effective upper body exercises out there. Done properly, the supported push up can significantly improve upper body strength, as well as create sexy, sculpted upper arms and shoulders.

The first thing to realize about supported push ups is that thinking about them as “girly push ups” is very short-sighted. Supported means supported – nothing more.

Use supported push ups to:

• Increase your upper body strength until you can do unsupported push ups
• Continue exercising if you start with unsupported push ups but then become too fatigued to continue doing the unsupported version.
• Perform exercises that you can’t yet do from the unsupported position, such as close-grip push ups or even 1-arm push ups.

How to do a Supported Push Up

To do supported push ups, simply put your hands on the floor about shoulder-width apart, drop your knees to the ground, raise your feet up, and keep a straight line from your shoulders all the way down to your knees. Drop down until your upper arms are parallel to the ground, and then go all the way back up to the start position. Repeat as many times as possible, rest for 30-60 seconds, then repeat for another set.

Push ups of many different varieties are an integral part of the incredibly effective P90X Extreme Home Fitness Program, as well as the Insanity 60-Day Weight Loss Program. Both programs are worth their weight in gold! Click on through to see my personal P90X results.

The Dip with Leg Raise exercise is a basic, but very effective Triceps exercise.

The triceps muscles are the muscles on the back of the arms, and they combine with the bicep muscles and the shoulder muscles to create the cut, lean, sexy look that is appealing on both men and women.

For women specifically, the area on the back of the arm tends to become a body fat storage area as they get older, which leads many women to start realizing the benefit of resistance training, rather than just doing cardiovascular training all the time.

How to do a Dip with Leg Raise

The proper way to do a dip with leg raise is to keep both legs as straight as possible, and to keep the raised leg as high as possible. The straighter and higher the legs, the more difficult the exercise is, and the more you will get out of it.

Keep your back as close as possible to the chair or whatever you have your hand ons, and drop down as far as you can without putting undo strain on your shoulders. A rapid pace is okay in this exercise as long as you aren’t bouncing up and down rather than going through the full range of motion.

Done properly, the simple to execute dip with leg raise exercise will blast your triceps into great shape while still remaining a simple body weight exercise that can be done anytime, anywhere.

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Insanity Before and After Pictures and Fit Test Results

In this on-going review of Insanity blog series, the truth behind the Insanity 60-day weight loss program is revealed with a play-by-play description of what the program is really like – and more importantly – if Insanity really works!

Day 3 of Insanity was just as intense and mind-blowing as the Plyometric Cardio Circuit workout was, and it was also a lot of fun, which was a total bonus! The Cardio Power and Resistance routine does a great job of marrying up extremely high-tempo cardiovascular training with plenty of great resistance training at the same time.

Insanity Cardio
Power and Resistance The workout starts out with a similar “warm up” routine as the other workouts, and just as with the others, the warm up alone will leave you winded, sweaty, and wondering what you have gotten yourself into! Nonetheless, it is easy to see even during the first few workouts of Insanity that the cardiovascular and muscular endurance needed to really excel and get great results will come sooner, rather than later – just due to the sheer intensity of the program.

After the heart-pumping intensity of a 10 1/2 minute warm-up, the video goes into a 7-minute stretching routine to get you ready for the rest of the workout. The stretches are a challenge, though, and Shaun T constantly reminds you of the necessity of stretching, as well as how to get the most out of each movement. Also, the stretching routine does cool-down your heart rate a bit in order to get you prepared for the serious challenge of the remaining part of the workout.

Cardio Power and Resistance

The first wave of exercises include a very effective combination of cardio and resistance. In order, the first 4 exercises are: Power Jumps, Belt Kicks, Hit the Floor, and V Push-ups. Power Jumps are especially difficult and will wipe out your air supply in under 30 seconds, but then you’ve still got 3 more exercises to go before you get a break.

The first 4 exercises are each done for 30 seconds, back-to-back, leaving you with 2 solid minutes of intensity that will probably seem at first like it lasts a lot longer than 2 minutes… Once you survive that first wave,  you only get a 30-second break before you repeat that sequence even faster than the first time, then you repeat it yet again at an even higher level of intensity.

As if over 6 minutes of all-out intensity wasn’t enough of a challenge, after finishing all 3 sets of the first wave of exercises, you then do a full minute of challenging Tricep exercises that will leave the back of your arms on fire.

The Next Wave

By the time you get to the second wave of exercises, you are pretty much wiped out and ready to go hide in a cool, dark room with a ceiling fan and an air conditioning unit, but this workout still has several more minutes of intensity left before the fun is over.

The next wave of exercises includes Hurdle Jumps, Globe Jumps, Moving Push-ups, and Floor Sprints, all once again done back-to-back before getting a 30-second break. The jump movements are as hard as they sound, Moving Push-ups make an already awesome exercise even more difficult, and by the time you get to Floor Sprints, it’s more like “floor walks,” because you can barely even hold yourself up off the floor, let alone do any actual sprinting.

Once again, Shaun T throws in a final knock-out punch at the end of the workout, just in case – by some wild chance – you aren’t already feeling like a heart attack might be in your near future…

The final exercise is a series of 8 Hop Squats followed immediately by 8 Push-ups, and you do that series 3 times in a row with no break. Between the hopping up and down and the Push-ups, the final exercise uses your entire body, and every ounce of oxygen that you have left as well.

Conclusion

Overall, Cardio Power and Resistance is a very intense workout, it is very effective, and it – like other Insanity workouts – is mercifully short. Despite the fact that it will leave you exhausted and gasping for air, and despite the fact that it does a great job of working  your body from both a cardio and a resistance perspective, the whole disc is only about 40 minutes long.

That leaves you plenty of time to lay on the floor in a pool of your own sweat, just happy to be alive!

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