chin-ups – Burpees to Bubbly

Good morning and happy Monday, friends! For all of the Patriot’s fans out there- what a game, right?! Boston is a great city to live in during times like these… I think it even helped soften the blow of this storm today 😉

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January is generally a month of setting goals for the upcoming year. It’s a time a reflect on the previous year and to think about what you want to achieve in the upcoming year. While I tend to stay away from setting specific “I’m going to do X, Y, and Z in 2015”, in favor of just being mindful about things I want to continually improve (loosening up, stressing less, relaxing more, etc.), I did have a few fitness-related goals this year:

Improve my push-ups: Rather than wide arm, drop down a few inches push-ups, I want to do them with my elbows tight to my body and with dropping my chest all the way to tap the ground and come back up. The strength required to do this is much more than I thought it would be, so my goal this year is to do LESS crap push-ups and MORE real push-ups.
Do 10 unassisted Pull- Ups & Chin-Ups: Again, this is a move that seems so easy, but is really very challenging since it requires so much strength. It’s such an incredible exercise to incorporate into your workout routine because it utilizes so many muscles and is a great functional exercise.

Over the past month, I’ve been working towards improvement in both of these areas and I wanted to share some tips that have helped me. You may not have fitness-related goals for 2015, but I think these tips can be applied to a whole range of goals- fitness-related or not.

1. Make a plan. Simple enough, right? But for me, I find that if I write something down and detail out exactly what I want to accomplish, it’s much easier to figure out how to chip away and work towards achieving that goal.

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I have been meaning to write a second “Currently I’m Crushing On…” post for a while now, but for one reason or another, I never got around to it. I’m hoping to make this a more regular reoccurring post series, so here we go!

Chapstick Hydration Lock

I probably have some of the most chapped lips you’ll ever see. It doesn’t seem to matter how much chapstick I put on, my lips never get soft. RM jokes and calls me “chappy” and says I have this problem because I have big lips and therefore a bigger surface area to cover. I think he’s just full of it, but still. I have been trying to be better about keeping my list moisturized and this Chapstick has helped! I put the “night” side on before bed and when I get up and put the other end on throughout the day. While I still have chapped lips, they feel better when I put this on.