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Fitness & Health

05th Feb 2016

VIDEO: Former Royal Marine Jay Copley’s functional muscle blast workout

Increase your power

Ben Kenyon

If you’ve made it this far through our four-week muscle-building, fat burning workout series, well done.

But we’re not quite done yet. So far we’ve hit strength, raw power and thrown in a lung-busting full body attack workout.

If you’ve hit each weekly workout three times over the course of seven days you probably notice a difference in your strength and fitness.

But this final #Function workout, created with PUMA and Barrys Bootcamp body transformation specialist Jay Copley, sees all this come together with a mixture of strength, power and functional exercises.

Grab a set of dumbbells and really push hard on this one…

Function

You can have all the strength and power you want, but’s it’s useless unless you can really use it. That’s why we’ve created a workout with specific movements to ensure your body is both strong and muscular but also functional like the world’s best athletes.

Functional movement training is huge now with the rise of CrossFit and similar strength and conditioning protocols.

The squat and press is a huge power move that has the best of both world – it really is an incredible exercise. You’ll still build real strength with old school exercises like the bent-over dumbell row.

But we’ve stuck burpees in there which are a real full body, fat-burning killer that will boost your strength and conditioning.

Beginners go for 7.5kg-10kg dumbells, intermediate 10kg to 12.5kg and advanced 15kg or more.

Hit each move as hard as you can, notching up as many reps as possible in the 45 seconds. Doing this workout three times over the week you should see the amount of reps you can power through go up.

You can hit three, four or five round of this workout.

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Squat and press

Benefits:

The squat and press is simply one of the best all-around pressing exercises you can do. It hits your quads, shoulders, triceps, glutes, hamstring and core.

Because of the explosive nature of the movement, you can use considerably more weight, which not only burns more calories, but will also help you build more strength and, of course, more muscle

How to: 

1 – Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Hold the dumbbells in front of you, with your arms bent to 90 degrees and palms facing each other.

2 – Bend at your hips and knees to lower into a squat until your thighs are just past parallel to the floor. Keep the weights in front of you.

3 – As you stand back up, press the weights above your head, then bring them back to the start position to complete the rep.

Dumbbell bent-over row

Benefits:

The dumbbell bent-over row works several muscles in your upper body, including your traps, rhomboids, lats, biceps and rear shoulders.

How to:

1 – Grab a dumbbell securely in each hand. Slowly bend forward at your waist so that your chest is leaning forward over your feet. Keep a slight bend in your knees while keeping your feet at about shoulder width apart.

2 – Start with your arms fully extended, allowing the dumbbells to naturally hang down at about mid-shin level. Hold the dumbbells so that your thumbs point in toward one another and your palms face your body.

3 – Next, lift or “row” the dumbbells up to the top and close to your stomach. Slowly return to the starting position and repeat. Be sure to keep your head up, back straight and your shoulders back throughout this exercise to keep your back secure and stable at all times.

Burpees

Benefits:

Burpees are the single best bodyweight exercise you can do. They work your entire body in one brilliant, metabolic move. It will hit your core, your legs, your arms, your chest and your shoulders all in one. Burpees build strength, burn fat and really boost your conditioning if you drill them.

How to:

1 – Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, with weight in your heels and your arms at your sides.

2 – Push your hips back, bend your knees and lower your body into a squat. Place your hands on the floor directly in front of, and just inside, your feet.

3 – Jump your feet back to softly land on the balls of your feet in a plank position. Your body should form a straight line from your head to heels. Be careful not to let your back sag or your butt stick up in the air, as both can keep you from effectively working your core.

4 – Jump your feet back so that they land just outside of your hands.

5 – Reach your arms over head and explosively jump up into the air.

T rotations

Benefits:

This is perfect exercise for your arms and abs. When performed under control this exercise is insanely effective for cutting up a ripped six pack.

How to:

1 – First get into the push up position on the dumbbells.

2 – Then start by raising one arm towards the ceiling, while turning both your feet. Breathe out while you turn.

3 – Return to the start position by lowering the dumbbell and breathing in.

4 – Be sure to explode up when taking the dumbbell up towards the ceiling, then controlling the dumbbell down slowly on the return.

Close grip press on dumbbells

Benefits:

This push-up variation specifically targets your triceps (as well as your chest, deltoids and core) and big triceps make your arms look that much bigger.

Since all your muscles (including biceps and triceps) grow in pairs, bigger triceps mean bigger biceps. Doing the exercise on top of the dumbbells causes your chest to go through a greater range of movement – which means more stretch and more muscle contraction.

How to:

1 – Adopt a high plank position.

2 – Descend slowly while keeping elbows in.

3 – Pause for two seconds at the bottom.

4 – Push up while keeping elbows in.

https://youtu.be/g2_tse84nmU