Category: At-home workout

Workouts and Weekending

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Morning, friends! I hope you had a great weekend! Thank you so much for your awesome comments, Twitter shares and Facebook shares on my “You workout… you can eat what you want”. I had a blast writing that post and was happy to see that so many of you could relate to it!

I’d love to say that both my workouts last week and weekend activities over the weekend were mind-blowingly awesome, but, they weren’t. On the plus side, I got out of the house which was a very nice treat after having been cooped up inside my little apartment by myself all week!

Friday night after work, I headed up to my friend Lisa’s apartment for a glass of wine and social interaction. It was perfect!

Saturday morning, I got up, worked out (mostly back to normal!) and then hit the road to head north. Although I was feeling and looking {mostly} better, I knew I didn’t want to go out, so I thought it was best to swing home for a night. I stopped in Kittery to “look” quickly at Banana Republic and ended up scoring BIG TIME. Can you guess how much I spent on all of this? 1 dress, 1 pair of pants, 1 skirt, 2 shirts, a necklace and perfume? Hint: It’s under $100!!!

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Apparently I was into leopard print…

Once I got home, I showed my dad an incredibly sore, swollen area on my back and we decided to go to a walk-in clinic to get it checked out since I’m in Dallas Monday and Tuesday this week (really not great timing…). Turns out I had a staph infection and was put on antibiotics. Great. Just what I needed after my week!

Needless to say, being home with my parents to take care of me couldn’t have been any better. I got to have wine, snuggle and play with the cats and even got some “get better” flowers from my mom’s friends. They sure know how to make a girl feel better!

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Charlie’s “sleeping like a log”… get it… in the wood bag, haha I thought mom was pretty funny for that one!

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Sunday was a relaxing day around the house. I filmed a workout video, napped (I didn’t sleep Saturday night, I think because of the Prednisone… sucks), blogged and just tried to relax. I’m nervous about this quick trip to Dallas because being tired and run down is really the last thing I need right now!

Let’s talk about workouts…

I have a whole post going up tomorrow about my mentality towards working out last week (and physical inability to do what I usually do), which was definitely a struggle for me at times, but at other times it was literally the last thing on my mind. Although I wasn’t able to DO most things because of how painful the sores/bumps were on my hands and feet, I was able to get creative with some workouts, which allowed me to get movement in without pain- made me feel so much better!

Last Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- Nothing
  • Tuesday- Nothing
  • Wednesday- I came up with a “no contact, no impact, no equipment” workout that took me about a half hour to finish, including a warm up. I’m posting it on Wednesday for you!
  • Thursday- I g-chatted with Athena during the day and voiced my frustrations about my physical limitations and she gave me a bunch of “doable” exercises to do. I ended up playing around in my apartment for an hour after work and got in a great sweat sesh with no pain! I also walked 3 miles in the day since it was warm and sunny (and I hadn’t stepped foot out of the apartment in over 48 hours…).

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  • Friday- I was able to jump and make a fist with my hands on Friday!! So I did about 30 minutes of different exercises in my apartment since it was raining outside (meaning I couldn’t walk).

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  • Saturday- I had a great workout in my apartment before leaving for Maine. I did about 35 minutes of kickboxing and 15 minutes of core strength, no-weight arm exercises and some squats/lunges.
  • Sunday- I filmed my workout from Wednesday, which was about all I did. I had intentions of going snow shoeing, but due to lack of sleep and time constraints, it didn’t happen…and that’s ok!

This Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- If I slept last night, my plan this morning was to get up early and do a quick 20-30 minute workout before heading to the airport. I know I won’t have time on Tuesday to workout, so I’d like to get something in today if possible.
  • Tuesday- Nothing
  • Wednesday- Finally back at the gym (I hope!!!). I’ll probably take it easy and do some light, no-impact cardio before I teach pending on how I feel. I missed these guys last week!
  • Thursday- Teaching my SHRED and Kickboxing double… Hope I’m feeling back to normal at this point!
  • Friday- Not sure. I may try to get something done in my apartment or it could be a rest day since I have plans after work.
  • Saturday- Teaching kickboxing at the Oak Square YMCA
  • Sunday- Not sure… it will probably depend on how my workouts for the week went.

And, that about sums it up!

