Wedding Workout with PUSH.tv and Mike Monroe

by Mike Monroe, Fitness Director for PUSH.tv: Customized Personal Training DVD's

So this is it, you have committed to commit - you are getting married. Congratulations! And now you want to get fit and look FABULOUS for all the engagement fanfare and of course the big day--so many photos and so little time.

I have trained many a bride, and their two main goals are to be thin enough to fit into that dress and to have nice muscle tone, especially in the arms and upper body. I am here to tell you that if you work hard and are disciplined, you can have the success that I have been a part of, firsthand.

We have two things we need to focus on in order to achieve those goals. Let's first address getting lean. This happens in two main ways - diet and cardiovascular training (CVT). On the diet front, you don't have to starve yourself. You do have to eat a little less. My advice is to choose healthy options (Example: cookie vs. apple? - take the apple) and to eat small, well-balanced meals. Include plenty of vegetables and protein, and lay off heaping amounts of breads/pastas/potatoes/sugars. Remember, food is fuel for your body. If you don't need the fuel, then you don't need to eat. Don't eat for the sake of eating.

Now let's move on to the CV work. You have a good diet and now we need to get the body to burn some additional calories. Increasing what your body is doing during the day, in the form of aerobic activity, will mean that your body needs to burn more of the fat and stored carbohydrates. This, remarkably, will result in weight loss! You can pick any activity you like as long as you do it with consistency and with some intensity. I recommend a minimum of 150 minutes of CVT a week for someone trying to tone-up and lose some weight. But wait a minute, don't shoot me - You don't have to do all 150 minutes at one time! Break it up however you want. Three 50 minute segments per week is a good way to do it, or you can do five 30 minutes bouts - whatever works best for you. Your intensity should be high but not so high that you can't complete a full sentence if a friend stops by to say hello while you are on the treadmill.

So now we have our diet and CVT all set. These are two of the three keys to success if we are going to be the OMGLAH Bride (aka "Oh My Gosh, Look At Her" Bride). The last piece of the puzzle is working those muscles that people see when you are in your beautiful dress - biceps/triceps/shoulders/upper chest/upper back. I call these the "Bride-Makers". Try these exercises to really bring out the best in your "Bride-Makers":

Decline hold or decline pushup - Kneel on the edge of your couch or a chair, with your feet in the air. Perform a good pushup taking the entire upper body down as close the floor as possible. The body should remain in a straight line through the top of the head so if you get to the ground your forehead should be the first thing to touch the floor. If you can't do a full pushups simply go ¼ or ½ way down and then back up. Work your way up until you can do full range of motion. Try 2 sets of 8-12 repetitions.

Dips with one leg extended - Sit in a sturdy chair with your hands on the chair, under your thighs and knuckles facing forward. Feet are on the floor initially. Ease your body off the chair so that your arms are supporting your body. Extend one leg straight out and perform a dip, bending the arms until they reach a 90 degree angle at the elbow, while keeping the head and chest upright. After the set/switch to the other leg. Try 2 sets of 8-12 repetitions per leg.

Superwoman - Lie facedown on the floor with your elbows bent, palms down and thumbs even with your ears. Arch your head and upper body off the floor (you can raise the legs up too if you want more of a challenge). Keep your face toward the floor and not facing forward when you are up in order to prevent added stress on the back of the neck. Once arched, straighten your arms directly out as if you were Superwoman flying across the sky. Hold for a one-count and then bring arms back until even with the ears. Repeat that in-out movement of the arms. Try 2 sets of 10-15 repetitions.

Arm Circle Series - Stand with your arms straight and hands in fists. Arms are along side your body and hands are by your hips. Raise your arms up until parallel with floor. Perform small arm circles to the front, then circles to the rear. From there, bring your hands out in front of you, still parallel to the ground. Perform circles outward and then inward from this position. Lastly, put your arms overhead and perform circles outward and inward while your arms are overhead. Try 2 sets of 8-10 arm circles per position.

Shoulder Sweeps - Grab two objects you can pick up (and are heavy enough that you feel some resistance). You can use dumbbells or exercise bands or if you don't have any equipment, water bottles work great. Stand up and hold the objects (let's say you are using bottles) by your hips with straight arms and palms facing your hips (knuckles out). From there, raise your arms up laterally until your straight arms are parallel to the floor. Once there, sweep the arms forward until the bottles touch in front of you then sweep back to the side. Lower the bottles down to your hips and repeat. Try to 2 sets of 10-15 repetitions.

Super 30 Curls - Grab two objects you can pick up (and are heavy enough that you feel some resistance). Again, water bottles work great here. Perform 10 x "½ up-curls" (from your hips to half way up the range of motion) then perform 10 x "½ down-curls" (from your shoulders to ½ down the range of the motion) then perform 10 full range of motion curls. Try 2 sets of 30 repetitions.

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About the Author:

Mike Monroe is a nationally known and certified personal training guru. He is the Fitness Director for PUSH.tv and is the architect behind the PUSH.tv customized personal training DVD program. His clients include a host of high net worth individuals and range from complete novices to professional athletes, and from celebrities to socialites. His personal training philosophy stems from a lifetime of adventure and charitable work. He served 12 years in the US Marine Corps with combat operations in the Gulf and Somalia. As an endurance sports competitor, he's completed dozens of adventure races including a 150-mile ultra-marathon through the Western Sahara, aka "The Toughest Footrace in the World" (gulp). To boot, he's competed in five Ironman triathlons and has used many of his endurance events as platforms for charity - raising upwards of $180,000 for such causes as The Children's Hopes and Dreams Foundation and The Alan T. Brown Foundation to Cure Paralysis. Mike founded "Moms Who Marathon," an empowering program that gets Moms with little or no running experience into kick-a** marathon shape. Just recently, Mike embarked on a new endurance challenge to benefit spinal cord research. In this grueling physical and mental year long challenge, Mike will bench press his body weight 10,000 times, do 10,000 push ups, pull-ups, sit-ups as well as a host of other "10,000" tasks.

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