Cathe Friedrich’s (holy) High Reps

Holy high reps.

‘Nuff said.

I finally got around to trying the third of Cathe Friedrich’s brand spankin’ new workouts and chose to pop the High Reps workout in on Saturday morning.

I just finished the STS mesocycle 2 four week cycle and am about to go into “active recovery week” before diving into the final cycle in the rotation. Given that, I figured I’d tack on one more weight workout to my regime last week before taking a break from the weights this week.

And boy, was I not prepared for what High Reps had planned for me! It was nonstop, like whoa. But SO SO SO awesome, I can’t even begin to describe it. But I’ll try – this is a “review” style blog post afterall, right?? 😉

So the focus of this particular workout from Cathe is a total body, endurance-style workout. Which meant high, high, high rep counts and light weights. It felt a LOT like the BTS Group Power program at my gym, but on speed or something! The workout is broken down by body part, that is, after a brief warm-up that left me sweaty and warm – you know it’s gonna be a goodie when the WARM-UP is intense. LOL.

Each set of exercises breaks down into a series of weight work – usually a combination of barbells, dumbells and resistance band work and includes 3-4 exercises down in close succession for each body part. This is very different than Group Power in that each body part is only worked for one exercise with high reps, not three to FOUR done with high reps. PHEW. Cathe sure does know how to take it up a notch…or ten. 😉

Cathe does a really nice job in this workout in terms of mixing up both the style of weight lifting (balancing free weights with barbell work) but also the succession of moves. You might do an upper body series (like shoulders) and then switch to some leg work before going back to another upper body set (say, back) and so on. It was nice to break up the workout that way versus doing ALL legs and then ALL upper body.

By the end of this workout, I was wobbly and my entire body felt nice and fried…in the best possible way, of course. Waking up this morning, I totally felt it especially in my upper body and back.

Holy high reps is all I gotta say (again).

LOVED this workout (shocker, I know).

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In other news, I promised my buddy Heather I’d post some pics from our first “ladies day out” with my niece Isabel this weekend. We hit the outlets near my sister’s house for a little shopping where I proceeded to buy every cute outfit I could get my hands on for Isabel. I just couldn’t help myself – she HAS to look stylish afterall, doesn’t she??

Just look at that face!!