Questions for you: When’s the last time you had a limitation inhibiting you to workout like you wanted to? What do you do when you can’t do your usual workouts- skip a workout all together or try to improvise and come up with something that is doable?

Wednesday Workout: Tone Your Tush! {without equipment!}

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I’m really enjoying reading through your entries and comments on my giveaway post. I love hearing things you’d like to see more of on my blog, and one of the things that seemed to be a common request was more at home, no equipment necessary workouts. I couldn’t agree more! While I like posting the workouts I teach, I understand that many of you reading the blog are probably looking for shorter, equipment free workouts you can squeeze in before or after work. So, my goal is to start posting more workouts like this for you- starting today! This workout focuses on your legs and glutes, but I did throw in some optional core work in there, because let’s be honest, we can always use a little extra core work, right? The time intervals go as follows:

  • 60 seconds- strength. If you want to use weights, feel free, but the workout is meant to be a body weight workout, so explore your range of motion, speed of the exercises, etc. Try to get deeper with your squats or lunges, try to squeeze harder as you lift, try to stay lower in your pulses. Take it up a notch in this workout!
  • 40 seconds- cardio. The cardio moves I chose compliment the strength moves- gotta love the double burn!
  • 20 seconds- pulsing. If you didn’t feel the burn yet, you’ll feel it in this piece!

You have the option to do each set once through, twice through or three times through. You can do all 2 or 3 rounds of each set before moving on to the next, OR you can do each set once through and then repeat all of the sets again in a circuit format. Lots of options!

Tone Your Tush

All of these moves are pretty basic, but if you have questions, just shoot me a message and I’d be glad to explain!

Questions for you: Do you like working your upper or lower body more? Is this the type of workout you’re looking to see on the blog? Do you like body weight workouts?

This Week: Workouts, Snow Frustration & Things I’m Looking Forward To

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Thank you all so much for your kind words and great suggestions on my 1 year anniversary post. You have no idea how much it means to me… seriously! You guys are the best!! There’s still more time to enter the giveaway, so head on over and enter to win it!

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Good morning! How was your weekend? Mine was ok. Friday night I had a blast getting drinks and apps with my sister and my upstairs neighbor, Lisa. It ended up being an eventful night, but very fun! Saturday was full of fitness and baking since my evening plans got cancelled because of the snow and Sunday was quiet and low key because I was super uncomfortable from a weird skin breakout on top of my Chilblains. Yeah. Wasn’t fun at all.

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I’ve got to say, though, the snow has really been cramping my style and my plans. I love the snow and I love winter, but I hate the stress that it adds: worrying about whether or not classes will be cancelled, worrying about parking, getting disappointed because plans end up being cancelled because of the weather… it’s just getting old! Anyone else feel this way? What’s the thing about winter/snow storms that stresses you out the most or makes you the most upset?

Last Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I subbed a kickboxing class at the Watertown BSC. It was a big group AND no one left… that’s a personal record for me at that gym 😉 Before teaching I did 15 minutes on the elliptical and 10 minutes of abs.
  • Tuesday- I went to the Muscle Mix class at the gym in my building. We used the Reebok core boards which was a fun treat! It was the same sub as last week (who was awkward) and she was still crazy this week. She also kept telling us to “suck in our guts” and to not let them hang over out pants. I found that offensive and just not really appropriate. I understand the point she’s trying to make, but I think she could approach it differently. Thoughts?
  • Wednesday- I ran a quick 3 miles on the treadmill (and changed the incline from 1-5%, which upped the intensity) and then taught UXF Burn.
  • Thursday- The BSC cancelled ALL classes, which has never happened in the time I’ve worked there. Literally. Even in the blizzard last year they didn’t cancel classes. It was such a shocker!! On the one hand, I was happy that I didn’t have to deal with getting there and getting home, but on the other hand I was sad to miss out on my double 😦 I ended up doing 30 minutes of kickboxing and 30 minutes of strength in my apartment. Perfect.
  • Friday- Rest! I did 10 minutes of yoga to stretch out and wished I had 60 minutes to stretch. It felt so good!
  • Saturday- Big day of fitness. I taught kickboxing in the morning (sorry to the front row if my sweat smelled like wine… whoops!), which ended up being a pretty intense cardio class. Later in the day, I went to a blogger event at Flywheel. Boy were my legs beat by the end of that!!
  • Sunday- Rest. I wasn’t planning on resting, but my Chilblains came out in full force from Friday night to Sunday. It’s terrible and I need to go back to the dermatologist. My fingers were so painful it hurt to bend them… and it spread to my toes. I know I could have it much worse, but I was pretty miserable yesterday, to say the least. I cleaned, grocery shopped, food prepped and caught up on blogging instead. Sometimes rest like that is just necessary.

This Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I’m not sure what I’ll do today… I might have even gotten my workout in by the time this blog post goes up!
  • Tuesday- If I don’t go to the Muscle Mix class (I have a call right before it so I may not be able to make it), I’ll lift after work probably.
  • Wednesday- Treadmill run and then teaching UXF Burn.
  • Thursday- Teaching SHRED and Kickboxing. At least my workouts are already made 😉
  • Friday- I’d love to get in 30 minutes of at home yoga!
  • Saturday- I have no idea! I’m not teaching and don’t have any other plans. Maybe I’ll go to Recycle studio or BodyPump or Core Fusion. I love open weekend days 🙂
  • Sunday- Again, no idea. Apparently my week is very open in terms of workouts…. I like that!

Things I’m Looking Forward To

Hmmm… I’m looking forward to getting a chance to have flexibility with my workouts this week. Hopefully I’ll be able to try out new classes or workouts. My Valentine’s plans last weekend ended up being cancelled because of the weather, so hopefully they’ll get rescheduled this week. Other than that, I’m feeling really blah. I’m trying not to let this whole Chilblains stuff bother me, but it is. It’s just painful and frustrating and it makes me nervous. I know I could be facing things much worse than I am, but it just seems like I can’t win lately. Literally, I feel like it’s been one thing after another in the past 2 weeks and it’s really starting to get to me. I need to get back to the doctors ASAP, because on top of the Chilblains, I also have some weird bumps all over my body… almost like bug bites. I don’t think I have bed bugs (I looked) and I changed my sheets, but they’re getting worse. My skin hates me and I’m looking forward to the day when it’s back to normal.

So, sorry about my womp womp attitude, but I just don’t like when my body isn’t working correctly. It makes me nervous, but hopefully after seeing the doctor I’ll feel better.

Questions for you: Has the snow interrupted your workout plans? Have you ever been offended by something an instructor has said? What are you looking forward to this week?

 

This Week: Workouts & Things I’m Looking Forward To

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Happy Monday! I’m happy to say that I am feeling much better after having gone home to Maine for the weekend. After my finger issue (more on that in a minute), I went into the weekend saying that if I didn’t get any formal exercise in that would be totally fine (fitting, after my rest post on Friday, right? Did you check it out? I’d love to get some more people to chime in on what you think about rest days!). Turns out that since my mom and sister had gym plans on Saturday morning before our hair appointment and lunch, it made more sense for me to go with them, so I did. But it’s ok. I felt rested and, honestly, everything that had been bothering me last week just seemed to go away once I got home. I know that probably sounds weird, but it’s the truth. It’s like all I really needed was to get out of dodge and be home. Amazing how that happens.

So, back to that finger issue. To make a really long story short, I have had a few issues with my right ring finger since probably early December. It’s had various things go wrong with it, most recently, lots of swelling, immobility and a nasty open wound. I finally decided to go to the doctors last Monday. Two doctors looked at it and couldn’t figure out what was going on, so they gave me an ointment and told me to come back on Thursday. Thursday came, and I hadn’t seen any improvements to my finger. The doctor asked a dermatologist about it and she determined that she thought it was Chilblains, which is a form of frost bite. Yeah. Not impressed. They gave me a stronger steroid ointment, instructed me to keep my finger elevated to reduce swelling, told me to keep it away from soap and to wear mittens. Great. As of today, it’s still not really better, so I foresee myself going BACK to the dermatologist this week 😦 It’s just annoying because I really can’t move it and therefore it makes working out with weights and teaching kickboxing quite difficult. Ugh. Rant over- thanks for listening reading!

