What is Low Impact Strength with Chontel?

Chontel designed Low Impact Strength to offer a broader range of workouts to her loyal Sweat Community who don’t necessarily love high-intensity workouts. The workouts assist in building foundational strength from where you are at today in your fitness journey.

If you are looking for a great strength training program but prefer low-impact movements for various reasons, this is definitely the program for you. There are no jumping or high-intensity exercises! 

The program focuses on muscle progression, with limited load through the use of supersets and higher rep range. Chontel is here to increase your strength for everyday life, reduce common aches and pains, improve muscle definition, and improve joint strength and stability.

This program is perfect for building strength at home with minimal equipment. If you are looking to take your training to the next level, and be able to lift more weights, these 12 weeks will challenge you and improve your stamina. 

What is involved in Chontel's Low Impact Strength program?

Chontel provides 3 Strength workouts per week: 

• Lower Body & Core
• Full Body
• Upper Body & Core

Each strength workout will run for approximately 30-45 minutes. The workouts will have a strong focus on lower-body muscle groups to allow for greater volume and assist with muscle growth. There is also a strong focus on the core to build foundational strength required to progress training. The workouts will be low impact, meaning they will assist in building the foundation and strength required to support the joint's ability to handle load and impact, which is great for minimising aches and pains as well as helping progress to other training styles.

Chontel recommends at least 1 Low-Intensity Cardio session per week, however, 3 are available to you if needed.

There are also 2 recovery workouts available per week which will focus on mobility and stretching:

• Full Body Stretching
• Full Body Mobility and Stretching

What equipment do I need to complete this program?

Chontel designed this program to be home-based with the following pieces of basic equipment: 

• Dumbbells 
• Chair
• Resistance Bands
• Recovery Bands

If you don’t have access to these, two safe heavy objects can be used as dumbbells or a stable flat surface such as a bench can be used instead of a chair. Alternatively, use the ‘exercise substitution’ feature available in the Sweat app to substitute resistance band exercises for alternatives! 

How do the workouts work?

Lower Body & Core & Upper Body & Core
These workouts focus on muscle groups in the lower body and upper body. They are split up into 4 sections: Strength, Superset, Endurance, and Core. Complete the exercise for the specific number of reps or time with a 30-second rest between each lap (3 laps and increases to 4 laps in week 7+). 

Full Body

During this workout, there is a stronger focus on muscles in the lower body than the upper body, meaning you are training your lower body twice per week. There are 3 circuits with 3 exercises in each. Complete the exercise for the specific number of reps or times and repeat as many laps as you can within 8 minutes. Aim to exercise for the entire 8 minutes - you stop when the 8 minutes are up (this increases to 10 minutes in weeks 7+). You will get a 30-second rest between each circuit.

Full Body Stretching & Full Body Mobility and Stretching

These two workouts are approximately 10 minutes in length with a focus on reducing soreness across the body and joint aches and pain. They consist of a variety of 7-11 stretching exercises completed for a suggested duration of time.

Is this program only for beginners?

Chontel has designed this program to be suitable for everyone by encouraging you to alter the level of intensity in these workouts to suit your fitness level. 

Low-impact exercises and workouts do not necessarily mean easy! They solely mean you are looking to place less stress on your joints while maintaining your strength and improving your fitness. They usually consist of no jumping, meaning you can still get a fantastic workout without placing pressure on your joints.

One way to increase the intensity of these workouts is to modify the weight of your dumbbells. If you have more than one set available, you can rotate between a light, medium and heavy pair. Keep in mind that form is important, so try not to compromise this.

You can also increase the speed at which you complete the circuits in the Full Body workout and try and complete more laps. However, this should only be made if you’re able to still complete the exercises with the correct form. 

If you are still looking for more of a challenge, try adding more reps or laps to the Lower Body and Upper Body workouts, therefore, increasing the intensity to your own fitness level.