Dr. Jordan Metzl is a sports medicine physician who developed an extreme total-body workout routine called Ironstrength. He now teaches free exercise classes all around New York City.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and complete the gaps in the transcript with the missing words.
The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 students.
My name is Dr Jordan Metzl. I’m a sports medicine physician at a hospital for special surgery. We’re in Central Park having just done my hamstring workout. As a doctor I really believe that exercise is the best medicine and I want everybody to be able to take that medicine all the time.
The first time I did it I thought I wonder if anyone’s going to come. I just emailed some of my patients. We had about 25 people. I’ve now built a list server for this class at about (1) ... people.
This kind of workout is great about twice a week, and the great thing about it is that it’s free, you don’t need any equipment and it’s so effective I think body weight (2) ... and what’s called functional strength training is the way to go.
Today we did a combination of, first of all, some (3) ... up a hill. Now skipping is a great example of what’s called a plyometric, so the muscles basically rapidly elongating and contracting. So, even though, (3) ... is a lot of fun. It’s a great way to start (3) ... some of those running (4) .... .
These kinds of workouts over time push your lactate (5) ... meaning your fatigue level gets further up and further up the more you do this kind of intense training.
Then I did a series of exercises designed to strengthen the muscles, and so started with what we call plyometric (6) ... ... and those are like the best exercise you can do. They’re awesome. You basically squat all the way down and then you jump up in the air and squat all the way down. Then I had people get on the ground and did a series of rotation planks with the (7) ... , and then legs down, as you bring your legs all the way up and then straight down. Again, a great core strengthener. And then some (8) ... and the idea is strengthening the whole connected chain of the muscles. We started with the legs and the gluts, then we went to the core and the upper body.
Following that we did my favourite exercise which is called the burpee. It was designed in the 1930’s to get maximum strength and maximum effort. And then we finished with an isometric exercise called a (9) ... . And that’s where you hold yourself in one position to strengthen all the muscles round the core.
And that’s the thing I love about this class, it’s that it basically brings people together of all different ages and abilities, and it’s great because as a group you can work so much harder than you can individually.
Key:
1 6,000 2 strengthen 3 skipping 4 muscles 5 threshold 6 jump squats 7 push-up 8 sit-ups 9 plank
