Jacked Santa’s Transformation (You Can Do It Too)

Jacked Santa’s Transformation (From Jolly To Jacked)

Next week Santa, on the 25th, finishes his work for the year and is going to turn over his executive duties to the head elf. So he can get into shape.

We’re going to have some fun and look at how we’d get Santa into shape. We can use this information in our own workouts to devise a plan to get jacked in 2022!

To get an idea of Santa’s stats, I went to a wiki web page called NORAD tracks Santa. Here they say he is 5’7” and weighs 260 lbs. That’s a lotta weight for that height. I would estimate his waist size to be somewhere between 50 and 55 inches.

Way bigger than the average 50-year-old man’s, which is a little over 40 inches. Even in my Santa costume, my waist was between 43 and 44 inches.

Typical exercises that you’d see in a Santa workout are battle ropes to simulate driving the reindeer, A sack lift to imitate throwing a bag of gifts over your shoulder and finally squat jumps so Santa can jump up onto a chimney.

I have nothing against these exercises, but I would never prescribe them to beginners—especially someone who is 260 pounds. Just imagine how hard those squat jumps would be on the knees.

If you're just starting, you’ll be better off with a regular squat to strengthen your legs. A Santa-size man might need to start with a chair squat, but most will be able to do some form of weighted squat.

One of my favourites is the goblet squat. When you hold the dumbbell in front, it puts you in a more upright position which provides a greater emphasis on the quads and takes stress off the low back.

If you are interested in losing body fat and adding muscle, please email me at 1shark1bite@gmail.com for information on my personal training services.

If you would like a set of Torrobands for yourself, here is my affiliate link so you can receive 50% off on your purchase https://sale.torroband.com/?affId=555B3E5D

Check your testosterone levels from home. Just click this link http://trylgc.com/laurence and receive 20% off with code: LAURENCE20 I receive commissions on referrals to LetsGetChecked. I only recommend services I know and trust.

Here is the link to FortisFight https://www.fortisfight.com/product-category/men/ and use my affiliate discount code FITAND50 at checkout for 15% off you next purchase on all of their apparel.

My Affiliate link to Lebert for their Equalizer bars and more; https://lebertfitness.com/?ref=FitAnd50 and use the discount code FITAND50 you will receive 20% off your purchase

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/Fit-and-50-5...

My Amazon page link; https://www.amazon.com/shop/fitand50

The sack lift reminds me of a single dumbbell clean.

I used to do a lot of dumbbell clean and presses in my circuits workouts. But with a newer lifter, the risk of doing them improperly by rounding your back when cleaning the weight or leaning too far forward is an injury waiting to happen.

Better to break the movement up into 2 exercises first would be a Romanian deadlift to work our erector spine(spe-ni), glutes and hamstrings. This exercise involves moving your hips back as you lower the weight until you get a good stretch in your hamstrings, then thrust your hips forward as you raise your body.

The second part would be the shoulder press Something to watch for here is if you can’t press straight up without leaning your body back. This means one of two things you’re either using too much weight, or you have a mobility issue that needs to be addressed.

If it's a mobility problem, I recommend doing lateral and front raises for your delts until you work it out. We’ll talk about rear delts when we get to the back.

Speaking of the back, when you’re doing battle ropes, it works the whole body to some extent, but the real focus is on the arms, delts and back. It’s a good conditioning exercise, but because of the ballistic nature of the movement, I wouldn’t prescribe it to a newer lifter until they’ve developed some strength and muscle control.

I’d separate the conditioning work from the resistance training. For a bigger guy, activities like walking, swimming or cycling on a recumbent bike are less stressful on the joints and easier to recover from.

A cable pulldown is an excellent exercise to work the lats until you are ready to do pull-ups. This exercise also hits the traps, especially the lower trap fibres.

For a horizontal pull, you can keep the strain off the lower back by doing a bench supported row with a supinated grip keeping our arms close to our sides.

To target our upper back, simply move your arms up and away from your body, switching your hand to a pronated grip.

This hits your upper back, including traps, rear delts, and scapular muscles.

I’d like to add in one more pushing movement for our chest, and that’s the dumbbell bench press. I like this exercise because we can adjust our hands to wherever we’re most comfortable, and if you’re a bigger guy doing an exercise like push-ups might not be practical.