Category: Workout

Wednesday Workout: Italy Workout Series {Part 3: 5 Round Bodyweight Tabata}

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Good morning! It’s hard to believe there was a period of time where I had no workouts to share with you because these days I feel like I have quite a backlog of saved workouts to share with you. Today’s workout is part 3 of my Italy Workout Series, which includes- you guessed it- another 20 minute bodyweight workout. This time I used the Tabata format, which is 20 seconds “on” (this is when you do the exercise move) and 10 seconds “off” (this is when you rest), repeating 8 times for a total of 4 minutes. In a traditional tabata workout you would do the same exercise for all 8 rounds, but I tend to change it up a bit and do 2 or 4 difference exercises for each round, generally complimenting each other. Today’s workout used 2 different exercises per tabata so you’ll do each four times.

I don’t know about you guys, but for me, in a tabata workout, rounds 1-3 or 4 leave me feeling like “I got this, no problem!”, rounds 5 & 6 tend to be “Alright, this is feeling definitely more challenging… and that 10s seems to be going by awfully quickly” and then by rounds 7 & 8 I’m struggling to keep up with the number of reps I could complete in the earlier rounds and barely feel slightly recovered by the end of the 10s rest period…. which is probably why tabatas are such an effective type of training format to throw into the mix!

 

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Quick note: for the “walk out-> pushup-> walk in-> squat, you’ll walk your hands out into a high plank position, do a pushup, then walk them back in and then you’ll do a squat. If you want to intensity this move, you can do a 1 legged walk out and switch sides after each squat.

I set round 1 up to also be the warm up, so you can choose whatever moves you like to do to warm up for this round. Otherwise the moves are a bit lower intensity than I normally do, but again I was on vacation, which means my workouts are less intense by nature, and I was working out on our terrace and didn’t want to disturb neighbors. Regardless, it was a great way to get in a little sweat sesh and perk me up for the day ahead.

In case you missed the other two workouts in this series, here they are:

Italy Workout Series Part 1: Countdown Bodyweight
Italy Workout Series Part 2: 20 Min. Bodyweight AMRAP

Questions for you: What’s the hardest workout format for you? What’s your favorite workout format?

Wednesday Workout: Italy Workout Series {Part 2: 20 Min. Bodyweight AMRAP}

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Good morning! If you remember, last week I introduced part 1 of my Italy Workout Series with a quickie countdown style workout. Today, I’m sharing another quickie workout that I did outside at one of the hotels we stayed at. Our hotel room wasn’t big enough to workout in (plus RM was still sleeping!) and we didn’t have a terrace or balcony so I needed to find a new space. Luckily it was early enough that there were not other guests out and about yet!

While broad jumps by nature require a bit of space, if you don’t have space and want to workout in your hotel room or apartment living room, you can replace the broad jumps with just regular squat jumps. Easy enough!

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Quite notes: for the broad jumps, do 10 out and 10 back and for the plank with knee to chest, do 10 on each side.

This workout left me SO SORE for a few days. My quads were literally screaming at me- broad jumps are no joke, especially if you land in a low squat and really push yourself in the jump part. Combine that with walking lots of hills and stairs and it’s no wonder why I didn’t recover as quickly as I normally do!

But I still thought that this was a really fun, effective, sweaty 20 minute way to start the day- I hope you try it!

Questions for you: What exercise always leaves you sore?

Five on Friday {9.9.16}

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Hi, friends! Happy freaking Friday 🙂 I hope you’ve all had a good week- mine started out roughhhh, but turned around a bit by the end of it. We leave for Italy in 9 days and work is absolutely crazy right now so I’m just trying to get through what I can so I can start my vacation without the stress of worrying about what I didn’t finish.

But, let’s talk about more fun things, shall we?

  • Moscow Mules- We received some beautiful monogrammed copper mugs for our wedding (thanks, Jean!), so last weekend we decided to put them to good use by whipping up some Moscow Mules. Neither of us had had one before, but we both enjoyed them! It was a really fun cocktail hour enjoyed on our back patio.

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  • Eating out vs. eating in- Most of the time, RM and I try to eat in the majority of the time. We shop on the weekends for the week, prep a bunch of food to have handy (I bring my lunch every day, too), but last week we kind of went on a eating out bender. Thursday we went to Buff’s (hadn’t been in SO long), Friday we went to Hopsters (again, hadn’t been in SO long) and Saturday we went to The Local in West Newton, because, well #saturdaydatenight. This is very unlike us to go so many days in a row eating out (unless we are on vacation), and while everything was delicious, we decided to eat IN on Saturday night. RM grilled up some veggie and shrimp skewers and I made a nice big salad. There’s something to be said about making your own meals- it felt really good to eat a nice meal like this!

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  • Love Grown Cereal- Confession: I LOVE cereal. I always have, but over the years I’ve tried to clean up my cereal choices (and I’ve gone from eating it daily to just a few times a week- baby steps). Most of the time I have Erewhon & Uncle Sam brands because they have such few ingredients, but they had a sample of Love Grown Power O’s at Whole Foods last weekend and I knew I had to try it out. They’re made out of different legumes, so they are wheat & corn free- something you don’t see often with cereal!

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  • Teaching- I’ve been loading up on classes leading up to our vacation since I know I’ll be going so long without teaching while we are away. While it can be tiresome (yesterday I did 6am and 5:30pm… and 9 hours of work in between), it’s really so rewarding. I love coming up with new workouts and playlists and helping people feel good and feel strong. I’m teaching tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday… and then I’m off for a longggg time, so catch me while you can!

