Freestyle training

[daffny27daisy]

Anyone know about this concept? I want to incorporate this into my workouts (specifically lower body - I build too much muscle in my legs and now they are a little larger than I'd like)....... I LOVE lifting and I always to the exact amount that Cathe does, but my husband has told me that my legs are ready to "cross over" From the feminine side and he's encouraged me to stop doing weights on my legs all together and just focus on step for lower body. I don't want to completely eliminate weights on my lower body.... cuz I love lifting and challenging workouts! I have started mixing things up and making changes.... which, drives me INSANE! I have dropped my weights condierabely for lower body, not going above 20 lbs for excercises and using only dumbells for the most part.

I have begun researching "free style" but it only informs me how great it works for my type of problem.... how toned and defined you can keep your lower body with ..... then..... it's always, "buy this book to learn about the training".... !!! I don't want to buy a book or another excercise video or my husband will kill me! Can anyone just basically tell me the concept? I know enough about weight lifting/cycling/cardio/resistance training/nutrition/form..... etc. that it would probably would be a waste of money for me to buy a book just to understand a few single concepts............ anyone?? Thanks!

 

[CathydsRNA]

Basically the concept is to exercise the lower body at least 5x a week and preferably 6x/week and do at least 3 sets of 5-6 exercises per workout session. Less than this would not be freestyle. If you use weights, you must use about 75% of what you can maxiamlly lift with good form for a set of 10 reps. A lower emphasis on squats and similar exercises and a higher level of focus on lunges and reverse lunges and lunge variations. The book recommends working out all lower body parts during each workout as opposed to focusing on just glutes and quads for example one day and hamstrings and clves the next as the premise of the book is not to give any lower body muscle group much rest. With that being said they do include programs where different lower body parts are worked every other day. You should also rotate the types of exercises you do. Lower body stretching is also an important compont of the program as is cardio but only about 3 cardio sessions are recommended/week. Although not much discussed on these boards, upper body training is another component of freestyle with the focus on triceps and a much lowe focus on chest work. I follow the program for lower body work only.

 

[daffny27daisy]

Wow.... thanks for the info! I learned something new today This sounds really interesting. You know what's funny..... for about a month now, I have been doing lower weights/higher reps on the legs and working them at least 5x per week..... not going over 10lb dumbells (this is going down from 40-50 lbs on the barbell!)......similar to what you were saying. I have already noticed a difference in my legs... they actually look like they are getting more cut & lean..... I would have never thought that lighter weights would make such a difference! I will certainly be playing around with this freestyle stuff for the lower body! I will continue to keep my routine at lower reps for another month and that way I can really see if there are changes! I have most definitely noticed a big cut in my teardrop on my quad! Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond!