Category: At-home workout

Boot Camp and Supersets

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Where did the “warm” weather go?! I guess this is what comes with the spring season.

How about a little workout for you? I did this in my total body conditioning class last week and it was a good one. The workout starts with a boot camp style and moves to a supersets & cardio style at the end, which is a nice way to break up the class if you ask me!

Boot Camp and Super Set

Obviously this can be modified up or down as you wish. Here are some possible modifications:

1. Don’t use a weight for the squat w/OH extension OR use a heavier weight

2. Step forward into a squat rather than jumping OR jump higher/further

3. Push-ups can be done on your knees OR try lifting a leg

etc., etc. If you’re looking for a more specific modification, please shoot me an email (burpeestobubbly@gmail.com) or leave a note in the comments section! YouTube is also a great resource to get visuals for the moves (froggers or bunny hops, for instance).

For the supersets, try challenging yourself with the weights! If you usually curl 5’s or 8’s, try going to 8’s or 10’s or 12’s… It might feel tough at first, but you’ll be amazed how quickly your muscles grow stronger when you increase the weight you’re using (I promise, you don’t get bulky! But you will get more tone and definition:) )

Let me know if you try this!

Questions for you: Do you like circuit style workouts or do you prefer workouts where you don’t have to repeat anything? I know I do circuits often, but they aren’t my favorite! They are great for causing muscle fatigue, though:)

Easter Recap

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Happy Easter, Burpees to Bubbly readers:) I cannot tell you how sad I was to leave Maine today… a 24 hour trip is just NOT enough!

Did the Easter bunny come to your house? He sure came to ours!

006Mom filled our baskets with some fun treats. I was especially excited about the Greek Yogurt cookbook; I can’t wait to make something from it!

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We all got decked out in our Easter outfits and headed to church. Prior to leaving, my dad came in the house and announced that Easter is so great for parents with 5-year-old girls because they get to see them all dressed in their white Easter dresses. Like, what?! What does that even mean? Haha. Danielle and I were not really sure how to take that, but once he saw us dressed in our non-white Easter dresses, he didn’t seem too disappointed. Random side note ended.

My mom got busy in the kitchen when we got home from church while my dad and sister dealt with insurance stuff and I created a cute “Easter” workout. Confession: I didn’t actually do the workout since today was my rest day, but I think it’s a good one!

Easter WorkoutIf nothing else, the Easter theme is enough to make me smile!

Brunch was absolutely delicious. We all agreed it was one of the best ones we could remember!

011Mimosas, ham, quiche, asparagus, ricotta & asparagus pinwheel (omg delicious. Definitely getting the recipe and making it asap… Mom kept saying how “blog worthy” it was) and delicious fruit! I was so happy that we had leftovers to bring back to MA with us:)

Since Easter usually falls right around my birthday (April 14th), we have started to celebrate my birthday and Easter at the same time. More presents for me! 😉 This year, though, my mom will be heading down to MA next weekend so she wanted to do my presents and cake then, but I did coax her into letting me open one!

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013A few weeks ago my mom had a “girls weekend” trip in North Conway, NH and she picked up both of these things there. The wine is from a local vinyard- I can’t WAIT to try it! And, the glass serving platter is beautiful.

And, with that, Easter and the weekend are over. Whomp, whomp:( Besides my normal teaching schedule, this week is quiet and I am so excited about that! Oh, and tomorrow starts Birthday Month AND the April Arms Challenge. April is going to be SO.MUCH.FUN!

Questions for you: How was your Easter? Did the Easter bunny bring you anything good? What does your week look like?

From MA to ME

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Greetings from my favorite state: Maine! As much as I love my life in Massachusetts, my heart will always be in my home state of Maine, so I love when I have the chance to break away from the fast-paced city life and slllooowww down and hang out in Maine with my parents.

Let’s catch up on Friday before we get to Saturday…

Last time I checked in with you, I was debating on what to do for a workout. I wasn’t feeling great and had had a couple of intense workouts earlier in the week. I thought about just walking or doing nothing, but when Athena suggested that I do the “Deck of Cards” workout (originated by Bob Harper- google it), I was totally peer pressured. I had wanted to do this workout for a while, so I figured that Friday was the best day to do it.

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Yeah, that face totally means “oh, wow. that was killer. #sweatybeastmode”. I picked cardio and core moves since I had just lifted on Thursday (and was teaching UXF later in the day where I knew I’d be doing about 50% of the strength exercises) and let me tell you, when I flipped multiple hearts followed by diamonds, or vice versa, I was cursing. The whole workout, including a 5 minute warm up, only took me about 30 minutes so it is great to do when you’re in a time crunch or traveling. (for those of you unfamiliar with the “deck of cards” workout, you pick and exercise to do for each suit in the deck. When you flip the cards over, that’s what you do for an exercise. Face cards= 10 reps, Aces= 11 reps).

Post workout, I decided that I just HAD to get to Lulu to get that tank that I had been dreaming about.

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Cute, right?! And, I ended up finding a really cute of low-rise (unheard of at Lulu) capri’s on sale for $29!! With my instructor discount, that’s basically free when it comes to Lulu:) Since I “saved” so much money and had extra time on my meter and before class, I treated myself to some frozen yogurt.

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YUM! Great fuel for teaching, right?! 😉 Class went great, though. Wasn’t a huge group, but considering it was Easter weekend I was happy with the turnout. Post class, I grabbed a couple of drinks- and nachos- with a friend and my sister. Yum, again!

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My sister and I called it a relatively early night since I knew I had to teach at 10am today and pack and be ready to head to Maine straight from teaching.

Onto today….

My day started out with an hour cardio kickboxing class at the Oak Square YMCA. For the new readers, I recently dropped my Saturday 9AM TBC class at the Allston BSC for an every-other Saturday Kickboxing class at 10AM at the YMCA.  This class makes my week! Even on Easter weekend, I had 31-32 people in class today and boy did we SWEAT! Perfect start to my weekend of extra glasses of vino (yes, that is possible…I am the “wuss” in my family”) and extra candy.

We had an extra long trip up to Maine due to a shopping stop in Kittery and ice cream stop in Sanford

015Avocado ice cream?! No, thanks! Plus, Shaw’s Ridge is wayyy better than Shain’s anyway (I worked and managed Shaw’s Ridge for 7 summers and had the privilege of working with the BEST group of girls everrrr, so I am biased, but the ice cream quality really is much better).

We finally got home around 4pm and got back in the car with mom to head to our roommate’s mom’s house. My mom and Amy’s mom are best friends and when you take our mom and  my sister, Amy, Sara and Rachel, that makes up the “Shapleigh” girls. Rachel wasn’t there today, but we still had a blast!

EasterOk, how CUTE is Amy’s mom’s centerpiece?! I swear, that is the best use of peeps I have ever seen! I just love these girls so much!

025From L to R: my mom, Chris (Amy and Sara’s mom, me, Amy- our roommate-, Sara- Amy’s sister- Danielle- my sister)

As much as we would’ve loved to have stayed and had fun with them all night, dad was at home waiting for us to eat dinner. I told him I wanted crab cakes, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that he not only had the crab cakes ready for me when I got home, but also had chicken sausage sando’s, veal sando’s, and pea soup. I’m a lucky girl!

We also surprised mom with the coolest thing ever! Mom and dad live off of box wine (they drink A LOT of wine, so it makes more sense to buy by the box) and my sister and I found this “Purse Box Wine” that we knew she’d love.

wine purse

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As for the rest of the night, I’ll likely be in bed early since I’m exhausted! Church in the morning and then a delicious Easter spread!

Questions for you: What are you doing for Easter? Have anything you’re really excited about eating? Did you get in any good workouts this weekend in anticipation of candy indulgence?

Wait. It’s only Wednesday?

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Don’t you hate it when you’re a day ahead?  It’s so disappointing when you realize you’re not as close to the weekend as you originally thought you were. Since I have Friday off, I guess today technically IS like my Thursday, so I guess it’s not so bad that I feel like it is Thursday today. I’ll take it!

I am working from home again today, so you bet I’ll be doing this workout:

WFH workout

I might do it every 60 minutes instead of every 30 minutes because I plan on going for a jog during my lunch break (I think it’s supposed to be around 50 degrees today! and sunny! woohoo!). Has anyone tried this? I made a coworker virtually do it with me on Monday. I would message him every half hour. He may or may not have called me a drill sergeant. I may or may not have loved it.

