Setting Fitness Benchmarks
Goal-setting for the New Year
As the end of the year approaches, we often reflect on the events of the past year personally, professionally, and physically! This is a great time to celebrate the wins and identify opportunities for improvement.
One way to set fitness goals is through “Benchmark” workouts. These are workouts that set a specific physical task within a specific time domain and a score is calculated. After the workout, you may have noted strengths and relative weaknesses that can be celebrated and lead to opportunities for improvement. 3-6 months later, you can revisit the same workout and strive to improve your score.
CrossFit was inspired by military-style training to improve general physical preparedness. You will often find workouts that are named after fallen men and women in service and are called “Hero workouts”. These workouts are great for use as “Benchmarks” to test your fitness now and re-test later.
This week’s workout is a modification of a Hero workout called “Jack”. This workout targets upper and lower body strength and power, hip extension, and cardiovascular endurance.
Why midlife women should do this workout:
Build upper and lower body muscle strength, power, and muscle mass for better metabolic health, longevity, and body composition.
Cardiovascular stimulation for a healthy heart
Plyometrics for bone density and cardiovascular health
Warm Up
AMRAP 7 (As many rounds as possible in 7 minutes)
10 up-downs
10 air squats
10 easy push-ups (knees, toes or elevated on a stable box, bench or chair)
Movement Practice
Take 5-10 minutes to review the workout movement videos and options below and select your weights and movements for the workout.
The prescribed workout weight “RX” is noted below the workout for reference. These weights are for more advanced athletes. If you are a beginner or intermediate athlete, select movement options and weights that you can perform confidently where each set of 10 repetitions can be performed in no more than 2 sets with a brief rest in between. Once you have selected your weights/options, practice 3-5 repetitions of each movement in the order written in the workout to be sure you are comfortable with the flow between movements.
Movement options
Push Press (Alternative: dumbbell push press)
Kettlebell Swing (American) (Alternative: Swing to eye level; If no kettlebell, - Double dumbbell swing
Box Jump - (Alternative: Weighted box step-ups or dumbbell thrusters).
Workout
AMRAP 20 (As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes)
10 Push presses
10 Kettlebell Swings
10 Box jumps
Score: Number of completed rounds and repetitions.
(RX for women 75# barbell, 35# kettlebell, 20-inch box jump)
TIP! Manage fatigue by slowing down your repetitions. This allows you to achieve some “rest” while continuing to accumulate repetitions.
*Be sure to document your movement options and weight choices so that you can replicate the workout for your “re-test”.
Cool Down
As an expert in the hormonal physiology of the stress response system, I cannot overstate the importance of a thorough cool-down after an intense fitness benchmark workout. Yoga is my go-to because it promotes whole-body flexibility and mobility care as well as calming the mind and increasing the vagal tone needed for our stress response system to return to baseline.
Indulge yourself in this 15-minute full-body stretch yoga sequence to jumpstart your recovery! #dontskiptheyoga
NOW BOOKING APPOINTMENTS!
If you are an active woman or competitive midlife athlete who feels abandoned by mainstream medicine, I’m here for you!
It is with great excitement that after more than 2 years of preparation, I have FINALLY launched my Telehealth Consultation Medical practice focusing on the Reproductive Endocrine needs and Menopausal Care for active, athletic, and high-performing women.
Active and athletic midlife women have needs and risk profiles that are different from the general population. These needs often go unmet by the mainstream medical community due to a lack of understanding of fitness and sport and their impact on mid-life hormonal physiology or even a lack of acknowledgment that this dynamic exists. We put your health, fitness, and performance at the center of the equation so that you can achieve your healthiest, highest-performing self!
You will find all my service offerings on my website including a link to my calendar so that you can reserve your place in my schedule!
To celebrate the official launch, I’m offering $75 OFF my Health and Wellness Concierge service! Simply provide the code CONCIERGE75 in a message to us to redeem the discount once you request your appointment. The discount will be applied at the time the appointment request is processed.
Hi Jennifer! Thank you so much for the kind words and for subscribing! You ask a great question! One of the things we need to pay more attention to in mid-life is recovery.... that means adequate fueling/protein AND carbohydrate intake to support our training, thorough warm-up and cool-down, tissue care such as foam rolling, mobility work, massage/body work and most importantly - SLEEP! A common misconception is that we need to slow down in mid-life, but what we really need to do is focus more on recovery. If we can do that, we will be able to engage in those intense workouts and avoid injury. Hope this helps! If you want to learn more about this, you can check out my post "Stop Demonizing Cortisol" along with several podcast appearances where I discuss this very issue. You can find those on my website www.drcarlad.com in the MEDIA section. Hope this helps and thank you again for subscribing! Happy Holidays!!! :) -Carla
Hi, Dr. DiGirolamo! I love your newsletter and get excited every time I see a new one posted. I wanted to ask about your thoughts on overuse injury or those stemming from too much load or too many reps in women in their 50s & 60s. The inflammatory response can be brutal and cruel when all we're trying to do is push a little harder to improve fitness (even while being careful and prudent in the process!). It can be so hard to overcome these issues and keep going!