Last Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I wasn’t as sore as I thought I was going to be from Barry’s Bootcamp, so I headed to the gym in my office building for a low-impact cardio and core workout. I rarely say this, but my workout SUCKED.  Yup. It wasn’t good and I left there frustrated that I wasted almost an hour of my day. I just did the elliptical and then a short circuit, but felt like I didn’t really exert myself. Oh well. We can’t always have rock star workouts, right?!
  • Tuesday- I went to the Muscle Mix class during the day at my office gym. It was a sub and I wasn’t that impressed with her. First off, she worked out in a sports bra (not appropriate, in my mind, unless you’re teaching Zumba), her form was terrible for planks, and she just said weird stuff. She was pretty jacked, but she was just too out there for me.
  • Wednesday- I ended up getting a sub (thanks Kate!) for UXF Burn because of the weather. I could have figured out a way to trek it there, but I realized it wasn’t really worth the super long commute for an hour class. I ended up doing this workout from Fitnessista with a few additions and some extra core and cardio at the end. I loved the tabata cardio’s!
  • Thursday- Taught my double! I taught a fun format in SHRED that I kind of took from Emily’s class at Barry’s. I created supersets and gave the class 4 minutes per superset to work down from 10 reps of each to as low as they could go in 4 minutes. Then we did 60 seconds of abs and a tabata cardio. I’ll post it for you this week because I loved it!
  • Friday- Rest day at home in Maine 🙂
  • Saturday- Went to a class with my sister, but didn’t love it (wow, my workouts weren’t that great last week, apparently!). The instructor is usually crazy intense, but her class today wasn’t anything special and I didn’t feel like I was working that hard. Oh well.
  • Sunday- I went snow shoeing with my mom in our yard for over 45 minutes!! Well, I snow shoed and she cross country skied behind me. I haven’t snow shoed since last winter and it felt great. It was a beautiful day and I got a much-needed dose of Vitamin D!

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This Week’s Workouts

  • Monday- I am subbing kickboxing at the Watertown BSC at 6:30pm- Please come, BSCers!
  • Tuesday- Muscle Mix! I really enjoy getting out of the office and getting my strength workout done during the day (rather than getting up early or doing it after work). Especially in a half hour 😉
  • Wednesday- Probably running before teaching UXF Burn. I missed these guys last week… I may make it harder for them to show them that 😉
  • Thursday- Teaching SHRED and Kickboxing!
  • Friday- Rest
  • Saturday- Big day of fitness for me- teaching kickboxing at the Oak Square YMCA and then going to a blogger’s class at Flywheel in the Back Bay. I am REALLY excited!
  • Sunday- Probably another rest day, or maybe yoga.

Things I’m Looking Forward To

Well, I’m really looking forward to all of my apartment problems to go away. I was so relaxed coming back to Boston last night, but as soon as I walked into my apartment and saw how it looked and realized my heat was broken… my stress came right back! I’m also looking forward to making the choice to spend Valentine’s Day with my sister 🙂 I love the holiday, but can do the date-thing on Saturday night… spending Friday with my sister and anyone else who wants to hang with us is exactly what I’m looking forward to! I’m also looking forward to going to a cycling class at Flyweel. After my Recycle experience, I fell in love with indoor cycling, so I can’t wait to experience another studio!

Questions for you: When’s the last time you did something snow-related for a workout? Did you make it to the gym during the snow storm or did you opt for an at-home workout? Have you had an injury that makes it difficult for you to workout?

Wednesday Workout: Booty Burner #2

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Hi there! Remember the last booty burner that I posted? That was fun, right?! Well, I’ve got another one for you today. This time, rather than doing regular squats and lunges, you’ll be doing plié squats and curtsy lunges, which just happen to be 2 of my favorite leg exercises.

Make sure you do a quick warm up before you do this. It’s a great addition to a legs day at the gym because it will give you that extra burn before you call it quits!

Booty Burner #2

UPDATED TO ADD: Make sure you do this twice through so that you curtsy back on both legs. I usually do this on the right halfway through my kickboxing class and then on the left at the end of class. Sorry! I should have made that more clear when I was writing it up!

To help explain the process, here’s a video! Sorry about the end… I fumbled my words!

http://vimeo.com/85670517

Questions for you: What is your favorite leg exercise? Do you prefer curtsy lunges or regular lunges? Plie squats or regular squats?