need to lean up in 3 weeks!

hkbecky

Active Member
Hi Cathe,

This is so childish, but I've been asked to be the MC at my friend's wedding in 3 weeks! My arch nemesis will also be there and I MUST look better than she does!

I will be wearing a nice spaghetti strapped dress and would love love love to have toned arms - a la Jennifer Aniston. I'm so almost there, but still got about 1" of flab on the tricep area that just won't budge. I'm currently 5'4" and weighing 115lbs. I'm not at my ideal body fat% and would love to be more lean. I eat clean and workout with your dvds 4-5 times a week with 3-4 cardio and 2 weight days.

Is this an impossible task for 3 weeks or is there any intense exercises/eating regime that could help? I'm even considering weight loss pills just to get there and look good!:p

thanks!!
 
hkbecky,

WHOOOOOOOOA!! Slow down! I wouldn't outdo yourself and get overtrained! Do you have the workout Gym Style:Chest and Triceps?? It's from the Hardcore series. If you don't you could get that to help your tricep area and if you don't want to wait a week to be able to have the workout you could just get some ideas off of the video clip.

Just a little advice- I wouldn't work your tricep muscles on consecutive days more than 3 times per week.

It sounds like you already have a pretty good fitness schedule! Keep eating clean (eat your food in its purest state) and keep doing what you are already doing and you should be in shape for that wedding in no time! ;-)

Rebecca Dotson
 
I like how you said you are soo almost there. It proves that What you are doing is actually working(wooo-hooo)!

Keep it up and fine tune the eating and especially watch your sodium intake! This will help tighten things up with the clean eating and your training ;-) Also add in 2 days a week of supplemental tricep work by picking 3 different exercises doing higher reps(20)(or heavier,low rep range 6-8 if you are already doing high rep or bodyweight exercises-mix it up and make sure the 2 days you train have different programs)

Heres a link below of exercise programs to give you an ex !
You can also click on the link below the info for pictures!

Good luck!

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/triwork.htm
 
I was sort of in the same situation a few months ago in getting ready for my wedding. Only a few weeks before the wedding, my arms were not looking like I wanted them to. I had been doing mostly muscle endurance type workouts and not enough cardio. I started following Cathe's Upper Body Bliss rotation and it helped a lot. I do no have slow and heavy, but did the same exercises listed at the gym in a very slow count and it seemed to work fine. The gym styles would be harder to recreate so I would get those if you don't already have them. My advice from everyone on this board was to lift heavy and do lots of cardio in order to get the job done in a short period of time. I just wish I had started a rotation with heavier weights sooner!

Here is the upper body bliss rotation:

http://69.0.137.118/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=7&topic_id=4045&mesg_id=4045&page=4

and here is the description of the slow and heavy exercises

http://shop.cathe.com/product_p/350.htm

Hope this helps!

- Diane
 
Hi HKBecky! Well doing anything drastic weight loss wise usually leads to droopy skin because the skin has not had the proper amount of time to retract from the drastic body fluid losses. Thats why I believe doing everything in moderation is a better approach.

As far as weights, if you overtrain your muscle (work it 4 or more times per week), it will not respond because it will not have had time to recover and therefore will maintain at best.

I say that right now you have to really get ultra serious about everything that goes in your mouth (perhaps moreso than you currently are), no extra unwanted calories and no processed foods, for the next three weeks (but no starving either or again we deal with the hanging skin issue).

Drink lots of water to help flush exercise byproduct out of your system and keep your skin glowing too.

When working your triceps, do slow reps with the heaviest weight you can handle properly and work some negative sets too (if you have a spotter better yet). In addition to a variety of tricep exercises, I personally find lying barbell extensions to really attack the flabbiest part of my tricep the best (and with a spotter, you can do a few sets with negatives with maximum output (lowering the barbell down slower than going up)). Then finish your tricep workout with a resistance band doing standing overhead extensions for high reps to feel a nice little "fire" in the muscle.

Good Luck!
 
Thanks so much for everyone's input. I will definitely implement everyone's suggestions. I do have the Gym Style and Slow & Heavy series so I will tackle those first.

But I thought that there was no such thing as 'spot reducing'? But from what i gathered with your advice, doing tricep weight training will help reduce the flab in that area?

So i should do heavy weights with lower reps or heavy weights with high reps as well?

Thank you to all! Cathe you're my inspiration!


:7
 
Haven't posted here in a while....but here's my 2 cents...

You can't spot reduce but by eating clean as Cathe suggested, you'll lose any fat that may be hiding the muscles in your arms. From what I understand, diet = 80% of the results you'll get from your workouts.
 
>But I thought that there was no such thing as 'spot reducing'?
> But from what i gathered with your advice, doing tricep
>weight training will help reduce the flab in that area?

You can't spot reduce, but you can spot tone/spot build muscle, which is what the triceps exercises will do.

Losing fat/weight is a matter of expending more calories (through your basal calorie needs + activity level) than you take in (from food).

Another suggestion I didn't see here: kickboxing/boxing workouts, which work the arms and shoulders while you get a cardio workout.

You might try doing 2 kickboxing workouts on non-consecutive days) and 1 interval workout (like an IMAX, for fat burning) a week.
 
Thanks everyone for your input, it clarifies a lot.

My diet has always been kind of difficult to monitor since I live in Hong Kong and a lot of the diet here consists of noodles and rice.

Sometimes, for the sake of convenience I eat fast-food 1-2 lunch meals per week. But try to budget those calories so I don't take in more than I'm expending. I hope this still means I'm eating clean :p

It would be great to know how many calories Cathe's workouts burn. I think there was another thread on that somewhere. That plus monitoring my intake closely should help reduce the additional flab.

I'm trying a 5-day workout cycle with 60mins of cardio 3x per week and the other 3x will be gym styles and other cardio & weight mixes. i usually try to do a double-whammy on Sundays...

Thanks again ladies:7
 

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