Hey Everybody!

Long workday for The Muscle Couple.  Anh’s mother returned home to Houston today after being with us for the last 18 days.  We’ll miss her tremendously and so will the Muscle B.  She is such a great Grandma and an even better chef.  We’ll be eating authentic Vietnamese food for months as she saturated our freezer with “bomb dishes”.  Many thanks to her and safe travels back.

I wanted to quickly point out a new exercise we encountered over the weekend at Gold’s Venice.  I’ve attached a video and and a pic of Anh performing the exercise.  I don’t think many commercial gyms in the world have access to this machine, but if yours does, I would recommend it highly as a great “finishing exercise” for any workout.

You can set the timer and perform reps until the time runs out or you can start with long full ROM(Range of Motion)pulls with each arm raised as high as possible and then pulled down “elbow to the thigh” emphasizing your lats at the prime mover in executing the movement.  As you get towards the last 20 seconds of your set time, shorten the pull ROM and grab and pull more frequently, keeping your arms and shoulders closer together as I demonstrate in the video.

Doing it this way dramatically increases the resistance of the machine and offers more of a lactic acid burn and cardio workout(as evidenced by my facial expressions toward the end of the lift). 

This is a real bear and I can only imagine the benefit this movement will provide to your upper torso and cardio endurance over time.

Notice her technique of fully extended arm to pull down elbow to thigh

Perform three sets of this exercise at the end of your workout a couple of times a month and you will get a tremendous final kcal burn to end your session.

MIHWCS