You weed through the jungle of weights and machines at the gym in search of something new. Your adventurous spirit yearns for a different exercise to take you out of the doldrums of yet another boring workout. Let me take you on a daring journey through new and unfamiliar territory. I’ve found buried treasure in some old, novel and obscure exercises. I’m here to save the day and to introduce you to some lost, but not forgotten exercises you’ll find useful, practical and best of all, effective.

Single Leg Squats
Ever wonder why so many people claim their knees or back hurt if they squat? It is probably because they start out with the bar loaded with plates right away. Aussie personal trainer Ian King advocates squatting on one leg with body weight until you are strong enough on each individual leg to go to conventional squats on both legs with a bar and weight. “If you can’t do the movement with your own body weight, then you have no business adding external weight,” he says. “I challenge even the heaviest squatter to try squatting just body weight on one leg and they’ll be surprised at what a tough exercise it can be!” Single leg squats are also great for balance and very functional. They not only target the lower body, but also emphasize your postural muscles all along your spine.
1. Start with squats to a large stability ball or high bench. Put the ball in a corner of a room or have your workout partner hold it for you.
2. Allow the back of your leg to lightly touch the ball/bench.
3. Extend both arms straight out in front of you for balance.
4. Extend the other leg slightly out in front of you so the heel stays just above the ground at all times. The higher you extend the leg, the more difficult it is to balance.
5. Keeping your foot flat on the ground, slowly bend the knee on the supporting leg, touch your bottom to the ball, and explode up for 5-10 reps on each leg.
6. Maintain an upright posture with a slight arch in the low back, holding the abdominals tight. Fight the urge to lean toward either side or twist.
7. Progress to smaller stability balls or lower bench heights as your strength improves and your form stays perfect.
8. Your goal is to squat freely as low as you can go with no assistance from a bench or your hands helping you up.

Overhead Squats
When searching for a great total body exercise, I reached back into Olympic weightlifting history and uncovered this challenging exercise. Picture doing a squat, but instead of allowing the bar to rest across your traps, you hold it directly overhead. This isn’t a ballistic Olympic exercise, but weightlifters use it as strength and balance preparation. If you aren’t perfectly tight and stable with these squats, you’ll fall on your butt! Start with a stick, progress to dumbbells, then use the bar.
1. Assume a squat stance with the legs shoulder-width apart, abdominals tight, slight low back arch, and stick resting across your upper traps. Your grip should be a little wider than your normal squat grip.
2. Raise the bar directly overhead and squeeze the shoulder blades tightly to keep the bar in place.
3. Squat down while keeping the bar directly over your head and your arms in line with your ears.
4. Maintain an upright posture and drive quickly out of the bottom position.

Triple Threat
While my mission was to find old exercises, stumbled across a new exercise on an old piece of equipment – the stability ball. Stability balls are more than just to rest your legs on while you do abs. This exercise will take your sagging glutes and hamstrings and make them rock hard. Juan Carlos Santana, MEd, CSCS, director of Optimum Performance Systems and the Institute of Human Performance in Boca Raton, Florida explains that “there are many exercises that work the hamstrings in conjunction with the hips and one of my favorite routines is on the stability ball. I refer to this three-exercise protocol as the ‘triple threat’.”
The triple threat can be performed 2-3 times per week, preferably after resistance training workouts. The program is a combination of three stability ball exercises put in succession consisting of the bridge, the leg curl and the hip lift. All of the exercises require the hip to come up and remain off the floor during the entire protocol. This keeps constant tension on the hips and hamstrings. The progression begins using two legs simultaneously. On week 1 you perform 3 sets of 5 repetitions of each of the exercises with 1-2 minutes rest between each set. Each week add 2 repetitions to each of the exercises so by Week 6 you are doing 15 repetitions of each exercise. On Week 7 the progression gets much more interesting as it goes to single-leg work. The rep and set scheme starts back at Week 1 again, but since one leg is resting while other is exercising, there is no need to take a rest between sets. By week 12 you are doing 15 repetitions of each exercise on each leg. By this time you have developed hamstrings of steel!
Threat One – Bridge
1. Lie flat on the floor, arms extended out like a “T”, legs extended, and heels on top of a stability ball. The smaller the ball, the more difficult the exercise.
2. Perform a bridge movement by squeezing your cheeks and lifting them off the ground. Return to the floor and repeat.
Threat Two – Leg Curl
1. Return to the first position with your legs extended and heels on the ball.
2. Keeping your hips off the floor, bend your knees while your heels are gripping the ball and roll it into your body. Keep your abs tight, roll the ball out and repeat.
Threat Three – Hip Lift
1. Return to the first position with your legs extended and heels on the ball.
2. Walk the ball out until the knees are bent and the heels are off the ball. Perform a bridge movement by squeezing your cheeks and lifting them off the ground. Return to the floor and repeat.

