Les Mills Combat Review

Beachbody unveiled their second program from world renowned fitness trainer Les Mills -- Les Mills Combat.  Combat is an mixed-martial arts style home based fitness program that packs a punch!

Let me just get this out of the way, probably one of my favorite aspects of the program where the Aussie and New Zealand accents of the trainers Dan and Rach.  Okay, I said it!  

Now to the program.  The base kit came with 7 different workouts.  Five of them were primarily cardio based fighting workouts.  The workouts pull from several different areas of the world of martial arts including Muay Tai, kickboxing, karate, tae kwan do and traditional American boxing.  The mix of moves target your arms, shoulders, legs and core all the while peaking out your heart rate.  

In addition to the 5 fighting workouts, there are two HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts.  These work a blend of upper and lower body areas.  As well as targeting that core.  With these workouts, you will need a dumbbells, a weight plate or a resistance band could be used as well.  

What makes this program a great choice for any fitness level is the use of a modifier.  With every workout is one member of the cast reducing the impact of the moves but still maximizing the results you are going to get.  While not an incredibly difficult program, there is lots of challenge and delivers on the results.  

The calendar of the program is 10 weeks long (63 days) with a 6 day/1 rest day schedule.  The calendar is also modifiable for different fitness levels mixing in a longer workout for those looking to maximize their results.  Workouts range from 30 to 60 minutes.  There are also a couple upgrades that will include additional workouts and weighted gloves for increase results.  

Here is list of the workouts:

• LES MILLS COMBAT: THE BASICS. Master the techniques and mixed martial arts moves, guards, and stances you will use throughout all the LES MILLS COMBAT workouts.
• LES MILLS COMBAT 30: KICK START. A low-complexity but high-intensity workout, introducing you to the basic LES MILLS COMBAT combination moves.
• LES MILLS COMBAT 45: POWER KATA. This workout combines speed and power with cross-training for complete calorie scorching.
• LES MILLS COMBAT 60: EXTREME CARDIO FIGHTER. Challenge your endurance with a high-repetition sequence of moves that will have your muscles firing on all cylinders.
• LES MILLS COMBAT 60 LIVE: ULTIMATE WARRIOR'S WORKOUT. Upper body . . . legs and butt . . . core and cardio . . . this workout hits every muscle hard.
• LES MILLS COMBAT: POWER HIIT 1. High Intensity Interval Training uses short bursts of maximum effort followed by recovery to push you into muscle-conditioning overload.
• LES MILLS COMBAT: SHOCK PLYO HIIT 2. Uses propulsion exercises to improve athletic power and endurance, pushing you into peak performance mode.

I love the results I got !

4 Tips to Picking the Right Workout

So you are ready to start...but where do you start.  Here are 4 tips to think about when picking the right exercise and fitness program for you.

1) Pick something you LIKE to do.

If you like cardio, do cardio.  If you like to hike, hike! Running your thing, go run Forrest! It is important to find a program, a schedule or workout that you enjoy.  If you enjoy your exercise regime, there is a greater likelihood of you dragging your rear end out of bed to do it.  Pick something you like to do.  Pick something that you look forward to doing.

2) Pick a program that MATCHES your goals.

If you are trying to lose weight, then the program you are doing needs to match that goal.  You want to add mass, than you need to workout in a way that adds muscle mass.  Your goals and your program need to match.  This will prevent discouragement because you will actually get the results you are looking for.

3) Pick a program that fits your ability.

The worst thing you can do is take on more than you can handle.  This often results in either injury or be overwhelmed and quitting.  Make sure that what you choose to do matches what you are capable of doing.  Now this is not permission to not push yourself to your fullest potential.  Yet, understand that you need a program that is aligned with your capabilities at the current moment.

4) Pick a program that fits your lifestyle.

If you don't have 2 hours a day to go to the gym, than a fitness program that requires 2 hours a day will never work for you.  This is not a excuse for you not to workout or leverage the "I don't have time" excuse.  Yet, you need to have an understanding of what fits into your schedule.  There are plenty of great programs that are 25 or 30 minutes and get results.  Or if you have an hour, find a program that goes a whole hour!  Just make sure what you chose will continue to fit into your lifestyle.

The greatest tip I can give is just to pick something.  Get moving, get started, and start seeing results!

