Lean Circuit 1: The Game has Changed

So, yeah.  Lean Circuit 1.  Or as I like to call it, Fart Circuit 1.

Lean Circuit 1 is back to more combos.  Where the Push Circuits targeted one muscle group per exercise, Lean Circuit one is back to combos, like the Burn Circuits.

The difference is, these are a ton harder.  In the Lean Circuit exercises, well, in the first one so far, almost your entire body is engaged in EACH exercise.  When I finished, I felt like previously enjoyed dog food.  My entire body was wrecked.

But there's another side-effect from this exertion.  If you had any gas in your body, it's going to escape.  When you are tensed up such, it gets expelled.  Forcefully.  It's safe to say I farted my way through Lean Circuit 1.  It was like a butt symphony.  Everybody loves the cymbal crashes and cannon blasts in the 1812 Overture.  Not sure anybody would appreciate me recreating that with my ass cannon.  I'd do a bicep curl combined with a squat...fart.  Triceps extension combined with a leg curl...fart.  Hammer curl combined with a sumo squat...fart. It was pretty epic.  If I didn't feel like I was near death, I would have been laughing all the way through it.

There were 2 exercises in particular that were just excruciatingly painful for me.  The second, a row in the plank position, I'll cover next week, but the first, a bicep curl with a calf raise I'll cover here.

With your hand against a chair for balance, and a weight in the other hand, you lift one leg up behind you.  As you curl the weight, you lift, using your calf, up onto your toes.  Without bringing the weight all the way to your shoulder, you hold in this position for two counts.  Then, as you lower the weight SLOWLY, you lower your calf at the same pace, so the weight and your heel reach bottom position at the same time.

(I'm either working out or being faaaaabulous here...not sure which)

Yeah.  It looks kinda like that.  You do that twelve times ON EACH SIDE.  Holy crap.  The reps themselves aren't the killers.  It's the speed.  You have to do it so deliberately.  By the time you're done, you are destroyed.  AND THEN YOU HAVE TO DO THREE MORE EXTRA EXTRA SLOW.

If the other Lean Circuits are like this...I'm stoked.  They're going to be a huge difference for me, I think.  I only lost about 2 pounds this week, definitely off the pace I had been keeping so far.  I'd like to get that back up to 3-4 pounds per week.  The lean circuits plus the running (if the weather ever comes back) should really get that going.

One final thing...Chalene...what's with the outfits?  Seriously.  Previously, in the other circuits, the only person in the video that might be a little whacky with the outfit was Chalene herself.  Especially in one of the Burn Circuits, she wore this pair of hooker boots that had to be godawful to work out in.

But yesterday's video really kicked it up a notch.  Chalene and the older chick looked like rejects from the Solid Gold Dancers.  Like...shiny gold tops and shit.  Weird.  The other chicks looked like extras from The Matrix.  Faux leather outfits.  Unless they were ACTUAL leather, which, good lord, how bad must those chicks have smelled afterwards?  At least the guy was dressed in something that a NORMAL HUMAN BEING would workout in, a sleeveless tee and shorts, I think (I didn't pay much attention).