Tag: at home workout

Wednesday Workout: 2 Upper Body Circuits & Cardio Blasts

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Good morning! I don’t know about you, but I am ready to have mornings where the weather is warmer than 35-40* when I wake up. While I appreciate that it’s lighter out, warmer temps would be more encouraging for early morning runs 😉 Since the weather was chillier than I’d like to run in first thing in the morning this past Saturday morning, I opted to keep my workout inside. It actually worked out well since my legs were still sore from a lower body focused workout I had done on Thursday- it was pretty killer, if I do say so myself!

Anyway, I woke up Saturday not really knowing what I wanted to do for a workout, but I knew it couldn’t be long which is why I worked out at the house instead of going to the gym. I was on a tight schedule since I had to leave by 9:45 for my bridal shower and knew I would need extra time than normal to get ready so I decided to forego the gym. I don’t know about you, but between the time it takes to get to the gym, get started on a workout, pack up after and get home my whole workout experience takes longer than I’d like it to.

All you need for this workout is a set (or two) of dumbbells and a stability ball- easy enough, right?

Upper Body Circuits & Cardio Blast

Please make sure you do a good, dynamic warm up before jumping into this! Once you’re warmed up, grab your dumbbells & stability ball and get going 🙂 You’ll do 4 rounds of circuit 1 and then 50 reps of each cardio exercises. Then, you’ll move to circuit 2 and then finish with 25 reps of each cardio exercise. I was done in about 45 minutes!

Here are some explanations or links to videos for some exercises that aren’t very common on B2B:

  • Clean & Press– This video will give you the general visual of a clean. Think about sinking low in the legs, hinging through the hips with your back flat and arm extended straight towards the ground. Focus on using power from the legs to bring the weight up- it should come up weightlessly rather than you curling it to bring it to the racked position. Once you get it in the racked position, press it up to the ceiling, bring it down to the racked position and then shoot your hips back & let the weight pull you back down to the starting position. Try not to put the breaks on to stop the momentum.
  • Stability ball chest fly
  • DB Pullover
  • Front raise & upright row- With a light set of weights, perform a front raise, making sure to not bring the arms higher than shoulder height. Bring the weights back down and then perform an upright row by leading with the elbows (think about someone pulling your elbows up to the ceiling by strings) and stopping the weights at chest height. It’s almost like you’re zipping up your coat, but with 2 hands.

Hope you give this a try!

Questions for you: Do you prefer to take the time to get to the gym for your workout or do you prefer saving time and working out at home?

Wednesday Workout: Cardio Sandwich Circuits

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I hope that title didn’t make you hungry 😉 This workout was created as a way to keep me inside the house during the snowstorm on Monday. Literally, the only time I stepped out of the house was to bring the trash out… and I’m not even mad about it. Soon enough we’ll have beautiful weather so I took advantage of a nasty, wintery (yet spring) day and virtually didn’t leave the house. It was actually very nice, especially since this workout ended up being kind of a butt-kicker 😉

Going into the workout, I knew I wanted a mix of cardio and strength training. My weights at home aren’t big enough to really give me the kind of challenging workout I want for a lifting session, so I generally incorporate cardio and weights for any at-home workout. With that said, between the cardio sandwich and strength exercises in this workout, I was huffing and puffing throughout the whole thing… especially when I had to do 12 burpees followed by 12 burpees… that was killer 😉

Cardio Sandwich Circuits

I think the directions are pretty clear- all you have to do is complete each round 3 times before moving on to the next. Your reps will decrease from 12 to 10 to 8 as you complete rounds 1-3. If you’re running short on time, feel free to pick just 1 or 2 of these and put all your energy into that.

Here are some notes/explanations for the exercises- I wanted to do short video’s for some of them, but I’ve been filming so many videos for my BoxFIIT certification that I just couldn’t do any more!

  • Squats & squat hold w/side taps- perform the designated # of straight squats first and then come down into a squat hold and tap each leg out to the side for that number of reps as well. Hopefully you’ll feel that extra burn!
  • Shoulder press-> chest squeeze- for this one, you’ll hold a weight in each hand and perform a shoulder press. When your elbows come back to shoulder height, pull your weights together so that they end up in front of your face with your palms facing you. Engage all of those chest muscles as you’re pulling your elbows and weights to touch in front of your face.
  • Lunge & tap- Lunge back on one leg and then push off the foot that stepped back to bring that foot to tap right next to the stationary leg. I did an isometric bicep curl hold while lunging.

