I’ve been doing more circuit based workouts lately at the gym in preparation for the 10K I am running next month.

Another reason is because my husband was ready for a change and suggested we start doing more of my “boot camp style” workouts, since I know I am better at these than him (he has me on strength though) I jumped onboard…

The first few he designed and they were good, but then I designed one that we did yesterday that just about kicked both our butts (his more though!).

The basic idea was easy: 

• 8 different exercises
• 16 reps per exercise
• 4 rounds total!

I originally had the plan to do 8 rounds, 8 reps, 8 moves and call it the:

Crazy Eight Workout 

But we agreed this way looked a bit better.

Here are the 8 moves we chose: 

1. Step-ups (w/ 40-lb barbell)
2. Horizontal Jumps
3. Bench Press (65-lbs)
4. Walking Lunges (w/ 50-lb barbell)
5. Bent Over Rows (20-lb dumbbells)
6. Back Extensions (25-lb plate)
7. Windshield Wipers
8. Pike Jumps with a push-up (hands on a barbell)

It was crazy! I am really sore today which feels awesome. What felt ever more awesome was the fact that I beat my husband through the entire workout! SCORE!!

He might have me on standard weight training but I kicked his butt when cardio came into play! And in case you think it’s because he was lifting a crazy amount more than me… nope. In fact, his step-up was with 50-lb, we did the same barbell for lunges, he did do 100 for bench though, but no weight on the extensions and I don’t know his row weight.

Boo-Ya!!

Do this workout and let me know your thoughts! 

I wanted to share another top notch workout but before I get to that I have to share the weekend!

Weekend Recap: 

It’s Sunday night and Dan and I are actually doing nothing (well beside surfing the web). In fact, we had a movie day and watched three movies. It was funny because we both agreed that we’ve never had a full out sit, chill and watch movie day. But it was much deserved.

Our weekend was crazy! We host an annual wine party each Christmas and it’s always 2 Saturdays before. So that was yesterday. Because our list grows each year we decided it was time to move the party out of our condo… one of the places I teach a bootcamp at allowed me to use their clubhouse! It was perfect and already fully decorated for the season.

But because I love the idea of cooking and doing this grande party I spent over 15 hours in my kitchen between Friday and Saturday cooking and baking! And let me just say, it’s hard to put a menu together for 20-30 people!

Here’s what we ended up with… and YES everything was homemade from scratch!

• Turkey meatballs in marinara (always a hit)
• Whole wheat pizza bites
• Wheat fettucini quiche bites (no pie crust)
• Baked Chickens (brined for 12 hours)
• Proscetta-wrapped stuffed dates
• Clean chocolate truffles
• Chocolate dipped strawberries (decorated to look like Christmas lights)
• Cheese Plate (Brie, Smoked Gouda, Muenster)
• Sugar cookies (not clean, nor homemade… I was exhausted at this part so took the easy route)

Working Off The Wine And Treats With This

This is a workout I created for my boot camp this week. I love making these holiday themed workouts so I am really excited to share it with you!

It’s to be done just as if you were singing the song. So on day one, just do exercise 1 for 1 rep. Then straight to day 2, do 2 reps of exercise 2 and 1 rep of exercise 1…. day 3 is 3 reps of exercise 3, 2 of 2 and 1 rep of 1.

Keep this pattern going until you are all the way done with 12 days of fitness!

The 12 Days Of Christmas Fitness

1.  Candlestick burpee
2. Body up/downs (start on back and stand up all the way trying to not use hands)
3. Lemon squeezes
4. Leg Raises
5. Golden Push-ups
6. Double Jumping Jacks
7. Squatters Squatting (squats)
8. Lunge jumps (1-1 count… 16 total)
9. Pike Push-ups
10. Climbers Climbing (Mt Climbers)
11. Plank up/downs
12. Tuck Jumps
    

    A requirement for holiday workouts?

I also found this Holiday Cardio Mix I am thinking about getting for the ladies… what do you think?

I haven’t shared a workout in a while, so I feel a little overdo. Sorry about that.

The workout I did today I did at the gym but you can just as easily do it at home too. It was heart pumping and my entire body was tired at the end!

The premise is simple… 10 exercises, 50 reps per exercise. Complete it as quickly as possible!

Ho-Ho-HoLY MoLY Workout

1. Burpees (with push-up)
2. Squat jumps (holding a 15 lb weight)
3. Double Jumping Jacks
4. Push-ups
5. Dips
6. Bench Jumps
7. Leg Raises
8. Squat thrusters
9. Lunge Jumps
10. Lemon Squeezes

I woke up this morning (on a Saturday) at 6am for a race that didn’t start until 9am… It’s not like it was far away but I had to get into full costume! Yup, Cindy Lou Who!

It was Charleston’s annual Reindeer Run this morning, so myself and several of my boot campers laced up our shoes, tossed on some holiday themed clothes and hit the start line.

It was so much fun! Even if it was only 38 degress. They had holiday music blasting, snow machines blowing out “blizzards” and a ton of people showing of their holiday love.  I wish I took pictures but I can’t run with my phone in my hand so it had to stay in the car.

