Paleo Workouts For Dummies
Overview
Paleo workouts that are heavy on results—and low on equipment investment
Paleo Workouts For Dummies offers a program of back-to-the-Stone-Age exercises with specially designed workouts that burn fat, fight disease, and increase energy. The paleo workouts found in this step-by-step guide, promote sound activities with a strong emphasis on practicing and mastering fundamental/primitive human movements such as squats, hinges, pushes/pulls, sprints, crawls, and more.
Paleo Workouts For Dummies caters to the anti-gym crowd who want a convenient program that can be used anywhere, anytime. In addition, vital details on healthy Paleolithic foods that maximize energy levels for the intense workout routines are covered.
- Companion workout videos can be accessed, for free, at Dummies.com
- The video content aids you in mastering paleo moves and techniques covered in the book
- Offers a complete cardiovascular and strength workout
By focusing on the primal movements that humans evolved to perform, Paleo Workouts For Dummies is for anyone following a paleo diet routine as well as those curious about how to maximize their paleo workouts.
Read More
About The Author
Dr. Kellyann Petrucci, author and nutritionist, appears on various news streams nationally and conducts workshops and seminars worldwide to help people feel — and look — their best. She is also the author of the popular website www.DrKellyann.com and gives daily news, tips, and inspiration on Twitter @drkellyann.
Patrick Flynn, a fitness minimalist, conducts workshops and certifications worldwide, teaching people how to get more fit with less — but more effective — exercise. He is the driving force behind ChroniclesOfStrength.com, a top-500 health and wellness blog.
Sample Chapters
paleo workouts for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Paleo workouts are meant to be short and simple but immensely effective in helping you build strength, quickness, and endurance. Because the movements and routines are simple, proper form is key, and you have to guard against over-exercising. In addition, you have to make sure you're fueling your body with the right foods before and after exercise.
View Cheat Sheet
View Cheat Sheet
HAVE THIS BOOK?
View Book Companion Site
Access practice tests
Additional Book Resources
Articles from
the book
Paleo Diet Recipes
Primal superfoods will help get you from where you are now to where you want to be. They have deep nutrition that stand out from the pack of Paleo foods.
Primal superfoods are multitaskers. They heal the gut, decrease inflammation, and flood your cells with nutrients that are often lacking. In fact, superfoods help heal you on the deepest possible level, from the inside out.
A good Paleo workout is like good writing: vigorous and concise. Each of the following ten exercise routines is quick and effective. For tutorials on how to do the following exercises, and for more effective and efficient time-crunched workouts, check out Paleo Workouts For Dummies.
100-Meter Sprint
Sprint for 100 meters as many rounds as you can with good form in ten minutes.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The cave man didn't have the luxury of supplementation. But it would be downright silly to renounce any and all advancements that have happened over the last million years or so. Most supplements out there today are unnecessary and a complete waste of money and time. But following are ten primal-approved supplements to help you get the most out of Paleo fitness.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Proprioception, or the awareness of your body position, ties all the senses together. High proprioception allows you to move skillfully without thinking about it. Low proprioception, however, results in awkward and often dysfunctional movement.
Proprioception is supported partly by the vestibular system, which coordinates your movement through changes in head position.
You can get 95 percent of all the strength and fitness you’ll ever need from 5 percent of all the exercises you’ve ever heard of and subtle variations therein. And this 5 percent consists of the fundamental primal human movements, of which there are roughly six:A push isn’t an exercise per se but rather a category of movement.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Almost nobody’s first hanging leg raise looks even remotely passable, and that’s okay. Over time, as the abdominal wall thickens and strengthens as well as the hip flexors, this movement will start to take on a sort of elegance that few other exercises exhibit.
The hanging leg raise is a staple in gymnastics training, which should give you an idea as to the kind of strength it builds.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The windshield wiper is a pseudo hanging leg raise, adding in a fierce rotational component. The benefits of the windshield wiper are vast, especially for those seeking rotation power and a ripped up midsection. (Note: You must achieve the hanging leg raise before you can do the windshield wiper.)
You’ll feel this movement across your entire abdominal wall; you’ll specifically feel its effects around the finger-like muscles of the rib cage (the serratus anterior).
Paleo Diet Recipes
This advanced carry isn’t necessarily more difficult than the perspective of loading or mobility. What makes this movement “advanced” is the high degree of concentration and tension that you must maintain throughout. Also, the bottoms-up carry pulls a balancing component into the mix.
