Sorry I have been MIA — June was a very busy month — both with work and the end of the school year. I finished out my Stephanie Huckabee rotation, I did a light/recovery week using Ellen Barrett’s workouts (a mix of her Studio, Crunch and the workouts she did for Fit TV), then, I finally started my Montenegro Method rotation. It took some tweaking, but I have ended up with a plan like this:
Day 1 — Montenegro Method Strength
Day 2 — Montenegro Method Endurance
Day 3 — Margaret Richard Strength
Day 4 — Run/Walk
Day 5 — Montenegro Method Strength
Day 6 — Montenegro Method Endurance
I also add on stretching, Pilates, and yoga.
So far, I’m enjoying the MM workouts! They are short (under 30 min) but really pack a lot into the time! At first I thought I would have to “double up” on the workouts in order to feel like I accomplished something but — nope — one session and I’m pretty good to go — with an add-on of Pilates, yoga or stretching. (more…)
When I decided to actively pursue my goal of becoming “One Fit Mama”, I thoroughly researched training plans. I talked with fellow fitness fanatics and several trainers about the things that I should incorporate into my training, how often I should train, the intensity to use, etc. Following all of the research and conversation, I designed the following plan:
Monday – Short Run: 2-3 miles at my “race pace” (the pace I would use if running a 5k race)
Tuesday – Upper Body Weight Training
Wednesday – Interval Run: 2 mile run with speed intervals
Thursday- Rest Day
Friday – Lower Body Weight Training
Saturday – Class at the gym ( this varies week to week between kickboxing, step aerobics, pilates, or hip hop dance)
Sunday – Rest Day
This looks like a good training plan, right? I have a balance between cardio and weight training, and even included rest days. For the last several weeks, I have dutifully followed this plan and felt good about the things I was doing for my health.
Then I was sidelined by a large pain in the butt. No, it was not a bully at the gym, or an obstacle on the running trail – it was quite literally a deep pain in my hip and butt muscles. I took a few extra days of rest, thinking the problem would resolve itself, but once I began running again – the pain returned. (more…)
Today is a busy one – I am volunteering at the book fair at my daughter’s school today – my “shifts” are the one right before school and the one after school. I am a big book person so I love being around the book fair. Of course, my daughter picked out some books and so did I. At the moment I’m really into reading young adult literature. It all started when I became nostalgic for some books I read as a teen/tween. I guess what started me thinking about them is watching my daughter’s reading take off – she is pretty well into chapter books these days which is amazing to me because she is only in first grade. The schools seem to push the reading a lot harder and earlier these days as I am pretty positive I was not reading chapter books in first grade. I suppose there are ups and downs to that. Anyway, my current read is an old favorite – Julie of the Wolves. I appreciate it a lot more as an adult than I did when I first read it as a “tween”. I picked up some more young adult literature for myself at the book fair and I’m looking forward to reading some new authors and finding books to share with my daughter when she is older.
Today I started thinking about rotations. I know many of us plan our workouts and design various “rotations” in which to alternate them. I get a lot of my inspiration to design my own rotations by reading about what others are doing, reading rotations that instructors put together for their various “systems”, and just generally having fun with trying to combine different workouts, instructors and styles. It is a bit like fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. Sometimes I’ll find a set rotation and add my own tweaks (as with Stephanie Huckabee’s rotation – I am following her 2-a-day plan, but adding on some additional workouts that I choose). Sometimes I’ll decide on a theme or instructor that I want to workout with for a set period of time. Sometimes I’ll come up with a “generic” rotation where I’ll have a category for the day, but allow myself to pick and choose the workout that fits my mood for the day within that category. It is a lot of fun for me to do this and keeps me motivated. After I finish up with Stephanie Huckabee’s rotation I plan to do the Montenegro Method workouts – not quite sure how I’ll put it together yet, but I have some ideas in mind and some time to plan it out since I still have a couple of weeks left in this rotation. In future posts I’ll be sure to include some of my past, present and future rotation ideas! (more…)
Sara invited me to post and Fig graciously allowed me to join up! I’m excited, fitness has been a passion for me all my life and I love to write up my impressions of the workouts I do.
A little about me – I’m a 40-something mother of one. Happily married with a dog, a cat and a bunny to round out the family. I work outside the home so I treasure my 5:00 a.m. workout time as it is my only “Me” time for the whole day usually! For example, right now, after a full day of work, I’m typing this while helping my daughter with her math project. It was pretty fun – we had to create a math game. She did a good job and actually did most of the work herself – including coming up with the concept and designing the board. Why didn’t we have homework like this when I was a kid?