I think everything else is pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask me!

My legs felt pretty beat after this- I hope you give it a try!

Wednesday Workout: The 1000 Rep Workout

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Good morning! I mentioned on Instagram last week that I had a day where I could’ve easily skipped a workout. It was pouring rain, I was in a training all day at work so I couldn’t go to the gym during my lunch break, I had an eye exam in Boston after work and the traffic getting home was ridiculous. All of which could be very valid excuses for me to have skipped the workout. But the thing was, I didn’t WANT to skip the workout. While I was driving home, I had an internal conversation with myself trying to figure out what I should do. I was looking for ways to talk myself out of the workout since I rarely ever do that, but all the signs pointed to me doing the workout:

  • I wasn’t tired
  • I wasn’t sore
  • It wasn’t too late
  • I could do it at-home
  • I had eaten lots of carbs that day so I felt like I had loads of energy to burn
  • I genuinely WANTED to workout

So, what did I do? I worked out! But to save time, I decided to just workout at home rather than go to the gym and fighting the 6:30pm crowds where I knew I would get annoyed and frusterated and end up wasting more time just walking around trying to find a spot to workout and equipment to use that wouldn’t be in the midst of all the chaos.

The upside of being stuck in traffic was that not only did I have time to go through the mental checklist for deciding whether or not to workout, but I also had time to plan the workout in my head! I don’t know what made me think of doing a workout like this, but it ended up being a really good one- and, with 10 exercises in the mix, it helped keep things interesting and helped keep me from totally dreading all the reps!
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Wednesday Workout: At Home Dumbbell Workout Circuit

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Happy, happy Wednesday, friends! I tend to use Mondays and Wednesdays as my running days, but since I ran a 5K on Sunday, I decided to break out my weights at home and do a dumbbell focused workout instead. I ran the 5K in about 23:30, which is much faster than I normally run, not to mention I ran another 1.25 miles to get home, so I felt like I needed to give them a little break from running. Oh, and it was COLD on Monday so not having to bundle up was another reason for keeping my workout inside 😉

Once I was warmed up and started with the workout, I could tell I was more tired than I thought, so I took my time and took breaks as I needed to. It can still be hard for me to tone things down when I have a certain plan in mind, but I am getting better at listening to my body and slowing down when it feels like that’s what I need. Baby steps!

Anyway, this workout was done with dumbbells, but could easily be made into a bodyweight workout by changing up a few of the exercises or simply omitting the weights.

At home dumbbell workout

  • DB Front Squats- grab two weights and place the butt of each one on each shoulder. Stand with your feet wide enough to allow you to get deep into the squat, just make sure your knees and toes are in line to prevent knee injuries.
  • Weighted jump squats- you can either hold a weight in each hand or drop one and only hold one.
  • Push-up with walk-ups- As you can see in this video, you can either do the pushups on your toes or knees, depending on how you’re feeling on the particular day you do the workout. This is one of my new favorite moves!
  • I held weights for the lunge & taps, but you certainly don’t need to! I did not hold weights for the lunge hops.
  • Check out this video for the weighted supine extension

I think that should cover most areas of potential confusion, but let me know if you need more clarification on anything 🙂

Questions for you: When you workout at home do you prefer using weights or doing bodyweight exercises?

Wednesday Workout: Upper Body Resistance Band Workout

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Good morning! I’m back with a short, but effective upper body workout for you that requires just one piece of equipment: the resistance band! This is a piece of equipment that you don’t see me using much on the blog (I think this workout is the only other one on the blog that uses the band), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think it’s a great, it just gets pushed to the back for some reason. However, while I was working from home on Monday, I was looking around at my fitness corner, thinking about what I wanted to do for a workout and the bands were calling to me!

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So, I decided to create a few workouts that use the band that I’ll share with you over the next few weeks. One of the things I love most about resistance bands is that they don’t take up much space so it’s super easy to take them on the road with you- in your car, carry on, suitcase, laptop bag… you get the idea. While I’m not planning on letting workouts get in the way of my time in Italy, I do plan on bringing one so that if I feel like getting in some movement (other than walking) and time permits it, I’ll have something to use. When I traveled for work I would always bring a band with me to use for my hotel room workouts.

For this workout, we are doing just 4 moves, but if your band is tight enough, you’ll feel it by the end of the 3-5 rounds! I’ve got a video in case you want to workout with me, otherwise you can just take the image below and do the workout on your own time 🙂
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