Tag Archives: results power movement

Exercise

After six weeks on the RPM System

I’m overdue to give my six week re-assessment of the RPM System — two weeks late to be precise, since I started on May 18th. I’ve had good reasons: travel, and some heavy-duty work to get my wife’s raw food recipe book ready for the printers. (I handled the photography, the layout and the design.)

I also haven’t (and I’m ashamed to admit this) worked out for the past two weeks, for the very same reasons. So the photos and measurements you’ll see below really are taken after a two week “break” from the workouts, which involved prolonged sitting at my computer and at the wheel of our car.

In spite of the circumstances that came together to sabotage my workouts, progress was made. I’m happy about that.

Here’s what I look like now. Compare the difference between these photos and the initial ones (taken after a week on the system).

Here are my re-assessment results (power score and measurements). Compare them with the initial ones.

I was pleased to see a marked improvement in my power score, which is now 76, up from the initial 64. My guess is these are beginner gains, and subsequent power score improvements will be harder to achieve. Still, I’m happy and willing to put in the extra work.

The new numbers are:

  • 33 pushups
  • 50 band standing reverse flyes
  • 70 seconds for the modified abdominal plank
  • 180 seconds for the wall sit

There were some surprises when it came to the measurements:

  • Weight: 159.8 lbs, up by about 1½ pounds; my guess is the extra weight is from muscle mass, since I lost fat, as you’ll see below
  • Shoulders: 47.5″, up by ½ inch
  • Chest: 39″, up by 1 inch
  • Arms: 12″, down by 1 inch; this was an unpleasant surprise, but my guess is I had extra fat in the triceps area, which went away.
  • Abdomen: 32″, down by 1 inch
  • Hips: 36.25″, down by 1Âľ inches, which was definitely a surprise.
  • Thighs: 19.5″, up by ½ inch

I guess all that sitting on a chair not only atrophied my muscles, but put extra fat on my arms, around my abdomen (which I already knew of) and my hips, which I didn’t know about.

I’ve got another couple of confessions to make:

  • I missed about a week’s worth of workouts during the 6 weeks, again due to travel. I asked the folks at RPM what to do, and they advised me to do one extra workout per week until I caught back up. That’s excellent advice, so if you’re in the same boat, do that, it’s going to be worth it.
  • I haven’t done my aerobic workouts at all. I’ve been too busy. You know how they say you should do three of their workouts per week, and on your off days, do half an hour of your favorite aerobic activity? Well, I skipped out on that entirely. Shame on me.

Still, in spite of cutting all those corners and missing out on plenty of workouts, look at the progress I made! Can you imagine how much more dramatic my progress would have been if I had followed their recipe?

I think this is really good proof of the program’s potential. I missed workouts, played catch-up, took a two week break, and still I made out really nicely.

Don’t take that to mean I fudged on the actual workouts though! Every time I worked out, I did every exercise and every rep indicated. On some exercises, I even did extra reps. The way I see it, if I didn’t give 100% with every workout, I’d have cheated myself.

If you have any doubts about the RPM System and whether it can work for you, I don’t think you need to worry any more. Try it out, you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s only $10/month, and you get two weeks free with this code: 553677456.

I intend to keep going, and will post future updates about my progress.

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Exercise

The RPM System just got better!

As I mentioned in some of my recent posts, I recently (5/18) started on the RPM System, a new fitness regimen that you can do with only an exercise ball and an exercise band, and I love it. I recently passed my 6-week progress point, and I plan to post the results from that re-assessment this week.

There have been some changes in the works on the backend of the RPM System website, which have just been completed. As a result of those changes, many of which came about from feedback provided by early users of the system, like me, the RPM System is a lot more affordable and easy to understand now:

  • The cost has been reduced to $9.95/month, which makes it affordable for just about anybody. It’s now much, much lower than a gym membership, and since you can do it at home, you’ll be saving time and money.
  • Those using the system will have the opportunity to sign up their family members at $7.95/month, with a special code, which will make it easier and even more affordable to stay fit. You’ll be able to work out together and encourage each other.
  • It’s much easier now to get the equipment you need for the program. There’s a new Equipment tab on the site menu, where you can purchase the exercise band and the ball, plus the door wedge and the metronome, which are the two additional items I didn’t know about when I started the workouts. Fortunately, you can get all of this as a bundle from the Equipment page, so you’ll be able to get right to the workouts without missing a beat. As a matter of fact, the door wedge is included with every exercise band, right off the bat. And you no longer need to get a metronome, unless you want to. All of the exercises have been changed to the same beat. If you want to try different beats as you advance through the workouts, you can, by using a metronome, but it’s no longer a must-have piece of equipment.

I took a few screenshots of their website, to give you a sense of the changes. Here’s the page where they describe why you should use the program. The new price is clearly posted there.

And here’s the Equipment page. As you can see, things are nicely bundled and the prices are quite affordable.

One of the things I like about this fitness program is the fact they donate to charities. It’s nice when a company decides to do that, especially in these troubled economic times. The founders donate 10% of the corporate profits to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation.

If you’d like to try the RPM System, you can get a 2-week free trial through this referral code: 553677456. The normal free trial is 1 week, but this way, you get to really use the system enough to see its true benefits to your body. I have, and I plan to keep using it for a long time.

As I mentioned in my very first post about the RPM System, I am using the system for free. When the founders asked me to review it, that was one of the benefits I got in exchange for putting in the time and effort of using the system enough to be able to speak cogently about it. But I wouldn’t have stuck with it for 6 long weeks if I didn’t love it, and I do. When I say you should give it a try if you’re not already exercising, I really mean it! You will see results!