I digress. I have been working out in some form or another since I was in high school. In those days, and through college I was a cardio hound – I ran and ran and ran some more. Didn’t do much strength training or any other cross training. In the early ’90′s I discovered the world of videos. I had a modest collection (it fit in a couple of shoe boxes!) until around 1998 or so when I discovered the FIRM. I actually borrowed the Tortoise and the Hare from the library on Thanksgiving weekend. After that, I was hooked and my collection (thanks also in part to the internet and sites like Videofitness.com) ballooned. I really have never taken a count of how many workout videos and DVDs I own. I think I would be embarrassed if I knew how many there were! I also have collected an array of equipment – BOSU, steps, various weights, stability balls, band, gadgets. We also have a treadmill and exercise bike – got those for DH, but he doesn’t use them often. (more…)
You may have noticed I was missing for a couple weeks or so. I got sick for about 10 days (weird random fever-causing virus) and didn’t work out much for over a week. Then when I got back into it I had such a busy week that I didn’t take time to post. But this week I am back. I decided to restart the Push phase of ChaLEAN Extreme last week — I love this heavy weightlifting after all, and I felt derailed a bit by my break. So now I’m starting my second week of Push. LOVE it.
As I continue on with the Push phase of ChaLEAN Extreme, this week looks a lot like last week. Why mess with a good thing? I am learning Amy Bento’s ASC3 (I think it came out right before I got pregnant so I didn’t do it much at the time) so that’s why I’m doing so much of it.
I’m still plugging away at the first circuit (called the Burn circuit) of ChaLEAN Extreme. I am finishing up week 3 and week 4 will start on Monday. I think that’s the last week and then I’ll start part 2, the Push circuit. I have really been enjoying these workouts and I love Chalene’s personality. She is such a cute little bundle of muscle and energy. She’s very good at the motivation aspect of the workouts. I also like that they aren’t very long–just something like 30-40 minutes each. That works well for my busy mom schedule.
Has anyone else who has done this program want to pop in and tell us how you liked it? I have some friends who got great results; maybe one of them will pop in and tell us about it. Otherwise, you can see one woman’s amazing before and after pictures by clicking on those links. One commenter on the after pic said she suspected the woman pictured had a tummy tuck as well–what do you think? I think that’s a possibility–that lose skin is hard to get rid of even if you lose the fat (take that from someone who’s had three big babies and who is considering a tummy tuck some day).
Speaking of babies, here’s what baby Cormac often does while I’m working out.
Tomorrow I’ll be starting an exciting new workout program called ChaLEAN Extreme by Chalene Johnson. Well, it’s new to me, anyway. A lot of my friends were doing it a year ago, but I was pregnant and didn’t want to do a heavy weights program at that time. So now I finally have it myself and I’m ready to go. I ordered it from BeachBody through my friend Jenn, who is a BeachBody coach — there’s a link for her over there on the right ——>.
It’s a 3-phase 12-week program, so that’s 4 weeks a phase (duh). Tomorrow I’ll start the first phase — Burn Circuit. It looks fun but tough. Not only do they have the weight workout DVDs but the program also came with a very helpful guidebook, a food guide, a DVD full of tips about form for the exercises and info about nutrition, etc., cardio and ab DVDs, a motivational CD, a resistance band, a thigh toner band, and a body fat tester thingey. I also ordered some bonus DVDs because I’m crazy like that. (more…)
This is another workout with convenient short segments. I have to confess (as I have probably confessed before) that I do not like workouts with the words Boot Camp in them. I’ve basically stopped ever doing boot camp workouts at all–even from my favorite instructor, Cathe Friedrich. It’s just not a Fit Fig thing. However, if you dig Denise Austin and like doing boot camp workouts, this one is for you! (more…)
Yes, I’m back into the swing of things and ready to give something away. When I was heavily pregnant or busy with new baby, I received a couple of Denise Austin DVDs for free from Lionsgate and put them aside. This weekend I stumbled across them and thought, “Oh yeah! Need to give these away!” So I’m starting with one this week and will do another next week.
So this week it’s Denise’s Body Makeover Mix. You can see a full description and a clip here. I personally don’t enjoy Denise’s workouts, just because she sounds like a Kindergarten teacher. Nothing against Kindergarten teachers — I just would prefer a different voice from my fitness instructors. (more…)
In the interest of full disclosure and in compliance with a new FTC rule (seriously, can you believe the FTC cares what I write on this little blog?), I received this workout DVD free, compliments of Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Now that we’ve got that out of way, I decided my review this time would start off with just copying over the little notes I took between segments, so you can really get my fresh first impressions.
