Exercise

Pete Ohnegian

My buddy Pete owns a gym in New Jersey named Good Energy Training. His workouts are all about finding the inner athlete in all of his clients.  Pete O., besides playing center for the Miami sharks in the movie Any Given Sunday, trained me when I was visiting up north over the holidays. He is an animal and utilizes many different alternative training exercises to condition and strengthen the body.

Two of my favorites 

Battle Rope Training

  • Hold ropes in both hands
  • perform waves, worms. flappers, sprinters and snakes for 2 minutes
  • work ropes "knobs up" and "knobs down"
  • great alternative to the normal machine circuit
  • builds strength and muscle

Sandbag Good Mornings 

  • grip a weighted sandbag
  • perform standard exercises like squats, lunges and shoulder raises
  • works on grip strength and muscle building

John DeFendis

John defendis blew my mind with his traditional metal plates routines. John's gym Coops Health and Fitness Center is all about passion and taking it to the next level with Ultrafit. When I went to South Carolina to train with John my regime consisted of three super sets made up of anywhere from 10 to 20 repetitions per set. I continued this work out 4 days a week. Day one: chest and shoulders. Say two: back. Day three: arms and Day four: butt and hamstrings.

While some people may think this type of working out is old fashioned take a look at Johnny D.  They'll be eating their words when they see former Mr. USA in prime physical condition.

Example of day one chest

Incline dumbbell or cable flyes super-setted with pullovers

  • 3 Sets 
  • 15 to 20 reps (across a bench with a good stretch, slow and strict)

Incline dumbbell presses

  • 3 straight sets
  • 10 to 12 reps

Flat flies supersetted with cable flies

  • 3 supersets
  • 12 to 15 reps each

Seated machine bench press supersetted with Pec Dec

  • 3 supersets
  • 12 to 15 reps

 

Kari Williams

I have been blessed to encounter so many great trainers who have taught me new exercise regimes along the way.  Kari Williams was instrumental in helping me get the 200 pounds off.  She is an amazing person and an International Fitness Institute certified personal trainer on staff at The Oaks in Boca Raton, Florida.  She whipped me into shape.  How many people can say they were trained by a nationally ranked NPL competitor with more than 10 years of training experience.  Yeah, exactly. Kari's accomplishments in addition to helping me get the weight off include 2009 NPC Nationals placing second in Figure and third in the overall masters and 2009 natural bodybuilding champion where she took first place as a middleweight and was the overall champion. Terry had me doing full body circuit training in the beginning when I was completely over weight and then I progressed to breaking up the body into parts: upper body, lower body, core and trunk.

Two great exercises

  • Sprint up and down a set of stairs holding a pair of dumbbells.
  • Hammer curls: stand with legs slightly apart, keep your knees bent and not locked, pull your shoulders back a little, elbow against your side, curl the dumbbells up towards your chest, contract in the biceps as much as you can, bring dumbbells back down towards the floor, don't swing your arms.