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Workout Wednesday for 17AUG22

Workout Wednesday for 17AUG22

Last updated on: August 17, 2022 at 11:55 am by Ben Hartford

Workout Wednesday for 17AUG22 2022-08-17T11:55:28-04:00 Ben Hartford

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Just thought I’d share what I’m listening to today. Please visit Paul J. Kim and attend an even that he is at if you get the chance. Copyright Paul J. Kim, 2012.

Welcome to Workout Wednesday. Every Wednesday, I’ll be talking a little about my training philosophy, explaining the exercises and giving you a free workout. As I’ve mentioned before, by night I’m a Catholic writer and nerd, but by day I’m a strength coach, personal trainer and strength athlete. I’ve done this as my full-time job since 2016, and part time in some capacity or another since 2006. As always, you should check with a doctor before embarking on any exercise journey. If you have any specific questions, you can ask them directly on either my Facebook fitness page, or my Instagram fitness page.

The why of this Workout Wednesday

Last Workout Wednesday featured a full-body workout that can be done just about anywhere. Today, we’ll push out a typical lower body workout that I might program for my strength athletes. It will feature squatting, deadlifting, leg curls and extensions, ab work and a little cardio.

Squatting is the king of exercises for a reason. As our heavenly king is creative and when we adhere to him, the body of Christ grows, the squat forces muscle growth all over the body (Wilk et al., n.d., https://www.nel.edu/userfiles/articlesnew/1545603395_39_4_wilk_342-pdf.pdf).

I will often call for something like a using a specialty bar (safety squat bar, cambered bar, Marrs bar for squatting; football bar, swiss bar, axle bar for pressing; axle bar for deadlifting). If you don’t have access to them, you’ll be fine. They are great tools, but not necessary for strength and muscle gains.

The what of this Workout Wednesday

But first, a few conventions for those that might not know. You’ll need to understand that exercises are given in terms of “sets” and “repetitions” or “reps”. For example, “Goblet Squat 3×12” means to perform a set (or group of repetitions) of goblet squats (which you can see this nice gentleman doing in the video above) 3 times. Each set will consist of 12 repetitions of goblet squats before resting. Unless otherwise noted, you should always warm up with lighter weight, and move up to heavier weight over 2-3 increments before you reach the “working sets” (in this case, the 3×12). Form is crucial. I will go over form for some of the more esoteric exercises I give to you, but a great resource that I often send clients to is www.exrx.net/Lists/Directory. I have yet to fundamentally disagree with any of their information.

Lower body workout for strength and secondarily size.

Specialty Bar Squat 5×5 – you don’t need to sit on the ground, but your hip crease should at the very least be parallel to the top of your knee cap. Warm up over 3-5 sets (depending on how strong you are) and then start counting the sets once you hit a heavy 5.
Romanian deadlift 3×8 – lengthen the hamstrings and glutes and then contract hard to stand back up.
Superset: 5×10 – a superset means you do one exercise for the prescribed repetitions and then your “rest” is doing the other exercise.
-Leg Curls -don’t let your back arch while doing these
-Leg Extensions
Standing Cable Crunches 100 heavy crunches
Rower 4x500m sprints with 1 minute of rest between sets

If you do this workout and like it, let me know!

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About Ben, The Nerdy Papist

Ben is just your run-of-the-mill Catholic man that was raised Methodist – for a while – who then tried to sell his soul to Satan, who then was an angry atheist, who then was a Wiccan magick practitioner, who then became a Baptist, who then became a Catholic. You can read more about the author here.

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