Today I did Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s 30-Minutes to Fitness: Weights workout. Actually I only did Biceps/Triceps/Shoulders, which is Workout 2 on this DVD. It’s actually a bargain of 2 great workouts on one DVD, with some great premixes including different active rests between sets (abdominals, standing abdominals, and cardio) and a couple total body premixes. It’s really a great workout for the price (currently on sale for only $16.95 at Advanced Workouts).
I actually briefly reviewed this workout a little over a year ago, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much, but I just want to emphasize again that it’s a great workout. With the workout I did today, she does one exercise for each body part (biceps/triceps/shoulders), then repeats it twice. Then she’ll do an active rest for a couple minutes. Like I said, I chose standing core work today–nice to occasionally do ab work that doesn’t involve traditional crunches. (more…)
MizFit rocks again. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate how very sensible MizFit is (though also often silly, of course — in a good way). She never fails to impress me not only with her extensive health and fitness knowledge but also with her downright common sense. Good stuff.
I got these little Exercise Anywhere cards the other day and they are tiny little things. They definitely qualify as something you could take anywhere. They’re made by a company called NURU (www.nuruplanet.com) and they’re designed to give you fitness pointers and descriptions of exercises (including nice little illustrations) that you can put in your handbag or even a pocket and take along wherever you are to do a workout.
The pack includes 30 little cards (printed both front and back) and it has a little ring to keep all the cards together. I like this ring thingey as I have a different card pack (with much bigger cards) of pregnancy exercises and when you take them out of the box they are kind of a disorganized mess.
The exercises are pretty standard stuff with detailed explanations of form and illustrations of both the muscles being used and the proper form. The exercises shown require very little equipment–most use just body weight though a few talk about using cans of food or water bottles. For my part I’d probably prefer using actual dumbbells, but of course the point is to “exercise anywhere” so I wouldn’t always have my handy dumbbells, i suppose. I could see this being a useful tool to take with you when you travel. I think I could also use it on those days at home when I just don’t feel like using a DVD to work out but I want more guidance than doing whatever pops in my head.
Overall, I think it’s a great little set of cards. Maybe if you are a very advanced exerciser they would not be that helpful, but for a beginner or intermediate wanting take-along instruction, they’re great. I think it’s actually like a little book but in card form. Very handy.
I have an extra pack I’ll be giving away on Sunday, so be sure to pop back then if you’re interested in winning a pack. If you just want to buy your own, you can find them here.
I just added a link to my Fitness Fig Tools page to a Beachbody PDF file of weight worksheets for Chalean Extreme. You can also click here to find it. I know this one is very popular right now so I’m sure a lot of people will find this handy if they haven’t been using it already. I’m sure I’ll need it when I do this workout postpartum. I plan to convert this info to an Excel file soon for those of us who like to enter our data right on the computer rather than printing the form and filling it out by hand. I’m too tired after a crazy day to do that today but I’ll get to it soon and mention it here when I upload it to the Tools page.
I just wanted to add a little explanation for yesterday’s poll. Weight splits involve splitting up different body parts on different days so you really hit each part hard. You spend much more time on each particular part, good for strength-building. Then that body part gets more rest before you hit it again.
Here’s an example of a 3-day split:
Day 1 – Chest & Triceps Day 2 – Lower Body Day 3 – Back, Shoulders, & Biceps
Cathe Friedrich’s Gym Style series splits it up this way. Of course, you can choose to do Biceps & Triceps one day, then Shoulders & Legs, then Back & Chest. I’m just giving examples.
Here’s an example of a 4-day split:
Day 1 – Shoulders & Core Day 2 – Chest & Back Day 3 – Legs & Core Day 4 – Biceps & Triceps
Cathe’s 4-Day Split workouts are arranged this way. She also adds cardio to each workout so you can do everything in just 4 days (but she also has great premixes including a 3-day split setup if you choose).
Then this is how you might do a 5-day split:
Day 1 – Triceps Day 2 – Shoulders Day 3 – Chest Day 4 – Legs Day 5 – Biceps
Cathe’s Cross-Train Xpress is a 5-day split, also with added cardio and abs. Personally I don’t like 5-day splits because my upper body is so sore all the time it’s hard to do the next upper body part (since they are used to some extent even on the other days). Some people really love a 5-day split, though (probably people fitter than me).
Oh, and Cathe really should put me on her payroll for all my promotion of her workouts, shouldn’t she? Oh, and her new Shock Training System (STS) uses 3-day splits, and mine is supposed to arrive today! W00t!
