up-chain your workout

Adding an up-chain to your workout is a super-simple way to boost the effectiveness of your training. Even better, up-chains can be used in whatever way suits your training goals, the equipment available to you and the time you want to spend training.

An up-chain circuit is a great way of increasing your strength and fitness because as you progress through your reps, each exercise will get more challenging, and then once you have done the highest number of reps in your chain, you go back to the start and it gets more manageable again. Working in this way means that you cycle through varying levels of intensity and this make the workout more achievable but also more challenging overall.

Here’s an example to show how it works:

• If you were doing a squat and shoulder press as a continuous pattern of 1 rep of each, for a total of 2 minutes, you might gradually tire (& get bored?), but the exercise itself doesn’t  become more demanding on your body
• If you use those same two exercises as an up-chain you would do 1 x squat, 1 x shoulder press, 2 x squats, 2 x shoulder press, 3 x squats, 3 x shoulder press, 4 x squats, 4 x shoulder press, 5 x squats, 5 x shoulder press, and then start again with 1 x squats, 1 x shoulder press, and so on which would create more muscle overload in the same period of time

Once you have understood the basic principle, you can tailor your workout to suit your needs and there is no limit to what you can include in your workout. Watch the video &/or click on the link below for ideas about how best to tweak your up-chain to suit your needs and a sample up-chain workout:

• 1-5 up-chain workout

I hope you have some fun creating your own up-chain workouts – this one is based on my HI-LI fitness circuit class last week but there is no end to the variations you can make so please feel free to change it as much as you need.

Let me know if you have any questions at all

Jx