Ok, it seems like butts are the “it” thing to train these days. With other trainers and fitness bloggers, like Bret Contreras, Ben Bruno, Marianne Kane, Rog Law and John Romaniello recently giving the boo-tay the much deserved attention it needs, I figured I’d share with you a butt-friendly workout I did with my client and fellow trainer Hannah.
Yesterday, Hannah and I met up at the Harvard football stadium in Cambridge, MA to hit up some stadium sprints. Now, I will preface this by saying that Hannah and I don’t do traditional cardio. Nope, don’t like it. We both walk or ride our bikes EVERYWHERE around the city so for us to hop on the treadmill or eliptical on top of that would be pointless.
Plus, we are both fans of high intensity interval training, like jump roping, hill sprints, and running up and down stadiums. It works for us, and is a nice balance to the strength training and pilates work that we both do.
For this workout, we started out with a little dynamic warm-up, and then went right into the sprints. We originally planned on doing 10 sprints, however, after doing the first warm-up round and realizing just how high the steps were, and how taxing it was, we adjusted to 5…ha.
Here’s Hannah’s 2nd round of sprints:
Now, what’s great about stadiums and hill sprints, is that they are explosive movements, which, the glutes respond to very very well. If you happen to live in Boston or Cambridge, the Harvard stadium is a great place to do intervals. If you don’t live near a stadium, or a football field, a steep hill would do the trick as well.
As a side note: for all those living in Brookline, Summit Ave is an awesome hill for sprints. Plus, you’ll get a gorgeous view of the city at the top.
Since I believe that sprints should be sprints, I like to keep the work phase of the interval 20 seconds or under, 30 at the absolute max. And it just so happens that each round of stadiums took us 10 – 12 seconds. Perfect. You can see our results in the table below:
| Sprint # | Hannah | Sirena |
| 1 | (we did these together so no one was able to record time) | |
| 2 | (We were too busy being pretty for the camera, so we did not record time.) | |
| 3 | (Finally realized we should record time.) 10.8 | 11.4 |
| 4 | 11.2 | 11.1 |
| 5 | (Hannah had wobbly legs, no bueno, opted out.) | 11.2 |
If you don’t have access to a stadium, you can still do your sprints outside on a hill like I mentioned earlier, or even on a flat surface like a track or park. Again, aim to keep your sprints sprinty, ideally under 20 seconds. Always start with a well-rounded dynamic warm-up, and give yourself plenty of recovery time between each sprint. If you’re new to interval training you’ll see a link at the end of the blog that will teach you about how much rest you need for intervals. In our case, we used the walk down from the stadiums as our rest period.
Here’s my 2nd round of sprints:
To give you an idea on how you can fit in these kinds of interval workouts in your routine, here’s a breakdown of our workout schedule:
Monday: Fusion-based strength training (a hybrid mix of athletic based movements with a pilates-yoga flair, like this workout)
Tuesday: Stadium or hill sprints
Wednesday: Pilates reformer with Phyl London
Thursday: REST
Friday: TRX partner training with Phyl London (Hannah and I both train with our fab instructor Phyl).
Saturday: REST
Sunday: REST or walk
As you can see, Hannah and I both get a lot of recovery time after workouts. Our workouts are highly efficient and thus we can do less and see more results. For high intensity interval workouts, I would recommend 1x a week for most clients, granted your metabolism can sustain intense workouts. And depending on how active a client is, I may also suggest an extra day of walking, however, since Hannah and I walk everywhere, we don’t find it necessary to do additional cardio on top of the workouts we already do.
Over the course of the next several weeks, our goal is to each break the 10 second mark, and eventually get up to 10 sprints. Our butts are going to need an entourage after a couple of months of this!
If you’re interested in learning more about interval training, here’s a blog series I wrote on the subject (part 1, part 2, part 3) and if you need help with anything, please let me know.
10 Responses
I wish I could meet you two there for sprints. I would love that. : )
Duuuuude, it would be so much fun!
Let me know when you’re doing another Tuesday sprint session because I’d love to join you if the timing works!
The videos inspire me to go over there and try it! What a morning motivator! Thank you!
Hey Lisa! I’m so glad that you found it motivating. I’ll definitely be there next Tuesday at 1 pm if you wanna meet us 🙂
You go girls! I think I could handle maybe one or two. I get vertigo (or that’s what I’m going with). My son and company, training for crew, do 38 sprints up those stadium steps. Yeah baby!
38? Holy crap, that’s nuts! Well if you ever want to join us, let me know 🙂
Man, I need to make it back to Harvard. When I lived in Somerville I went to the stadium every weekend. Also, I was in Panera yesterday, and I looked over and saw that you were leaving, heading out the door. Must have been on your way to do sprints….;o)
Hey Tony! That’s so funny, I was thinking, “I wonder if I’ll run into Tony today since its Tuesday and that’s his off day”…then I thought, “oh wait, that’s weird that I know his work schedule”. Then I saw a cute puppy and got distracted.
I was actually at Panera after stadiums between clients.
You’re more than welcome to join us, Hannah and I are going to incorporate Tues stadiums into our weekly routine before the summer, you know how it is 😉
See you around CC! :))
S