Alternating Dumbbell Overhead Press with Rest at Top
Want to feel continuous tension in all of your arm muscles? You don’t have to climb a mountain or hang off a rope! Try this simple variation to an ancient shoulder exercise and realize maximal gains. You need to use slightly less weight than you would with a regular dumbbell shoulder press, but you will feel the burn much more!
1. Sit at the edge of a bench with or without back support.
2. Grasping a dumbbell in each hand, bring them to your shoulders, then directly overhead with both arms completely extended.
3. Keeping one arm extended and overhead, bend the elbow of the other arm slowly to allow the dumbbell to reach shoulder height.
4. Press the dumbbell back to the starting position. Keep this arm straight and extended overhead and allow the other arm to bend and then press.
5. Perform 8-10 repetitions with each arm and complete 2-3 sets.

Alternating Dumbbell Biceps Curl with Rest at Top
Change your old biceps curls with a continuous tension principle lost in modern-day training programs. Instead of letting your arms just hang at your sides while you are during curls, put them to work the entire time! You will find that you have to lighten the weight that you normally curl for this challenging alternative. You can stand or sit upright or inclined, just remember not to rock your body to curl the dumbbell.
1. Grasping a dumbbell in each hand with a supinated grip (palm up), bend the elbows and curl both arms towards your shoulders.
2. Keep one arm up and slowly lower the other arm to the starting position. Curl that arm back up towards the shoulder.
3. Keep that arm up and repeat the exercise with the other arm.
4. Perform 8-10 repetitions with each arm and complete 2-3 sets.

Wood Chops
World-renowned sports scientist Mel C. Siff, Ph. D. made this forgotten exercise popular. It mimics the very old chore of chopping wood, something that a twenty-first century girl doesn’t have the opportunity to do very often! Your entire torso will feel this exercise and if it was good enough to give the lumberjacks abs, it’s good enough for us!
1. Use stretch tubing or a weighted cable.
2. Set up in between two pulley stacks like you are going to do cable crossovers. 3. Grab a handle with both hands from only one side of the stack.
4. Keep the arms extended and overhead.
5. Keeping your arms extended, use your midsection to pull down on the cable diagonally across your body to the opposite foot. You will be simulating chopping wood, hence the name.
4. Switch and do the other side after each set of 10.

Sidebar - Variety is the Spice of Life
We are sophisticated women who never settle for boring, right? We’ve always known that change is good and variety is the spice of life. We try different flavors of protein bars to keep us on our diet, we buy new workout clothes to energize us, and we purchase that latest dance tape to get us pumped up. We change our hairstyles, hair colors, and make-up. But why do we still rely on the same workout routine we’ve had since we started lifting? Well your muscles get bored of doing the same thing everyday too, and when your muscles get bored, they fall asleep. And when they are sleeping, they don’t grow. That is the concept behind stress expert Hans Selye’s general adaptation syndrome (GAS). His GAS theory states that the body goes through three phases when confronted with a stress – in this case, exercise. The first phase is shock and is represented in resistance training as the delayed-onset muscle soreness you feel after starting a new exercise or routine. In this phase your performance may actually decrease because of the soreness. The second phase is adaptation and occurs as the body adapts to a particular training stimulus and starts to show improvement. The third phase is staleness and represents the body already adapting to the exercise and not showing further improvement. For example if you have never bench pressed before, you will make significant progress when beginning this exercise. However you will notice after a period of time of routinely performing this exercise, that your gains will be smaller than they were in the beginning and you may hit a plateau. The reason is because your muscles and nervous system have adapted to the exercise. You either need to add weight, change the repetitions and sets, change your rest periods between sets, exercises, and workout days, move the order of the exercises, or vary the exercise (perform an incline bench press instead of a flat bench press). Exercise physiologists Steven J. Fleck, Ph.D. and William J. Kraemer, Ph.D, in their popular book “Designing Resistance Training Programs,” state that exercise programs that do not provide variety result in a “sawtooth” pattern of change. You improve in the beginning of a program but will hit a wall due to the lack of change. You start the program when you become motivated again, but will be back to square one with the same problem. Over time these up and down changes may result in positive change, but the gains aren’t maximized or maintained. So, break away from the tried and true exercises and have an open mind. Your workout will never be the same and neither will your body!