Exercise of The Week

Today I'm starting a new "Exercise Of The Week" series. I'll try to make these as interesting as possible and try to make them as "bang for your buck" as possible giving you a non-traditional spin on some tried and true exercise favorites.

I won't be filming any bench press or dead lift videos because most of us who train at home don't have the luxury of that kind of equipment (and a lot of us already know how to bench or have seen it done before).

So today's exercise is one of my personal favorites, the RENEGADE ROW.

Renegades are just a spin on one of Dr. Stuart McGill's abdominal buttressing exercises where you try to hold your torso as rigid as possible as you take away one of your "pillars" - an arm holding onto a kettlebell/dumbbell in this case.


To perform a Renegade Row, you start on the ground holding a pair of dumbbells or kettlebells. Kettlebells are a lot more challenging for shoulder stability because it's surface area is a lot less than that of a dumbbell.

Next, brace your abs and squeeze your glutes. This is imperative to ensure that your body stays as flat as possible. You need to "zip up" as Pavel, a Russian Kettlebell Expert would say.

Finally, maintaining your brace, you row one arm up really concentrating on not allowing your hips to rotate or your opposite leg to come off the ground.

You'll really feel this in your abs if you do it right. For a real challenge, try adding a push-up to the movement (push-up, row left, row right, repeat). Doing that combo would be a complete upper body workout by itself.

CL
The FitAndBusyDad

p.s. You can find this exercise and many more in the soon-to-be-released FitAndBusyDad Exercise Index. Stay tuned for more details.

p.p.s. Make sure to check out how my friend and nutrition guru Brad Pilon celebrated his 31st birthday over the weekend!