Fitness Junction

This week:

• Knowledge Corner: Finishers

• Monthly Challenge Update: Daily Planks

• Meme Center: Nic Cage, say less

Knowledge Corner: Finishers

Finishers are a short but intense way to wrap up your workout. They are the cherry on top of your fitness sundae. By incorporating a final moment of focus and effort, a finisher can assist you in getting from good to great.

Finishers come in lots of flavors. What they all share in common is an emphasis on pushing towards failure in pursuit of an extra dose of muscle endurance or hypertrophy (muscle growth).

One method is to use a rep countdown. Pick an exercise or two, and then utilize a rep scheme that drops one rep each set until you hit zero. For example, if you want to give your chest and triceps a coup de grâce, do a superset of dips and diamond pushups. First set would be five reps of each, second set would be four, etc. until you hit zero. Pick a starting number that works best for you and thank me later.

Another route would be isometric exercises, where you hold a position for as long as possible. You could finish off leg day with a wall-sit (hold a weight for an extra challenge) or end a back workout by seeing how long you can hold your chin over a pullup bar.

The last option I'll mention is a drop set. This entails quickly dropping weight from a lift once you hit failure and then doing more reps until you hit failure again at the lighter weight. You can do this multiple times within a single set. Machines makes drop sets easy with their adjustable weight stacks, but free weight drop sets are just as effective if you have enough equipment. You can use smaller kettlebells/dumbbells to drop to or just shed plates from your barbell. Whatever tool you use, by hitting failure multiple times within one set, you'll achieve excellent gains.

Trivia

How many NCAA basketball championships did John Wooden win as the UCLA head coach?

• A. 7

• B. 10

• C. 12

• D. 15

March Challenge: 2min Plank Every Day

Welp, thought this one would be easy but already messed up twice. Turns out that little things like this can easily slip your mind on a busy day. Now, we set an alarm that goes off every night to remind us to knock out the plank. This can be a useful trick for helping you cement any new habit into your routine. And don't worry, we made up for our missed planks with double duty on subsequent days.

Meme Center

Trivia answer: B. 10. Coach Wooden led his team to ten national titles in twelve years from 1964-1975, including a record seven straight. You don't have to be a basketball fan to respect that level of greatness, or to benefit from his lasting wisdom.

P.S. Hope everyone's bracket is doing better than mine.

Thank you for reading this week's Fitness Junction! If you aren't already, subscribe here and share the newsletter with anyone you think will enjoy it. Click the button below to learn more about Natural Function Fitness and our services.