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  • Biking- I can’t thank RM enough for suggesting that we get bikes. We have been having SO MUCH FUN with them. One day last week I rode it all around town to run errands and then Friday night I took it to meet my sister for a drink (RM rode with me which was nice) and then Sunday RM and I covered nearly 25 miles of biking. We rode all the way into the city, brought the bikes on the T to Eastie (RM had to check on one of the units in a building he owns) and then back to Watertown. Midway home, we stopped at Naco Taco in Central Square for a snack and a beer. I used to run by that place weekly and would always be so jealous of everyone there enjoying drinks and food outside so it was nice to get to check it out. We both highly suggest it if you want good tacos and guac- everything was fantastic, and reasonably priced. Oh, and the good part about biking places for drinks is it limits me to just one, since I don’t trust myself operating the bike after any more 😉 #lightweight

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I guess that does it! We have lots to get done this weekend in preparation for our honeymoon, so it’ll be a busy one! There is a Vegetarian Food Truck & Craft Beer Festival at the Arsenal Mall tomorrow which we might try to get to. It starts at 11am and is $10-$45 and guests can enjoy more than 30 craft beers and lots of vegetarian dishes. Sounds pretty cool!

I hope you have a great weekend with whatever you have planned 🙂

Questions for you: What was a good part of your week? What do you have planned this weekend? Do you prefer to bike, walk or drive places? Do you prefer to cook/eat in or eat out? What’s a guilty pleasure of yours?

Wednesday Workout: 15 Minute Blast #3 {Last one of the 3 part series}

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I’m back with the 3rd and final part of my 15 minute AMRAP blast series! If anyone else is running tight on time these days, then these workouts are perfect for you. They are quick & dirty, as I like to say. They cover multiple muscle group, require minimal equipment and are over in a flash. A win-win-win combination if you ask me!

In this workout we’re working the legs/glutes with lunges and the upper body with biceps curls. I’m not one to usually focus on specifically working the smaller muscle groups, but once and a while I think it’s a nice addition to my workouts. That, and I think the lunge & bicep combination is a good one 😉

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For everything that has a “right and left” component (lunges, jumping lunges, butt kicks), perform the number of reps on each side.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Questions for you: What’s your favorite “combo” exercise?

Five on Friday {9.2.16}

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Hello! TGIF, right?! I’ll tell you what- I am looking forward to a long weekend! We get a half day today and then we have Monday off and I have to say that I am reallllly looking forward to it, even though I have so much work to do I really could use the day in the office, haha OH WELL! It’ll get done eventually 😉

Did you guys have a good week? Mine was good- tiring for the brain, but a good week! Last night, after a great yoga class, RM and I hit up Buff’s Pub for wings, which we hadn’t done for SO long so they tasted extra delicious .

  • Just Add Cooking– I was lucky enough to receive another box of meals from Just Add Cooking this past week and, yet again, everything we had was amazing! I’ll share more on it later, but here are a few teaser pics 😉

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  • Healthified Beach Lunches- One of my favorite parts of going to the beach is packing up the cooler with various food and drinks. There’s something about the beach that just makes me want fun snacks and tasty beers (or wine!), amiright?! Last summer, when I went to make us lunches I realized we were out of pitas/wraps, so I got creative and made a “wrapless wrap”, meaning I used the thickly cut deli meat as the “wrap” and stuffed it as I would if I was actually using a wrap. Now, we don’t even bother with the wraps because we like this variation so much. We prefer snacking on crackers/healthy chips dipped in hummus for our carbs rather than bread or wraps and while this may not be for everyone, it works for us. If you’re looking for a way to change up your beach lunches, I highly suggest this! I usually buy a nice Boars Head turkey meat and provolone cheese and then layer the turkey, cheese, hummus, spinach and veggies- last weekend I used cucumbers, red pepper and avocado. SO tasty!

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  • Morning Workouts- Since I teach after work and have to be to work by 7:30 (which is 30+ minutes away), I tend to workout during my lunch break instead of the morning. I find I have more energy and more fun, but this past week I got up to workout before work on Wednesday since I knew I wouldn’t have the ability to do so during the day and didn’t want it on my “to-do” list for after work. While it’s never really FUN to get up and workout before work, this sunrise AND knowing my workout was DONE by 6:30am made it totally worth it.

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  • Book Club- I’ll admit that I while I always finish each book club book before the next meeting, most of the time I’m scrambling in the last few days to actually finish it. A few months ago, I had to sit in my parked car outside of Jessi’s house to finish the last 10 pages haha oops! This time around, though, I’m ahead of the game. We are reading What She Left Behind and it is SO good. It’s told by two different women: one from the 1920’s and one more recently so it’s super interesting to read how different the times are between the two versions of the story. I highly recommend this if you’re looking for a good book to read.

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  • National Yoga Month- Did you know September is National Yoga Month?! I’m excited to be included in the activities hosted by Corepower Yoga, including a yoga class last night at Fenway for the media crew. I needed the yoga more than you know, so it came at the perfect time. I can’t wait to practice MORE this month- it’s one of those things I know I need, but for some reason it always gets pushed aside. And ps- Corepower’s #whyiyoga campaign is amazing- totally in love with this shirt and this message!!

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And with that, I’m out! We have a half day today and I’m teaching tomorrow morning, otherwise the weekend plans are totally up in the air. We may go to the Cape, but I’m hoping we stick around here for the weekend. Whatever you have on your agenda, I hope it includes everything that makes you happy 🙂

Questions for you: How was your week? Did you have any good workouts? What’s a “must read” book you’ve read? Do you like yoga? Have you been grilling a lot? What do you pack for beach lunches?