The bottoms-up carry can really only be performed with a kettlebell because it’s one of the very few weight-training devices with an offset center of gravity.
Paleo Diet Recipes
This metabolic conditioning routine with double kettlebells follows a sequence of 3 - 5 clean and press movements every 60 seconds for 10 minutes, with rest between start of a new sequence. The Paleo approach works out muscles throughout the body, providing an exceptional way to build strength and burn fat.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Spend time practicing the L-sit by itself before working it in with your pull-ups or chin-ups. The L-sit turns a chin-up or a pull-up into a brutalizing core exercise. The entire body must maintain an adequate amount of tension; otherwise, the L-sit won’t hold. This movement requires a strong set of abs and a strong back; it’s surely one of the finest full-body movements anywhere.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The muscle-up is a movement that comes from gymnastics and is best performed on a set of gymnastic rings. However, if you have only a bar to work with, you may use that instead.
The muscle-up is a pull-up into a dip. The most difficult part of this movement is the transition between the pull-up and the dip, where your elbows go from pointing down to pointing up.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The one-arm chin-up is a feat very few achieve. It’s perhaps the ultimate test of upper body pulling strength. There are no tricks to the one-arm chin-up; it’s a product of hard work and practice. If you want it, you have to work for it. Here are the steps:Assume a dead hang position from one arm from a bar or a set of rings.
Paleo Diet Recipes
You can perform a handstand push-up against a wall. But eventually, you should work up to performing the push-up from a free balancing handstand, which is by no accounts an easy feat!
Because you’re inverted, this movement naturally falls into the vertical pushing category. It’s more difficult than the standard push-up because you’re moving a higher percentage of your body weight and you’re doing so from a less advantaged position.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The one-arm one-leg push-up calls for more core control and grinding strength than the standard one-arm push-up. Not surprisingly, it develops more, too. Here’s how to do it:Set up at the top of your push-up position and lift one arm and the opposite leg off the ground.For example, if you lift your left arm, lift your right leg off the ground; if you lift your right arm, lift you left leg.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Paleo workouts are simple and effective, so it makes sense that you may be tempted to do too much. But overtraining is a serious matter. It's a prolonged condition brought about when the body is unable to sufficiently recover from the stresses of exercise and often leads to a host of malaises. Here are a few signs of overtraining:
Depression/anxiety
Elevated resting heart rate
Lack of energy, sluggishness, exhaustion
Lack of or reverse of progress
Loss of libido
Mood swings/irritability
Weight gain
Listen to your body.
Paleo Diet Recipes
In this Paleo workout for beginners, you'll see how to combine two basic movements using kettlebells: two-hand swings and goblet squats. Starting with a set of two swings using both hands, followed by one goblet squat, you can work up to your goal of ten two-hand swings and five goblet squats.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Most likely, you’re familiar with the plank. If not, think of the plank as the top of the push-up position. The name is symbolic of the looked-for body position, which should be flat; the hips shouldn’t sag or pike up and neither should the belly.
The plank helps to develop linear core stability, or the ability to resist extension of the spine, which is the major function of your abs.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The V-up is a wonderful ab exercise to strengthen the abdominal wall, and it’s typically much easier on the back than traditional sit-ups (which often aggravate or initiate back issues). The V-up is a useful progression toward the more challenging ab exercises, such as the hanging leg raise.
Perform the V-up on a relatively soft surface and follow these steps:Lie down flat on your back with your legs fully extended and your arms next to your side.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Although many mistake the windmill for a side bend, it isn’t. This movement blends hip flexion and thoracic rotation, which means the hips support the load, not the low back. The windmill is a heavy-hitting rotational core exercise, but you must approach it with caution. Don’t rush weight onto this movement.
First, practice the windmill without weight, and then after you perfect the movement pattern, try the windmill with a kettlebell or dumbbell.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The farmer's carry is a classic strongman type of exercise. It's evident where the name comes from; what's not evident, however, is just how comprehensive this seemingly modest exercise is.
The farmer's carry is one of the finest exercises for strengthening the grip and forearms. The farmer's carry also reinforces good posture and core stability.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The waiter's carry is an overhead carry. This type of carry is slightly more demanding than the farmer's carry because it requires additional shoulder strength and mobility and core stability. Don't expect to be able to do this carry with as much weight as the farmer's carry; it just isn't going to happen.