Just call me Mrs. Who!

I did make Dan take this picture of me before I left the house though!

After the race a local bar opened up for free beers and food but I have never been one that can run a race and then grab a beer… just seems to weird for me. But because it was still chilly by time all of us crossed the finish line we headed to a local coffee shop for a cappachino and a raw granola bar (I love these).

Thanks Kudo! My small, triple shot, skinny, 2-splenda capp! Delish!

I have been working on sprints lately so distance running was a new concept… in fact I haven’t ran over 2 miles since August so I didn’t have big goals. I ended up running it around 26.20 minutes (according to my watch). Not bad, I will take it!

But it was a great time with the girls and I am totally in the holiday spirit now!

I am sticking to the schedule, so far it’s been 22 days of burpees and I just realized that comes out to 1100 reps all together! Holy Macaroni! That’s crazy, but what is even crazier is that I still have 1400 left to go… BOOO

Here’s a clip from this mornings burpee routine. I rushed outside to do them before getting ready for the day. I’ve learned that no one wants me to do them in the house since I live on the second floor of a condo building.

Also… later today or tomorrow I will be posted my healthy Thanksgiving menu from when I hosted last year. This year I am in charge of the dessert so I will also post up the plan for that!

After 1,100 Completed Full Burpees!

I am still going strong! It’s now been 18 days of burpees…

It’s hard to believe that I have done 900 burpees already! By time this challenge is over 5000 burpees will be completed: DAMN!

I had a great feeling of success today as I was pushing through my burpees. A guy was in the side room with me and saw what I was doing, when I was done I walked out to get water and when I came back in he was doing burpees!

I gave him a quick “great job” and he said I had impressed him with my intensity he had to give it a shot.

My time is getting better and better, below I am sharing my video of post burpees yesterday. I will go ahead and warn you though if you want to see a gorgeous fitness model with a fresh face then don’t watch it. I am sweaty, out of breath and proud of it!

Today I did better than my best with a record of 4.37 seconds! Wow was I tired by the end of those 4.37 minutes! How are you doing?

TIMING THOSE BURPEES! 

A fellow colleague of mine has given me a new challenge… to complete 50 burpees every day for 50 days! She wanted to do it but wanted someone just as crazy as her to do it with for accountability reasons. So I said, sure, what the heck!

I am now on day 14 and it’s smooth sailing. They take less than 10 minutes to do so it’s not as if I cannot make the time, in fact I feel flat out lazy if I try to convince myself to pass for the day.

In case you’re curious to know what a burpee is, it’s one of the BEST body weight exercises around… and if someone wants to challenge that we’ll have a burpee contest!

It’s a squat meets push-up meets explosive jump… meets serious high heart beat and sore muscles.

The idea is that you start standing, lower down into a squat, hands to the ground, jump back to a push-up position, do a push-up, then jump your feet back up to your hands and jump straight to the sky… yea hardcore!

Watch The Burpee:

I love burpees and I love finding new variations. I have a boot camp workout that is called “Death By Burpees” and let’s just say by the end my boot campers wish they had the strength to kill me! lol.

It’s a fun challenge and gives me an extra something to do with my workouts right now. I love a challenge! Next challenge is going to be pull-ups, but I have 36 more days till I have to worry about it!

I won’t lie… my inner thighs are my own personal trouble spots. I have to work really hard to make sure my thighs stay tight and when I gain weight, it’s the first place to show it off.

Of course you can’t spot reduce areas so trying to decrease just my thigh diameter is silly… to drop body fat you’re going to need a total body workout plan to make your metabolism sky rocket and your fat cells get smaller… and smaller…

But there are specific thigh exercises that can help tighten and tone them! 

Here are my favorite inner thigh exercises to help tighten those thunder thighs and help battle “thigh swooshing”

1. Stability ball squeezes: Place a small stability ball (or a medicine ball) between your knees and squeeze your legs together. You can hold this for a count of 20-30 seconds or you can complete a set of squats while squeezes the ball. If you’re able to do the squats aim for 12-15 reps.
2. Side lunges. I love side lunges! They always hit me hard the next day and I love the feeling of knowing I pushed myself. Stand  a little wider than hip width, and bend your right knee while keeping your left leg straight (though not locked) return to start and repeat on the other side.
3. Sprints. Yup, sprints. Not your traditional “exercise” but sprints are amazing at toning and burning fat. Just look at a sprinter and you can see what I mean. So 30 second sprints, rest for 15-30 seconds and repeat.
4. Lunge jumps. Nothing hits your thighs quite like lunges jumps, you may have heard them referred to as switch jumps as well. Start in a low lunge (back knee close to the ground) jump up, switch legs in the air so you land with your opposite leg in the back. Repeat for a total rep set of 10-15. 3 Sets.

These are my 4 favorite thigh moves. The weather has been bad here all week but as soon as it clears up a bit I’ll make a video of everything… deal? Sweet! Ok, hope you all had a great weekend.

