Cathe Friedrich's XTrain: Chest, Back and Shoulders DVD

Exactly what the title promises — a separate set of exercises for your chest, then back, then shoulders (repeated in eight separate “rounds”). It's a focused format that lets you maximize the effort for each muscle group (because you always know a new body part is coming up). All the moves emphasize the importance of weight overload — using a weight level that pushes your body to absolute “fatigue.” How much is that? You want between 8 and 16 reps; if you can do more than 16, you need to increase the weight (an on-screen display shows Cathe's level and rep count). The moves are classics, but Cathe makes them interesting with varied tempos, pulses and positions.

Requires multiple sets of dumbbells, a stability ball and a resistance tubing. ©2012.

I’ve designed this intense upper body strength workout to focus on exhausting your chest, back and shoulder muscle groups with very little rest between exercises. In order to effectively reduce the rest needed between exercises, we will be working in eight rounds. Each round consists of one set for chest, followed by one set for back and finishes up with one set for shoulders. You will continue to repeat this sequence throughout your workout but use a different exercise each time you hit your chest, back and shoulders. By no repeating any exercise throughout the program, you eliminate boredom and increase mental awareness. You’ll also see us taking notes to record our selected weight(s) throughout the workout and I encourage you to do the same. This way, the next time you do the workout you can make it even more effective!

Here’s how Chest, Back & Shoulders works. You’ll need to use heavy weight(s) in this XTrain workout and do between 10 and 16 reps for each exercise. I suggest first trying a weight that is about 70% of your one rep max and make adjustments as needed. Keep in mind if you can easily do 16 reps for any exercise you should select a higher weight the next time you do this workout. Likewise, if you can’t do at least eight reps you should consider lowering your weight. Finally (and I can’t stress this enough), in order for this workout to be effective, you need to select a weight and resistance tube that challenges you for each and every exercise while still maintaining good form.