The waiter's carry strengthens the shoulders in a very unique way, and aside from the Turkish get-up, it's one of the best ways to make your shoulders indestructible.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The bodyweight row is a horizontal pulling exercise. You can think of it almost as a reverse push-up. The row strengthens just about all the muscles of the back as well as the shoulders and biceps.
Furthermore, the row is easily scaled, like the push-up, simply by adjusting your angle. For an easier row, start more upright.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The chin-up is a pull-up with your palms facing toward you. Because most people find the chin-up easier than a standard pull-up, it’s a good place to start when working toward your first full pull-up.
The chin-up puts a greater emphasis on the biceps than the pull-up, which explains in part why some find the movement slightly easier.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The military press is an old-timey strength builder, one that fell slightly out of fashion with the advent of the bench press but is slowly starting to come back. The military press is one of the most effective upper body grinding exercises found anywhere. It builds “real-world” overhead strength — some would call that “dad strength.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Is the push-up the perfect primal exercise? In many ways, yes, it is. It hits hard not only the primary pushing muscle group — chest, triceps, and shoulders — but also many unsuspecting parts of the body, such as the abs. It can be easily scaled to accommodate all strength levels, and it’s perhaps the most shoulder-friendly pushing exercise.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Through simple deductive reasoning — that is, you’re alive, therefore, you’re breathing — you can deduce that you’ve met the simple act of breathing with a considerable amount of success. However, breathing is too complex and influential a task to be graded like finger painting or Lego blocks. And the type of breathing you need to focus on isn’t the involuntary act of breathing but the conscious type.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Many valuable attributes of Paleo fitness exist, from agility and balance to anaerobic/aerobic capacity, flexibility, and mobility, but before anything else, you ought to cultivate strength.
Know what strength really is
A haughty and somewhat respectable lifter once said that true strength is a 500-pound dead lift, a 400-pound squat, and a 300-pound bench press.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The idea that a perpetually enlarging dose of exercise — that is, spending a lot of time in the gym — will continue to improve the body’s function and appearance indefinitely is as unsound and nearly as dangerous as the notion that the complexion and health of the skin will improve in direct ratio to the number of hours spent basking in the sun.
The Paleo diet has caused quite a ruckus lately. But the benefits are now common knowledge — even the most obstinate of physicians and college professors can’t help but acknowledge them.
Here are just a few of the benefits of the Paleo diet:
Burns off body fat
Clears skin
Improves sleep
Reduces allergies
Stabilizes blood sugar
Eating the way you were designed to eat
The Paleo diet, also known as the cave man diet, is a way of eating that resembles the diet of your Paleolitic ancestors.
The notion that you need to eat every couple of hours or so is one of the more fatuous delusions of conventional wisdom. No sound scientific evidence supports this idea.
The frequent feeding frenzy was popularized by bodybuilders sometime in the 1980s, when it was proper etiquette to work two twice-baked potatoes, 12 cheesy eggs, and a side of woolly mammoth into your system at any and all junctures.
Your body needs fuel to perform, and Paleo workouts are intense, so a strong showing requires a meal before working out. You want to eat anywhere from one to three hours before you work out if possible. Now, some people can do pretty well exercising in a fasted state, so just play around with different pre-workout timelines to see what works best for you.
Paleo Diet Recipes
For Paleo fitness, if you want to work out and work out well, the truth is that all you need is a pulse. Everything else is either a bonus or a distraction.
Necessary for the participation in any given conventional fitness routine is a list of stuff that's always pretentious, expensive, and wrong. These are the "must gets," or what many may label as true necessities for fitness; they include fancy footwear, highfalutin apparel, exaggerated supplements, affected heart rate monitor — and so on and so on.
Following the Paleo fitness program is not easy; successful lifestyle changes seldom come without their trials and tribulations. However, Paleo fitness is grounded in good science, and good science produces predictable and repeatable results — that is, what can happen to one, can happen to all.
With Paleo fitness, you get out of it exactly what you put in.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The hanging knee raise works the entire abdominal wall — the upper, the middle, and the lower. It’s easy on the back and really helps develop the strength needed to complete a full hanging leg raise.
For this movement, you need something to hang off of. A pull-up bar is the obvious first choice, but a set of gymnastic rings or any other sort of hanging device will work well.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The two-point plank brings in an anti-rotational component as well as a balance challenge. For this movement to happen, you must keep everything tight, so expect a full-body challenge as well as an ample burn in the midsection.