Ours what pretty uneventful… 5K, football, golf, football, golf, a nap, more golf… and now finishing up on some work. Dan did go fishing with my dad and brother and brought us home some nice fish! Too bad I can’t eat it until Oct 18th!

I am sad to announce that you’ll be seeing a new watch on my wrist soon… my old faithful Suunto watch finally ticked its last second. It lived a good long life, got me through a lot of workouts, helped me out in lot of runs!

My poor Suunto has been looking rather rough, after all the band was being held together by a hair elastic… the heart rate strap didn’t work any more and the pink was not longer the same pink that it was a few years ago… but that all just adds character, right?

RIP Suunto! You were a good watch!

Well, I got the hint when it suddenly started to beep for no reason, get locked on certain settings, and sometimes just completely go blank.

I would be very sad however I am not going to lie… loyal as it was, stylish it was not. I have pretty small wrist and this thing was bigger than Dan’s watch! He hated it and I have to admit it wasn’t exactly feminine on me.

I went online today with the intentions of just getting a normal watch, I don’t run as much as I used to because of my back so I wasn’t sure I really needed a heart rate monitor, but it’s one of those fitness gadgets that when I want it I want it so I found this one at LeftLaneSports.com (great website by the way!)

On a different note… 1 1/2 weeks until we go on vaca! I am starting to get together my workout plans to see what I can do while in Phili! I have been working too hard to just go crazy up there. I do know Dan’s mom though and I have a feeling she will have us walking around the entire city every day!

Working from home you would think it’s easy to get to the gym on workout days… but it’s not. Well, not for Dan at least. I jump at the opportunity to get away from the computer for a short sweat session out of the house, however Dan is a hardcore worker and sometimes getting his workouts in just don’t happen.

He does enjoy working out at home though and he had the idea that a few days a week he will do home workouts and get to the gym just 1-2 days for heavy lifting. To make that happen he bought us this:

It’s a Suspension Training System that we picked up at Dicks Sporting Goods, it was kind of pricey at $99.99, but it’s worth it. We’ve played around with a few exercises to get an idea of how we want to create a workout and just with that we were sweating!

Tomorrow morning I am going to grab my GymBoss and get going on a workout interval. I am going to try and film it!

This is a great piece of gear for any home gym workout. It doesn’t take up space and literally you can do so much with it!

Another great brand is TRX but they are a bit pricier and we wanted it now, we didn’t want to order online. Haha, impulse buyers!

Some suspension exercises on the list to do tomorrow:

1. Mt Climbers
2. Decline Push-ups
3. Leg raises
4. Reverse Pull-ups

The Pretty

One of the ways I handled my anxiety and stress of the weekend (read below to see what happened) was with a kick ass workout yesterday. I pushed hard and today my body is sore from shoulders to my feet! It feels great.

Here was my workout:

Triset: Do each of these back to back without rest. Take a minute after the squats before doing it two more times.

• Split Squats (20 lb dumbbells) x 8/leg
• Squat with 25 lb plate x 14
• Jump squats x 10

Superset (3 sets):

• Dumbbell Pullover (35 lb) x 10
• Pull-ups x 6

For time:

• 10 Combo Burpees*

*Complete a full burpee, have a preweighted barbell in front of you, after you jump up from burpee… grab the bar and complete 5 standing shoulder presses. The burpee plus the presses = 1 Rep

I did 10 reps in 3 min 20 sec

Timed Interval-6 Rounds

• 15 foot shuffle
• 2 Commando push-ups

I set my interval timer to 25 seconds of work; 10 seconds of rest; a total of 6 rounds.

For 25 sec straight: Shuffle from one cone to one set up roughly 15 feet away, get down and do 2 commando push-ups; shuffle back to start and do push-up… repeat until time is up. Rest for 10 seconds and repeat.

So that’s that… exercise is my favorite stress buster. It’s the only time where I can completely clear my mind and just work. It’s very cathartic to me, and I find that I push harder when my anxiety is high.

The Ugly Weekend Events

This weekend was close to being the worst weekend either Dan or I have had together. Which is why it’s been a while since I have written.

As you know, a couple of weeks ago we adopted a kitten. She is the cutest little kitten in the world and she quickly, very quickly  wrapped us both around her little paw. So when we woke up on Friday morning and noticed she had some “goo” around her ear we immediately grew worrisome and took her to the vet.

At that time the vet couldn’t pin point an issue, said her ear looked fine and send us on our merry way. I wish it was that easy… that night she grew worst and by the morning it was clear something wasn’t right. So we bypassed our vet and went straight to the emergency vet.

The issue: severe infection! And her fever was way too high for a 2-pound kitten (normal is 102, her’s got up to 106 later that day). She refused to eat, couldn’t walk, and simply look miserable.

The outlook wasn’t looking good, and Dan and I were not handling the situation all too well (I am a very emotional person).  But we just got a call that her fever has come down and she’s finally started to eat on her own.

We are still not close to being out of the woods yet, but at least the outlook is a bit more positive than yesterday. I couldn’t stomach to be in our empty house working, so I am just now getting back to getting things done. Please keep our baby Nike in your thoughts!