The 5/50 workout program is a base program. We will have specific exercises and programs for nearly every sport soon.
Before you start this, listen up
Please consult with your physician to make sure you’re in the clear to start this exercise or diet program. We don’t want you to get hurt while doing it. It’s better to be a couch potato, alive, and uninjured than a patient at a rehab center!
Once you’ve done that and you’re in the clear, here’s how the workout program goes
And remember, don’t hold your breath during exercise!
- Military Press (Overhead Press) – 50 reps: Make sure your knees are slightly bent, and your back is straight. Use dumbbells with your arms positioned so that your elbows are tucked into your sides, palms facing each other.
- Lunges – 50 reps on each leg: Hold your dumbbells at your side and below your waist. Make sure to keep your head up and your back straight.
- Bench Press – 50 reps: Use an exercise ball or bench. Hold the dumbbells the same way you do with the military press. Your elbows need to be tucked into your body with your palms facing one another.
- Squats – 50 reps: Keep your head up and your back straight. Have the dumbbells below your waist at your side just like the lunges.
- Bent Over Rows – 50 reps: Knees bent, back straight at 45% angle to the floor. Keep your head up pulling dumbbells up towards the ceiling and your back down towards the floor with your arms in the same position as previous upper extremity exercises. Elbows should be tucked at your sides and your palms facing each other.
Do each exercise through a full range of motion as quickly as you can without being ‘jerky’. No rests between exercises.
Use as much weight as you can do 50 times, fast. Once that weight & exercise gets easy, it’s time to up your weight a little. Then, if you can only get 40 reps moving quickly through the range of motion, that’s ok. Work your way up to 50.
That process keeps going. When that gets easy, up your weight a little more. (*Hint* start with small weights!)
Try this if you want to increase power
Alternate your routine every other day by taking the amount of weight you use in the ‘fast’ workout, double it and do as many repetitions as you can, through a full range of motion, and as slow as possible.
This may seem counterproductive but with this routine you actually activate more muscle fibers, both slow and fast twitch and increase power.
As you increase the amount of weight used in your ‘fast’ workout, increase the amount in your ‘slow’ workout.
If you play golf
Add a golf swing exercise using thera-bands/tubing. Make sure you do this going in each direction, left and right, to make sure you keep your back healthy.
How many? How many swings do you take during a round of golf? Divide that up and do so many between your other exercises.
If you take 100 swings divide by 4 and do 25 swings with the thera-tubing, each direction, after Military Press, Lunges, Bench Press, and Squats. Do all of these swings fast through the full range of motion of your swing.
If you play baseball and pitch
You may want to add a couple of different exercises to your routine.
You could 5/50 workout program every other day and do these on days in between or do one in the morning and one in the evening.
This really depends on your schedule and how you feel after doing your workouts.
Additional exercises: Say you are in high school and would like to pitch a complete game… 7 innings. Say you may throw somewhere around 20 pitches in an inning. How about training specifically to do that?! Do 7 sets of 20 repetitions of “pitching lunges”…each direction, left and right.
Hold your dumbbells together against your chest while doing these. (What is a pitching lung? Act like your coming from the ‘stretch’ pitching position… It’s kind of a sideways lung. Pictures coming soon!)
After each set of pitching lunges do 20 repetitions doing your throwing motion with thera-tubing resistance bands. What you are accomplishing here is actually training for what you do in the game…with more resistance/weight than you will use in a game.
You won’t fatigue as quickly or risk injury during your games once your body becomes acclimated to these additional exercises. Most injuries to pitchers happen when their legs get tired. They start keeping their lead leg straighter which forces them to overthrow using their arm/rotator muscles more causing fatigue, tightness and injury.
This should pretty much wear you out! Once your body acclimates to this routine you can up the intensity by doing more than one set of each exercise! Just use a lighter weight on the second, (or third), sets and make sure to keep up the pace.
Drink plenty of water before, during and after your workout to keep your muscles hydrated and to flush the toxins out of them before they can cause muscle soreness/tightness!
This program that is meant to do several things
- It’s very tough cardiovascularly because you’re working the upper body, then lower, then upper, etc.
- It’s aerobic since you are breathing the whole time and there are no breaks in the should cause you to produce much less lactic acid than you would normally produce while lifting weights. You should, once acclimated to the program, be a lot less stiff, tight and sore than with ‘traditional’ weight training programs.
- It puts much less stress on your joints because you are moving within a range of motion that is the natural way you work or pull heavy weight which makes your risk for injury extremely low.
- You are not isolating individual muscle groups which can lead to muscle imbalances which are the root cause of many injuries.
- There’s never any need to MAX OUT because you are constantly adjusting your weight/resistance up as you feel the exercise getting easier!
If you have any questions or would like to give a testimonial about how this routine is working for you, send us an email at [email protected] or message us on the chat in the bottom right-hand corner.