Here’s how to do the two-point plank:
Assume a four-point plank position (see earlier section), but start with your feet approximately shoulder-width apart.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The racked carry, and even just the rack hold for that matter, is one of the most boring-looking exercises but at the same time one of the most intense. Anyone who’s spent time holding a considerable amount of weight in the rack position will quickly describe it to you as the direct opposite of a comfortable feeling, like an ever constricting straight jacket.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Walking while holding weight overhead, especially two weights — two heavy weights — is an immense challenge. Everything in the body must be working together to make this happen. The core needs to be engaged, the shoulders need to be alert, and the legs need to be limber. All muscles are put to work in this movement.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Using kettlebells in a pattern of five repeats per movement, this metabolic conditioning exercise concentrates your Paleo workout on one side at a time. With no rest between movements, you'll perform a five-each sequence of the following rounds: one-arm swing, clean, snatch, military press, and reverse lunge.
Paleo Diet Recipes
This kettlebell sequence provides a great Paleo workout that can deliver results for fat loss and metabolic conditioning. The movements begin with 2 two-hand swings, followed by 1 one-arm swings in each side, then 2 snatches on each side, and finally, 2 thrusters on each side. Work up to eight repetitions of each movement for an intense, but productive exercise sequence.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The one-arm row, quite simply, is the bodyweight row performed with one arm. Expect many of the same challenges with the one-arm row that you would with the one-arm push-up.Set up precisely how you would for a two-arm row (the more narrow your stance, the more difficult this movement will be). Release one arm from the bar or straps, but keep your shoulders and your hips square.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Everyone should be able to do pull-ups, with very few exceptions. The pull-up is by all accounts one of the best back and upper body strengthening exercises. It is an exercise of the ages, if there ever was such a thing.
The pull-up punishes those with excessive body fat, and, interestingly enough, it may even be used as a sort of body fat analysis tool.
Paleo Diet Recipes
No one can ignore the bench press or deny its effectiveness. Admittedly, this exercise isn’t for everyone, but for those who have the shoulders for it, the bench press offers huge strength returns. You may or may not have the shoulders to handle bench pressing. If you experience any pain or discomfort with this movement, stop immediately.
Paleo Diet Recipes
You can perform the dip on a set of parallel bars, gymnastic rings, or straps. Develop the dip first on the most stable surface: the parallel bars. After that, try gymnastic rings because they make for the greatest challenge and allow for more freedom of movement.
Here are the steps to the dip:Stabilize yourself on top of a set of parallel bars (or rings or straps).
Paleo Diet Recipes
The one-arm push-up develops strength in ways few exercises can. This movement requires total body control, intense focus, and raw strength. The one-arm push-up is much more than a party trick. This exercise has tremendous carry-over into all sports and activities.Set up at the top of your push-up position.Be sure to set up with your hand as close to in line with your sternum (lower chest) as possible to ensure the shoulder is kept in good position throughout the push-up.
Paleo Diet Recipes
For Paleo fitness, you can link conditioning to anything related to the strengthening of the heart muscle, and more thrillingly, fat loss. As with anything else, a heap of semantics surrounds the word conditioning. People argue that conditioning means a great many things, and they’re right. Conditioning is a word with many definitions.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Life is movement. And the opposite of movement is motionlessness, which you could say is an apt definition of death. The cave man was constantly on the move in one way or another so he suffered few of the problems that people do today, problems brought about largely from a lack of quality movement.
As people age and take on more responsibilities, they tend to slip into stillness.
The brain controls all movement (in fact, the original need for a human nervous system, from an evolutionary standpoint, was to coordinate movement). The brain contains hundreds of billions of neurons (cells), with each single neuron making thousands upon thousands of connections to other neighboring neurons. These neural connections are the circuitry that enables all activity — both mental and physical.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The double jerk basically involves cleaning two weights up into the rack position then blasting them up overhead. Like the jerk, the double jerk may serve multiple purposes. You can use it for pure power and strength generation (lifting the most possible weight overhead), or you can use it for strength endurance and metabolic purposes (lifting weight overhead for multiple repetitions).