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Exercise

After a week on the RPM System

I recorded a video last night, after my third workout on the RPM System. I’ve completed a week’s worth of workouts, and I can already feel the program’s effect on my body.

My core muscles have begun to tighten, and my muscle tone is improving. I like the slow burn I get in my muscles after the workouts — not enough to make things painful, but just enough to let me know I’ve done some nice work, and that my body’s getting better.

The interesting thing about the workouts is that they’re easy to under-appreciate, until you begin to do them. You start doing the exercises, and you think it’s a piece of cake, until you get to the second or third run-through (it’s circuit training, remember), and your muscles begin to give up, and you’re drenched in sweat and gasping for air.

I thought I’d post some “before” photos, so I can track my progress accurately. I’ll use these, along with my initial measurements, to see how my body improves as I advance through the workout regimen.

Continue reading →

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Exercise, Reviews

The RPM System: first impressions

I had my first workout on the RPM (Results Power Movement) System last night, and I recorded my thoughts in a video clip which you can see below, or on YouTube.

As it turns out, I like the workouts. Of course, I’ve only had one workout so far, but for me, it’s an interesting change to work out without weights. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve always worked out with weights. I’ve never really dedicated any significant time, on a regular basis, to working out with just my body weight, doing anything else but crunches, pull-ups and push-ups. So my first workout was a revelation of sorts. I discovered I could get sore and work out all sorts of muscle groups using only my body weight, an exercise ball and an exercise band…

… with one caveat: you need a couple more things, without which you can’t do the workouts properly.

You also need a door wedge — something to allow you to anchor the exercise band so you can do band presses and band rows. I didn’t get it, so I had to improvise. Make sure you find one at a sports store, and buy it along with the exercise band. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find it as a set with the exercise band.

Make sure you read through the Equipment PDF, which mentions the door wedge (the general website doesn’t), and also make sure you get an exercise ball that’s the right size for your height. Check the PDF, which has a table listing the various ball sizes for height ranges.

You also need a metronome. If you don’t have one around the house, see if you can pick up an inexpensive one from a music or sports store, or if you have an iPhone or iPod touch, get a metronome app from the App Store. I opted for the second choice, and got an app called Metron, a highly rated metronome app, which costs $1.99. I like it, and it’s got a ton more options than I need for the workouts. The important thing for your metronome is that it needs to be able to go down below 50 BPM, and, just in case you need it, go up to 200 BPM.

The metronome is important, because almost every one of your exercises on the RPM System will have a beat which will dictate how fast or how slow you need to do it. The beat may increase or decrease, depending on the exercise, making it harder to do as you advance. Without a metronome, you won’t be able to keep the proper beat, and you won’t reap the full benefits of your workout regimen.

Another thing I recommend you do before your first workout is to read through the Strength Program Description PDF, which explains how the circuit training works the RPM workouts. It’s really important you do that, or you’ll be looking at your workout schedules like a hen looks at a newspaper, which is how I looked at it the first time…

That’s pretty much it so far. I look forward to the next workout!

If you’d like to try out the RPM System, use this code (553677456) which will get you a free week’s trial.

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Exercise

Started on the RPM System today

I’ve always had an abiding interest in exercise. Perhaps it was brought on by the fact that I was very thin as a child. I was shorter, thinner and looked much younger than my age as I grew up, and I got fed up with being treated like a little boy.

When I got to college, I read about weightlifting voraciously. I educated myself and began lifting weights frequently, advancing from 2-3 times/week to 6-7 times/week. I started weightlifting regularly my sophomore year, and by my senior year, I’d put on about 60 lbs of muscle, without illegal supplements.

After college, even though I was still lifting weights intensely, I lost about 25 lbs. There were a few reasons for that. For one thing, I turned vegan, and I didn’t balance my diet properly. Then I had an operation on my right knee for a torn ACL, and was out of commission for 6-7 months. I became unhappy with going to the gym, for other reasons as well… so I focused my efforts on my job and my personal projects, such as writing for my websites. Over time, that meant more weight loss, until my weight settled around 155-160 lbs. I was still interested in exercise though, and I wrote several articles about the subject when I began to publish online in 2001.

On a side note, if you ever wonder whether you should play rugby or not, keep in mind I broke a rib, then my nose, then tore my ACL playing rugby. It’s not an easy sport on the body. I decided to stick to regular exercise and leave rugby to those with sturdier constitutions and cauliflower ears.

Back to my adventures in exercise… I coasted onward, relying on my previous years of workouts to keep my body in a residual shape, and that worked, for a time, until I noticed that even though my weight stayed the same and my waist stayed the same, I was getting flabbier. The basic shape was still there, but muscle tone was nowhere near what I used to have, and I was accumulating body fat, slowly but surely.

I had several false starts over time, where I tried to go to a gym regularly, but that didn’t work out. So far, my exercise routine has been irregular. I do pull-ups and crunches every now and then, but it’s not enough.

Imagine my surprise, when out of the blue, I was contacted by one of the founders of the RPM System — a low-cost, highly customizable fitness program that tailors itself to each user’s needs after a baseline fitness and diet assessment — and I was asked to review it honestly, without pulling any punches. (RPM stands for Results Power Movement.)

Here was a fitness program I could do at home, with minimal equipment (an exercise band and an exercise ball), using only my body weight. Absolutely, I said, bring it on!

So here I am! I did my initial assessment today, and you can see my results below. My power score is 64, which, on a scale from 1-100, gets me a D (barely). It looks like I need some serious work…

It’s not that I could only do 4 push-ups, and so on… Their website grades each of my numbers on a scale of 1-10, then assigns me a score on a scale of 1-100. Here are my actual numbers for each test:

Continue reading →

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