The Fit Blog

The Summer has only a couple days left and while that means shorter and cooler days are looming, it also means that the Fall TV lineup is right around the corner. Personally, I don’t have many favourite TV shows anymore, but as a glutton for super-hero related stuff, I like to set aside space on my PVR specifically for NBC’s Heroes.
Heroes Season 3, “Villains”, begins September 22 and looks sweet as usual. With the season premiere being less than a month away, I thought it prudent to do some Heroes related research to see what king of training the cast actually go through. I came across this video of Hayden Panettiere’s workout at a “training session” in West Hollywood with her trainer :

Now, granted, Hayden has youth on her side (she’s 18). So maintaining a fit physique requires minimum effort (relatively anyway). Keeping up with this “routine” her “trainer” puts her through, along with a middle of the road diet would probably keep the cameras on here for some time to come. But seriously this routine is as good as my baking and unfortunately is a similar routine to what probably 80% of the people do at a given time at a gym.
Here’s two reasons why I think it sorta sucks:

1. Stair Master – unless you’re stair mastering full tilt, you’re looking at a waste of time. Working glutes isn’t a bad thing at all, but there are more efficient ways of doing so. Lunges ring a bell. Cleans and snatches fit the bill too. The bonus of these exercises is being able to get more work into less time. Intensity is the name of the game. 15 minutes of lunges and cleans with weight will get you light years further than an hour on the stair master. And there’s nothing more bothering to me than watching people on the stair master for an hour, reading magazines. If, however, you’d like to incorporate stairs in your routine, then just use a box or some real stairs and go hard. Bah… I loathe the stair master.
2. The Curl – curls with heavy weight aren’t the greatest exercise as they target such a specific group of muscles and are such a non-functional exercise. However, heavy curls do promote biceps tone\hypertrophy and if that’s what you’re looking for, then so be it. But curls with a small weight (less than 75% max, I’d say) are useless. You’re not going to “tone” anything with that – in fact, you’re not going to be doing much of anything for yourself either. With curls, go heavy or don’t bother. And if fitness or getting lean is a goal, then curls are worthless and at best just a bonus exercise (with max weight).

The biggest problem with these exercises is that when included in a routine as major elements, they’re really just a waste of time. A superior workout, done in a 10th of the time would have simply been something like 50 dumbbell snatches + 50 lunges.

In: celebs | | #