From the inside out

A friend of mine once told me that fixing the outside if the inside is broken tends to only accentuate the brokenness.

My disclaimer is that I am not a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist or even a psychic, so anything posted on this blog is intended as an unofficial helping hand.  

Self image and self perception are huge issues in relation to your health and fitness. There are some who no matter what the result never see themselves any different.  Their body might be healthy, but the inside still isn't.  Your heart health is just as important as your physical health.

Your heart is more than just the thing that pumps blood to the rest of your body.  The heart in a lot of cultures was consider the center or the seat of your being.  It is widely considered that the source of life both physically and spiritually/emotionally was the heart!  All this being said your health goes far beyond a flat tummy, bulging biceps and skinny waist.  Health is an emotional issue.  Health is a spiritual issue.  Health is a wholistic issue.  All of you needs to be healthy.

While focusing in on your fitness improves you body, focusing in on your relationships will improve you heart condition.  While locking in on what goes in your mouth, lock in on what you put into your mind.  Surround yourself with positive and encouraging people.    Read books, blogs, posts that will fill your heart and mind with peace, joy and love.

Take aim at making all of you healthy!  Here some tips:

1) Read personal development type books.  Books that better you!

2) Find a faith community - church, synagogue, Bible study.

3) Find friends that build and support you in your dreams and in your health goals.

4) Continue to exercise.  Endorphin make you happy!

5) If necessary find someone or place to help you deal with the emotional stuff - a counselor or psychologist.  There is no shame in asking for help.  We all need some help!

Your heart and your spirit are just as important as your body.  Get all of you healthy!

Another Reason WHY

This weekend our family took a short getaway to Caribbean Cove Hotel and Waterpark in Indianapolis.  The waterpark was your typical indoor facility with kiddie area, activity area, lazy river and 3 water slides.

My youngest child is my little diva.  She is 5 years old and working on 15 most days.  It took me a little convincing, a couple dollars cash to get her down that first waterslide, but once she did...it was I could do to keep up.

Here is a little perspective, the waterslides stand 40 feet up in the air, 4 stories high, 4 stories of steps...multiplied by the enthusiasm of a 5 year old girl who kept saying "daddy, one more time."  Every one more time meant picking up our bright yellow intertubes, lugging it up those 4 stories of steps, to sit her down on that tube and give her smiling face a push down that slide.

It was just 7 seconds of bouncing and bumping down that yellow tube on that air inflated tube to get to the bottom of the pool only to find her their soaked by water but having the time of her life.  And then those words "one more time" was reason enough to pick up that tube and travel up those 4 flights of stairs one more time.

There is a difference between being a dad and being an "active" dad. Being an active dad means not sitting on the sideline and watching them slide, but traveling along side them down the slides of the journey.  It has been a journey for me to lose the weight, get healthy and get fit.  But days like yesterday make it worth it.  Worth every step, worth every slide down, worth every water soaked smile on her face.  Just one more reason why I am stay healthy!

I ate my feelings and...

In our continued stream of thinking along nutrition and my continually belief that confession is good for the soul...I am an emotional eater.

When it rains, it pours highly carbohydrated snack foods in a Noah's Ark style flood.  In order for me to achieve the success of my goal weight and maintain that healthy, the one thing I have to find control over is my emotional eating.  I tend to eat when the stresses of life become overwhelming.

So here are 3 alternatives to eating my weight in snack foods:

1) Workout - pop in a DVD and sweat it out.  Pushing my physical fitness and releasing endorphin keeps me from binging.

2) Run - while similar to working out, running allows me to put my body on cruise control and engage my mind in some thinking and processing.  It gives a chance to escape to another place (both physically and mentally) and avoid the snacks.

3) Laugh - The proverb says that laughter is good medicine.  Being able to find humor in laugh is healthy.  While whatever the situation was may not have be funny at all, there is plenty in life to find laughter in.  So laugh, smile, and take your hands away from the sweets and salty.

I have not perfected being an overcomer of emotional eater.  I am working on it.  I try to use these alternatives to stuffing my face.  In an honest reflection, I really don't feel any better by eating.  While I satisfy my taste buds, I upset my belly and worse really don't emotionally feel any better.  (SAD FACE)

Day #22 The Hardest Workout

No it is not P90X or Insanity Pure Cardio...it is the workout that you don't want to do.  Tonight was one of those nights.  I was fighting a headache, so every time I jumped my head throbbed.  I watched the seconds tick slowly as my only thought "oh Lord, when is this going to be done!"