Paleo Diet Recipes
The double snatch is identical to the single snatch with the exception of stance width (just wide enough to accommodate the weight). Simply put, the double snatch is a power bomb. You rip the weight off the ground, swing it between your legs, and explode it up overhead in one smooth, uninterrupted fashion. Completing this movement is a commendable effort to say the least.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The broad jump is an outward jump, or a distance jump (think jumping across a stream); it’s not a vertical leap. Jumping is a necessary endeavor in almost all sports and other recreational activities, so it’s important to know how to jump properly. Jumping is a tremendous tool for developing explosive lower body power and improving the rate of force production.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The push press is what people tend to do naturally when attempting to press a weight that's too heavy for them — they use their legs to help drive it up. The difference with this power movement is that you do the leg drive intentionally, not out of desperation.
The push press shows you how to generate force from the ground and transfer it through your body and up overhead.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The bird dog is an easy drill to help prime the core and to wake up any sleepy musculature. In fact, you’d benefit from throwing a few sets of the bird dog into your daily warm-up routine.
This movement helps reset reflexive core stability; specifically, it trains the core on how to prevent extension of the spine (overarching your low back or flaring your rib cage out), a common problem seen in planks and overhead presses.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The bodyweight squat is horribly overworked, and people generally lack the authentic mobility and stability to properly do one. So don’t be surprised when you discover that the goblet squat comes easier than a bodyweight squat. The natural counterbalance of the weight helps compensate for mobility issues, allowing for a greater range of motion with better form.
The clean, a powerful hip-dominant movement, develops your ability to produce, reduce, and redirect force — a necessary athletic skill, even for non-athletes. The clean can also be a tremendous cardiovascular conditioner and power builder by itself. What’s more is that heavy cleans, especially heavy double-kettlebell cleans, show you how to take a hit!
The dead lift is simply the hinge put to work. To get started practicing the dead lift, you need something to pick up. A kettlebell or a dumbbell works great to start out (eventually you’ll move on to a set of kettlebells, dumbbells, or a barbell). Most men can start out with a weight between 35 and 40 pounds and most women, between 18 and 25 pounds.
You want to perform the front squat with a barbell, solely for the reason that you can load more weight onto a barbell than you can handle with a set of kettlebells or dumbbells.
But other than the amount of weight, and the placement of the weight, the movement pattern is identical to the goblet squat or racked squat — so don’t move too hastily onto the front squat until you have those two movements mastered.
The lunge isn’t a squat per se, but it’s still a knee, or quad, dominant movement, and it’s still an extremely valuable one at that. The lunge is effectively a squat taken from a split stance, or more simply, a sort of single-leg squat.
Because most of your movement occurs either from a split stance or as the result of pushing off just one leg, you want to train the unilateral (one-limb) movements, such as the lunge, just as extensively as you train the bilateral (two-limb) movements, such as the squat.
The goblet squat is the speediest way to get someone squatting properly and quickly. Really, it’s nearly impossible to do wrong. The following steps walk you through it:Grab a kettlebell or dumbbell and hold it directly in front of the chest, like a goblet (hence, the name goblet squat).Keep the weight held as snuggly to the chest as possible.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The closest relative to the (two-arm/kettlebell) swing, the one-arm swing adds an additional grip challenge and rotary stability component (the ability to prevent rotation). Just like the two-arm swing, use a kettlebell or dumbbell for this exercise.
Because you now bear the weight by only one side of the body, a good one-arm swing can be measured directly by the amount of rotation that doesn’t occur.
The pistol squat is a full squat on one leg. It sounds simple, but, as you probably know, simple isn’t always easy — and the pistol squat is an undeniable testament to that fact.
The pistol squat requires not only brute strength but also stability, mobility, balance, and coordination. It’s not only a fantastic leg strengthener in itself but also a viable metric of your overall movement abilities.
The racked lunge not only lets you load more weight onto the movement, but it may also provide an additional challenge for your core — especially if you’re using two different size weights. You’ll know it when you feel it.
And, yes, you can use two different size weights for just about any exercise, and from time to time, you should do just that.
With a racked squat, you perform a squat with weight held in the rack position (in front of your chest). This squat is best done with two kettlebells, two dumbbells, or a sandbag. Racked squats stress the core in a unique way and light up your abs.
When starting out with “racked” exercises, start with just one weight (either a kettlebell or dumbbell) in the rack to get accustomed to the position before moving onto two weights.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The single-leg dead lift is pretty much what it sounds like — the dead lift using only one leg — with a few minor tweaks, of course. Most natural and athletic movements happen from a split stance, not an even one, so it’s equally important to train the one-limbed (unilateral) movements as it is the two-limbed (bilateral) movements.
To perform the snatch, you swing the weight back between your legs and bring it up over your head in one smooth, uninterrupted motion. This movement brings you to the pinnacle of your primal hinging progressions.
