power lunges/scisors

[et]

Cathe, you just leave me in the dust with two things: biceps and power scisors. I'm actually making progress on the biceps and have increased my weights on them but I'm getting very frustrated with my lack of progress on power lunges (in L&G and I-max, body max I think also). I'm short and muscular with very developed quads (I build muscle easily), so I LOOK like I'd be able to handle them no problem; yet even after years of Imax I still can't complete half of them, oh the burn! And my legs become Jello afterwards. It's very frustrating to have wimpy thunder thighs!

Could it be my form? I do have to be careful to have most of the weight in my front heal when I do stationary lunges or my back knee can start to hurt, and it's not so easy to do that on power lunges.
Any suggestions on how to get through them?
Thanks
Elisa

 

[Aquajock]

RE: power lunges/scissors

I'm not Cathe, but I thought I'd share what worked for me:

I-Max 1 was the first Cathe workout I ever did, and the power scissors used to be the Grand Dragon interval, even more so than the dreaded Interval 10 (what I call The Doom Interval).

What helped me develop power scissors was to insert / substitute a few reps of power scissors in other parts of Cathe's routines that might normally call for grounded movements or lower-impact movements (for example mambos, walk-travelling forward and back, etc.). Just a few reps, maybe 8 max, here and there rather than a dedicated interval that brought me to temporary failure. I found that if I sprinkled them here and there in other non-interval workouts, when I got back to power scissors in an interval I was able to last longer and longer with them.

Now I'm able to do the power scissors interval straight through, AND add on 16 more at the end than Cathe & Crew do, and then skip the recovery segment and go straight to the aerobic segment of Section #9.

Hope this helps. I think the power scissor is the single best leg power-developer exercise out there. Well worth the effort.

A-Jock

 

[clareMc]

Elisa:

I know what you mean, these used to burn me too. At one time I could not complete the whole set on Imax and dreaded it. But now Power Scissors is a favourite plyo move, espcecially the series on CTX Kickbox.

I think that what worked for me was building the endurance for my legs, with lost of "Leaner Legs" and doing Circuit Max but substituting barbell squats and lunges where Cathe does the compound work with weights, in between the cardio segments. Each of these workouts done once a week form part of my routine when I am in peak form. After this I realized that I could power scissor with no trouble at all and loved the burn! Once you can build up your muscle endurance, these make you feel strong!

Even though you say you have a lot of muscle: how is your leg muslce endurance?

Could be time to swop the Slow and heavy series and PS legs for Leaner legs and PLB. Give them a try.

Also, when you are building up your tolerance for power scissors, make it a mental thing, not a physical one. Think in counts of eights: apart from power fifteens and sevens, all Cathe's choreography is counted in repeated beats of 8, so do an eight and count them up, then start counting the next eight, and so on. Usually this helps to psyche myself out, it's easier to think in terms of multiples of eights when doing an exercise that really burns, rather than thinking, "Oh god, I have to keep going for a whole minute, I'll never last" or "oh no, I have to do 32 of the bu**ers!"

Its a trick that works for me! Give it a whirl...

Clare

Clare

 

[et]

Aquajock and Clare,
Thanks so much, these are great suggestions. I'll work on building my leg endurance since that seems to be missing. Because I tend to bulk up I already do a lot of circuits workouts and my favourite leg workouts are PLB and L&G, but I should go back to LL for awhile. I really dread LL and haven't done it in many months, so that's an indication right there. CTX kickbox is another great workout I haven't done for awhile. I love the idea of throwing in just a few power scissors here and there. With spring finally arriving I'll be doing more running too. I haven't found that helped much before, but all these in combination might do the trick. I'll let you know when I can complete the whole I-max interval.

What do you think of this rotation?
Power Scissors rotation
T L&G
W I-MaxI (am) PUB (pm)
Th Leaner Legs + few sets of power scissors if still alive
F CTX kickbox + short run
S Body Max (or SJP if tired)
S long run + few sets of power scissors
M rest


Thanks again,
Elisa