Sometimes the hardest things are the things that you feel least like doing.  On the flip side of that coin is that those workouts are oftentimes the most rewarding.  I may not have burned as many calories as a workout that I felt fresh and ready to go, but the emotional reward of pushing through a difficult workout is as much a gain as workout you attacked.

These are the moments that are a test of grit, a test of determination, a test of discipline.  Tonight I had all three....

EXERCISE:
LES MILLS COMBAT Extreme Cardio 60

21 days in the rearview

January 7th I put a ground and said NO MORE!   I weighed in at 184.7 pounds, by far the most I had been in several months.  Let's be honest, it was a steady diet of monkey bread and Christmas cookies for about 2 weeks over Christmas and New Year's.  While tasty on the tongue, it was killing my around the gut!

So I kicked of 2013 with Les Mills Combat, Shakeology, and focusing on what I eat and as of today, I weigh 180.1.  Not the weight loss I hoped for but seeing some great results in the change in my shape.  While I do have a weight loss goal that I want to reach my focus is really beginning to shift.  I could press and workout extra, trim additional calories and get completely stringent to get to that goal.  And that would be fine.  But what I know about myself is that if I sprint to that goal, I will eventually run out of gas and while I might hit that number on the scale I know that my weight will yo-yo back up.

As with most things in life, the "tortoise" wins - slow and steady wins the race!!  My goal is to become actively healthy, not just a specific weight.

RESULTS HAPPEN HERE!

I would love to hear your comments!

Are you a cheater?

Friday nights at Casa Pitts are blocked off as a family night (at least as best as our schedules allow).  After a long week, prepping a sit down meal at close to 7 PM (after finishing our other Friday responsibilities) is just not feasible.  So our Friday night is our "cheat night".  It is the one night a week that nutritionally we let our guard down a little bit and make frozen pizza or sandwich bar or something easy and pop in a movie and just chillax as a family.

So I wanted to pass on some tidbits of wisdom from a cheater like me.

1.  Take caution in what you cheat with -

Just because you allow yourself a cheat meal does not mean that meal has to lack complete nutritional value. If  you get a pizza make sure has some veggies on it.  If you are going to eat sandwiches use a lighter cheese, skip the mayo and use mustard or even avocado as a replacement.  You want chips with that sandwich, even here you make a better choice about the chips you eat.  Cheat with wisdom, if you eat out you can still enjoy a yummy meal, but do it responsibly.  Just because you are eating a cheat meal don't make a wasted meal full of empty calories because...

2. Your body knows what it wants -

Here is the reason you need to make sure even when you cheat, you cheat right.  Your body is smarter than you are.  It's true.  When your body has a need for protein you will crave meat or eggs. When you body has a need for calcium, you might want cheese or milk. Your body knows what it needs and signals your brain "hey get us that." One of the dangers of a cheat meal is not fulfilling the need of your body.  When that happens your body tells your brain "hey we need something else and more of it."  If that something else is not what your body needs it will keep sending that signal to your brain.  Your brain sends the signal to the rest of you and you find yourself with your hand back in the bag of chips even though you are not hungry.  Which leads to...

3.  Overeating

A cheat meal does not mean 5 trips to the all you can eat buffet.  While you will more than likely blow your typical calorie count for a meal out of the water (my meals range from 350-425 a meal), this is not an excuse to eat like you are in the 4th of July Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest.  You need to still have some portion management.  So you may go back for a bite of seconds, but thirds, really, fourths.  At the bottom of the bag of whatever you are eating is regret.  So take caution!  Manage the amount of what you are going to eat.  Just because it is a cheat meal does not mean that you throw out the discipline you have the rest of the week.  Consider this a controlled indulgence.

You don't bust your backside to not enjoy life.  We fight for our health through diet and exercise in hopes a living a happier and healthier life.  Give yourself some grace on occasion to cheat.  Just cheat with caution.  It is still cheating and cheating can always lead us down a slippery slope and leave us caught elbow deep in a tub of ice cream.  So enjoy your pizza, your occasional scoop of Rocky Road, even juicy steak, but make this the exception to your life and not the rule.  If you let poor habits rule what you eat you will be right back to the point you were before your journey toward a fitter you!