The Get Micah Ready For Hawaii Project: Week 4 Recap

Week 4 of the Micah Project is actually a mashup of pre-Christmas and pre-New Year's workouts. As you all know, Micah's goals are to get more defined and bigger pecs and 6-pack abs. If you asked the general population how they might achieve those goals, you'd probably hear "lots of crunches and pushups". And while you might see a lot of core exercises (not so many crunches) and chest exercises, there is a lot more to think of in order to achieve these goals. (And, BTW, crunches will not get you 6-pack abs. More on that next week.) Here are a few things I like to keep in mind when training Micah:

POSTURE: I like to do an equal amount of back exercises to chest exercises with Micah because he doesn't have the best posture (the ratio is usually 1:1 and sometimes 2:1 back:chest). Doing chest exercises alone would aggravate that hunched-over position Micah tends to carry himself in which would pretty much hide Micah's pecs completely in the long run. As you'll see, we alternated bench presses with rows, pushups with lat pulldowns.

SHOULDER HEALTH: Micah had a shoulder injury some years ago and his shoulder acts up from time to time. If anyone wants a stronger upper body, they HAVE to focus on keeping their shoulders as healthy as possible. Micah and I spend a lot of time with shoulder stability and mobility exercises (seen in the stability ball circle and plank to rotation exercises, among others).

TOTAL BODY EXERCISES: In order for someone to see more defined muscles, they need to melt some fat! One of the best things you can do to get to that goal is to incorporate some total body movements. Some of my favorites are single arm dumbbell cleans to presses and kettlebell swings.

Without further ado, here is Week 4!