If you haven’t spent adequate time perfecting your swings, one-arm swings, and cleans, you’re not ready for the snatch.
The swing shows you how to generate power/explosiveness from your hips and is a marvelous all-around fat-chopping device. It blends strength and cardiovascular efforts, a trait shared by few exercises.
The swing also strengthens the muscles of the lower back, and strong evidence supports that swings may ward off back problems later in life.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The Turkish get-up is a primitive exercise that has you moving from just about every joint in your body, forcing you to stabilize where you need to stabilize and mobilize where you need to mobilize. Its primary purpose is to get you up off the ground safely.
Furthermore, this movement is the most comprehensive of all primal warm-ups.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The broomstick drill shows you what a neutral spine should feel like. From the outside, a neutral spine should look like a relatively flat back — no excessive arching or rounding. The spine itself is still curved, but nothing should look overly pronounced.
To perform this drill, you need a broomstick or some other long, straight, and thin object that you can line up alongside your back.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The butt-to-wall drill helps you find your optimal hinge position. In short, it shows you where exactly you should be sticking your butt. And all you need to do this drill is a chunk of wall.Find an unoccupied wall (or have someone hold a broomstick as shown).Stand directly in front of it facing away.
Assume your hinging stance, reach your butt back, and touch the wall.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The box jump takes some of the impact out of jumping because you’re landing on an elevated surface. Although the box jump is a bit more forgiving than the broad jump, it’s equally challenging and offers its own unique benefits.
For one, the box jump helps you develop stand-still explosiveness — the ability to rapidly “turn it on.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The jerk was originally intended for a single purpose: to heave the most weight overhead as humanly possible. And although that’s still a commendable purpose, the jerk has since taken on many other useful functions. When performed with a lighter load and for higher repetitions, the jerk not only remains a great power developer but also challenges the cardiovascular system.
Simple crawling movements loosen the hips, prime the core, and warm up the shoulders. Crawling also ties your movement together; it syncs the right and left hemispheres of your brain through contralateral movement — the movement of corresponding body parts on opposite sides, such as moving your right arm and left leg together and vice versa.
The pulling skill drills are geared toward helping you achieve your first pull-up. If you already have your first pull-up down, great; you can use the same ideas to progress toward the more difficult pulling variations.
The first pull-up is always the hardest to get, so be sure to set reasonable expectations for yourself.
Paleo Diet Recipes
This drill helps you to refine your push-up technique and to progress toward the more advanced push-up variations. The perfect push-up drill is a foolproof way to set up for, well, a perfect push-up! Here’s how:Lie flat on your belly with your arms extended fully next to your sides.Setting up the push-up from the bottom position helps ensure proper alignment.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Sprinting, like all other movement, is a skill. But because sprinting is such a high-velocity movement, it merits a little extra consideration than most other movements. Proper sprinting prep and mechanics can mean the difference between a fantastic workout and a torn hamstring.
This skill drill focuses on strides.
The deep squat, if you don’t already have it, can be a hard movement to regain. But if you practice these skill drills diligently — diligently being the most important word here — you can reclaim this movement. Don’t expect to restore your squat overnight, over a couple days, or even over a couple weeks. Just be patient; it will come.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Here is a simple drill to help you improve your walking technique. You can, and should, practice this drill nearly every day. You may be thinking, why do I need to practice walking? Well, the truth is, most people fake walking — that is, they don’t have proper walking mechanics. The skill drill of marching helps reset your natural contralateral walking pattern.
You should approach sprinting as an art to be practiced and nothing else. It’s not something to be thrown around loosely. Sprinting, when done right (and when done at the right times), ignites the metabolic furnace and triggers the muscle-building machinery. When done wrong, or when horribly overworked, it’s potentially injurious.
Putting healthy fats on your plate makes just about everything you do better! Fats nourish every structure and function of the body, including your very important brain. Fats also help you absorb nutrients more efficiently and keep you feeling full.
To perform well during your Paleo workouts, you need to nourish yourself with the healthiest fats you can eat.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Using kettlebells and the conditioning technique called tabata intervals, you can build up your Paleo workout through paced periods of movement, followed by rest. This video shows you how to begin metabolic conditioning with 20 seconds of two-hand swings and 10 seconds of rest, repeating at the same intervals for a goal of 4 minutes.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Using a kettlebell in each hand, you progress through this advanced workout in a sequence of five movements, with five repeats per movement. The exercise starts with double swings, moves to double cleans, goes to double snatches, builds to double military presses, and finishes with front squats. This video shows you how to work up to a solid 15-minute Paleo workout.