Speaking of being a drill sergeant… This email made my night!

emailPeople should know that when they send me emails/Facebook messages/texts like this, it only amps me up more! Watch out, Dynamaxers! Speaking of Dynamax, did you guys catch my guest post over at Fitness and Feta? If not, head over and check it out. If you are a new follower because of Athena’s blog, welcome! I am so happy you stopped by:)

This email actually made me feel so much better. As some of you may have seen on Facebook, I just couldn’t pull myself together on Monday once I got to the gym.

FB pull it together

I had worked from home during the day and I was all amped to get in a solid cardio sweat sesh prior to teaching, but between the traffic getting through Harvard Square, the parking nightmare at the YMCA and the fact that there were LINES for every piece of cardio equipment, I totally lost all motivation and wanted to go home and not work out. Now, if you know me, you know this RARELY happens to me. I really do love working out and know that even on the days I am not that excited about it “I’ll never regret a workout,” however on Monday, this wasn’t the case. I tried my best to pull it together for my Dynamaxers (I don’t think that is a word, but I’m going with it), but I still felt like I let people down with sub-par teaching. I know we can’t all be perfect all the time, but with my Type A personality, I WANT to be as close to perfect as I can all the time (I know, this makes zero sense, please tell me I am not the only one). Thankfully, Gregg’s email made me feel much better. Guess it was just another classic case of me being way too hard on myself. #storyofmylife

Phew… enough with the downer Debbie talk!

Did you all see the massive salad I had for lunch yesterday at Papagayo?

001As cool as this salad looked, I think it’s a little silly when restaurants make the “taco shell” so big! I had a few bites, but found the chips and salsa much more appealing.  Regardless, I do love me some Papagayo, just wish I could have enjoyed a marg!

What’s on the agenda for today/tonight? Any good workouts planned? Please share:)

Weekly Workouts and a WFH Workout

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Can you believe another week has already passed? Luckily, since most of my coworkers are in San Diego for a conference, I have the luxury of WFH (working from home) for a good part of the week.  And, to make this week even better, we have Friday off!! I do have to teach at night and on Saturday, so I can’t head up to Maine as early as I’d like, but still… having a week day totally “off” from my real job is awesome.

How did all of you do with your workouts last week? Here’s how I did:

  • Monday- 4.5 Mile Treadmill Run & taught Dynamax
  • Tuesday- “Mommy’s Moves” filming with Jess and walked about 2.5 miles for my commute
  • Wednesday- 22 minutes on the elliptical and then taught this workout.
  • Thursday- did some upper body strength training (drop sets) and then taught Cardio Kickboxing
  • Friday- ran 2 miles on the treadmill before teaching another stations workout. I didn’t do the same moves as I did in the workout I linked, but I’ll post what we did soon!
  • Saturday- Cleaned the apartment (sweeping and vacuuming is hard when you have multiple floors!) and then went to a Barre class at C2 Pilates (that post will be up soon!)
  • Sunday- Went for a long walk, which was JUST what I needed.

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Workouts for this week:

  • Monday (today)- I have extra free time today since I am not commuting to and from work, so I am doing my “WFH” Workout:

WFH workoutAnd I’ll do some cardio and maybe some weights before I teach Dynamax.

  • Tuesday-Jess and I have to film again since the first video was blurry:(
  • Wednesday- Cardio & teaching UXF Burn
  • Thursday- NEW schedule for Thursdays: Teaching TBC at 5:30 at Central Square which is immediately followed by teaching my kickboxing class… a great double session (Athena it’s kind of like your Tuesday Two-A-Day at the Y! I hope I can get a good following like you and Liz!)
  • Friday- Since I have the day off, I am going to try to get to a class at one of the BSC’s. I’m teaching UXF Burn at 5:30 in Allston (I am not supposed to do these workouts, so don’t worry- I’m not doing back-to-back two-a-days!)
  • Saturday- Teaching Cardio Kickboxing at the YMCA!!
  • Sunday- Probably a walk with mom after Easter Brunch!

Questions for you: What do your workouts look like this week? Do you get to have Friday off for Good Friday?