Manmakers are not made by men or women, but they definitely plunge them into caves of torment. I like to go into a pain cave when I exercise, so why not add 70 Man Makers to your 7-day routine? I often create fitness challenges and this one certainly ticked all those boxes.
Please note that when doing these challenges, do not expect great results within a week. It takes months to maintain a consistent exercise routine, gradually taxing your muscles and making lifestyle choices like diet to build muscle, lose fat, and improve your overall health and fitness. .
That doesn’t mean you can’t learn a few things from the experience. I certainly learned some lessons along the way. If you plan to follow Tom’s Guide’s fitness challenges, we recommend choosing the number of repetitions that works for you. For example, high repetitions of the same exercise over a long period of time is not recommended.
So, grab your best adjustable dumbbells and find out what happened after 490 reps.
Is Man Maker a good workout?
Man Maker is a full-body workout that builds muscle strength and cardiovascular fitness by linking a series of exercises together. And despite the name, which brings to mind the 1950s, anyone can pull off this move.
I wouldn’t program Man Maker as a standalone exercise, but it’s a great addition to any routine if you want to work all of your muscles in one movement, as part of a circuit, metcon, or HIIT workout.
How to make a dumbbellman maker
To perform the Man Maker, you’ll need a set of dumbbells and your own body weight. He combines burpees, push-ups, renegade rows, clean-and-squats, and overhead presses into one exercise.
- Start standing with your feet shoulder-width apart and a dumbbell in each hand.
- Tighten your abdomen and tighten your core
- Squat down with your back flat, heels on the floor and chest up, placing dumbbells shoulder-width distance in front of you.
- To train your triceps more effectively, place your hands closer together
- Step up or jump your legs back into the push-up position and lower your chest to the floor to perform a push-up. Your shoulders should overlap your wrists and your hips should be in line with your shoulders.Lower your knees to the floor for a push-up back
- Push back to a plank position and perform a renegade row by rowing one dumbbell back toward your hips, then the other.
- Don’t shake your hips, lift your butt, or lower your hips toward the floor.
- Step or jump behind the dumbbells, keeping your chest up, back flat, and shoulders back.
- Push through your heels to begin standing, pushing the weight into your legs and lifting them up to your shoulders, raising your elbows and stretching your hips and knees.
- Hold the dumbbells in your front rack as you deep squat, keeping your back flat and distributing your weight across your feet and thighs parallel to the floor.
- While standing, perform an overhead press by thrusting both dumbbells into the air, keeping your triceps close to your ears.
- Lower the weights to your shoulders, reset to starting position and repeat.
Here’s what happened and what I learned along the way.
Preparation is key
Man Maker works with the lats, rhomboids and trapezius, deltoids (shoulders), various stabilizing core muscles, glutes and hip flexors, quadriceps, hamstrings, biceps, and triceps ( This is a full-body compound exercise that targets the back, including supplementary muscles. rowing and press) and pectoral muscles, respectively.
It’s a good idea to do some preparation before jumping into Man Maker, especially for high rep counts. I programmed him to do 7 sets of 10 repetitions, run every minute as an EMOM, and then take a break for that minute after each repetition.
Preparation for me was like mobility work, warming up my legs and upper body with light movements and doing bodyweight exercises to make sure my muscles were warmed up beforehand, which I continued throughout the week. .
Form easily collapses
In Man Maker, there are many mistakes to be made at every stage, so I practice while looking in the mirror as much as possible. Your back may round when entering and exiting a squat, your lower back may slump when swinging or thrusting too high during push-ups or renegade draws, and your lower back arches during overhead presses.
Core engagement is important, but it’s easy to throw the word around without understanding what it means. Practice tightening your stomach and breathing deeply into your stomach instead of your chest, as if someone was about to punch you in the gut. Squeezing your glutes and quads will also help stabilize your torso in the plank position during the transition of the movement.
It felt swollen
The renegade draw is my least favorite exercise, so I chose the right weight for this movement, even though I can lift heavier in other phases of Man Maker. I started lifting about half the weight I normally would so I wouldn’t break my form to get more reps.
The high reps and time limits per round also raised the bar, making this a more endurance-based exercise that got your heart rate up and brought an aerobic element to your workout. Despite the light weight, it felt extremely difficult and I collapsed in a sweaty heap after completing my daily reps.
It’s a full body workout
This movement, which stimulates all major muscle groups, provides a full-body workout in a short amount of time, and I could then feel this exercise going from head to toe – thankfully not my lower back. If you haven’t tried this move before, we don’t recommend doing 70 reps every day. Add more rest to give your muscles a chance to recover.
I cut back on my other workouts a bit, used this exercise as a finishing touch to my training days, and limited it to a week to avoid overtraining. result? My muscles burned from head to toe, but of course, there were no physical changes in my body. I also felt it in my abdominal muscles more than I expected.
I got the wrong kit
Throughout the week, I tried kettlebells (which are harder to grip, control, and stabilize, and uses more forearms and wrists) and barbells. I recommend learning how to hold a kettlebell correctly. The handle and bell position differs from dumbbells, and some technique is required to control the bell as it moves from the floor to the ceiling and back again.
The Barbellman manufacturer does a push-up on the bar by jumping backwards, stabilizes the barbell in place, then cleans the barbell up to your shoulders, does a front squat, and finally pushes the weight over your head, making it more Technique is required. I think free weights are better for this exercise. You’ll have less weight to lift, but you’ll be able to train each side separately and equally without your more dominant side taking over.
How many man makers should there be?
This is completely up to you based on your current fitness level, experience with manmakers, and lifting ability. I programmed it based on my current training schedule and the loads I was comfortable using for each movement, so I started using my own body weight, then added light dumbbells to practice each movement, then slowly added weight. We recommend that you do so.
What did I learn after one week of Manmaker?
Man Maker is effective for conditioning, endurance, and building stronger muscles. To train for strength, low reps (1-6 reps) and high sets (4-6 reps) are sufficient. For endurance-based metcon workouts, you can increase the number of reps and sets as part of the circuit, or stick to the number of sets before and after. 3-4 sets of 8-15 reps.