Paleo workouts are meant to be short and simple but immensely effective in helping you build strength, quickness, and endurance. Because the movements and routines are simple, proper form is key, and you have to guard against over-exercising. In addition, you have to make sure you're fueling your body with the right foods before and after exercise.
This video shows you how to perform a bodyweight row, which is best performed with a set of exercise straps, a suspension trainer, or gymnastics rings. First, be sure to give the straps or rings a tug to make sure they're secure. Start by leaning back and finding a challenging angle for yourself, and keep your body in a straight line from the back of your head through your tail bone.
You perform a front squat using two kettlebells, which can be the same size or different sizes. Start a front squat by bringing the kettlebells into the rack position with your forearms vertical and against your rib cage. As you squat, keep your back flat, your heels on the ground, and your knees in line with your toes.
Paleo Diet Recipes
Paleo Diet Recipes
The military press is an upper body strength builder that toughens the shoulders, strengthens the abs, and teaches total body tension. This video shows you how to perform a full military press with a kettlebell. From the kettlebell in rack position, squeeze your butt and brace your abs, and press the weight overhead into a full lockout so that your bicep is next to your ear.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The kettlebell swing strengthens your hamstrings, lower back, and butt while also burning a lot of fat. Don't extend your swing above eye level. Keep a firm grip on your kettlebell to avoid launching it and be careful when performing and completing the exercise so your kettlebell doesn't injure you or someone else.
Paleo Diet Recipes
This video shows you how to do a one arm push-up, which is one of the best body weight exercises for raw upper body strength. When performing the one arm push-up, it's important to keep the elbow tucked in closely to the side of your body, minimizing any rotation about the hips and shoulders. Start from a diamond push-up position, splitting your stance as far as needed, pull yourself down slowly and then climb back up.
The pull-up is a great body weight exercise for developing the strength of the back, shoulders, and the biceps. In this video, you'll see how to perform a pull-up from the dead hang position. As you perform the pull-up, it's important to keep your body in a straight line and descend in a controlled manner.
This video shows you how to do a classic gym exercise - the push-up. When done correctly, the push-up is a wonderful core exercise that's great for the triceps, deltoids, and pecs. To do a push-up, keep your elbows tucked in close to the sides of your body, which puts the shoulders in an optimal position to perform the movement, and ascend with your shoulders, stomach, and hips at the same rate.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The Farmer's Carry is a great exercise that brings big benefits and is easy to execute. To perform the Farmer's Carry, start with two weights on the outside of your feet and dead lift them up. Keep your focus on maintaining a good posture with the elbows locked, and go for a little walk. This movement is best performed for time or distance, rather than repetitions.
Paleo Diet Recipes
The cave man was perhaps a perfect role model for health and exercise because he didn’t try to improve something that was virtually faultless. He followed his genetic programming: He moved how he was meant to move and ate how he was meant to eat. He was fit and healthy.
In the domain of exercise today, fads come (and just as often go) like pimples on a teenybopper.
Paleo Diet Recipes
When refueling after a Paleo workout, the key is to eat within 30 minutes after you’re done to optimize recovery. When choosing what to eat post-workout, you want to focus on that fuel called glycogen. The best way to restock your glycogen stores is through starchy carbohydrates. To rebuild your tissues during this time, you also need those branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), which are found in protein sources like meat, fish, and seafood.
Paleo Diet Recipes
A workout doesn’t need to be long to be effective. Short bouts of intense exercise, like those featured in a Paleo workout, all work to boost natural growth hormone, stimulate the growth of lean muscle tissue, and boost metabolic after-burn (which can leave your metabolism elevated for up to 72 hours post-workout).
Paleo Diet Recipes
Ever wonder what you should do immediately before and after exercise? The answer is to move. Injury is largely the result of movement dysfunction, asymmetries, restrictions, and, well, general stupidity. Exercises such as crawling, rolling, and Turkish get-ups will help with the first three. As for the last one, all you can do is live by the following rule: If something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it!
Load More Articles
Related Books
0:00
0:00
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6630d85d73068bc09c7c436c/69195ee32d5c606051d9f433_4.%20All%20For%20You.mp3
Frequently Asked Questions
No items found.