Today I worked some more on my 1 Rep Max tests for Cathe Friedrich’s upcoming Shock Training System (STS). I’m not going to attempt to explain how the 1 Rep Max is calculated but I do understand it’s a way of finding the heaviest weight you could lift once with the various exercises tested. Umm, something like that. The thing is, there are almost 120 exercises to test. Luckily Christosz from the Cathe forums put together some great STS 1RM worksheets listing all the exercises. I have those worksheets on my Fitness Fig Tools page (available for Filemaker or Excel). I’ve been using them in conjunction with Cathe’s Workout Manager to calculate my 1RM. I figured out today that I’ve gotten about 1/3 of the way through. Still plenty more to go.
My method is to focus on either upper body or lower body for each STS 1RM workout. For instance, today I went through and did a variety of exercises involving legs. I calculate them and save them with the Workout Manager and also enter them on the worksheets so I can get a better picture of what I’ve done. As I finish a workout, I go back and change the cells to another color to show I’m done with those exercises. I’ve also color-coded what I’ll do with my next session, usually focusing on particular equipment–so I don’t have to get out every piece every time. Next time I plan to do upper body and try to hit all exercises using the stability ball in addition to a few others.
I’m back to weighing myself regularly as I’ve re-started Weight Watchers. If you’re a regular follower of this blog, you’re probably thinking, “Uh oh, here she goes again” because I’ve been on and off so many diet plans in the last year or so, including WW. Plus I’ve been trying to do Intuitive Eating. Unfortunately, the weight’s not coming off with my casual attempt at intuitive eating, so I’m going to be a bit less intuitive and do WW. I won’t call it a diet but just a choice to eat less. Or something like that. (OK, so we all know it’s a diet but please don’t tell me that in the comments.)
The good news is I lost 1.8 lbs this week doing WW. Of course, I know you always lose more the first week but I’ll take it as a good sign.
I’m focusing more on the healthy eating this week than on the exercise (need to learn how to do both at once still), so my exercise plan is going to be fairly flexible and casual. I do plan to do some more of the 1 Rep Max tests for Cathe Friedrich’s STS series (which should be out before the end of the month!) I did some last week and I’ll do some more for today’s workout.
So here’s the casual plan:
Monday…………..Walk wearing MBTs Tuesday…………..1 Rep Max weight tests Wednesday……..Cardio, perhaps Tap-Less and Sweat More with Deirdre Morris Thursday…………Kettlebells Friday……………..Cardio, perhaps kickboxing Saturday………….1 Rep Max weight tests Sunday…………….Rest, yoga
Today I did Cathe Friedrich’s Pyramid Upper Body. That is, I did all the exercises from the workout, but didn’t actually watch the DVD. For some reason I didn’t feel like using a DVD (probably because I would have to watch it on my little laptop since my hubby was ensconced on the sofa in front of our only television). I opened up my Cathe Weight Worksheets document (available on my Fitness Tools page) and proceeded to do it all without turning on the DVD. (Don’t tell Cathe!) I already knew her rep count for the workout, so it was easy to do it myself–well, maybe easy is not the right word. I felt like I gave myself a pretty good workout–I really pushed it even without Cathe’s encouragement (though she is really great at the encouragement.)
The best part is that though for most of the workout I lifted slightly less heavy than Cathe, I think I could have been matching her weights. Let me give you an example. She used handweights of 3 sizes for the chest work: 12, 15, and 20 lbs. I used 10, 12, and 15 lbs, but felt I was strong enough to go heavier next time. It would be pushing it, but I could do it. I did match her on the shoulder work, and I was indeed struggligng a bit, but I did it. Some of my friends can match Cathe on her workouts and even lift heavier, but this is rare for me. I’ve come a long way from my first attempts to do weights with Cathe. I remember doing Cardio & Weights for the first time and being unable to even come close to her weights and thinking it was ridiculous to lift so heavy and that I never would bother lifting that heavy. Now I know that Cardio & Weights is not even one of Cathe’s toughest workouts and I think I’ll be able to match her weights for most of it when I do that one on Monday. I also remember that the choreography seemed impossible to me–at that time I’d only done her Basic Step workout. I recall deciding I prefered straightforward non-dancy step aerobics, which is funny in retrospect since now I love a good complex step routine.
Just a note for beginners: It is not necessary to match Cathe in weights, and she would be the first to tell you that. I am happy to be stronger and closer to her weights, but it’s best to lift what you can and increase the weights as you grow stronger. The weights you choose should be challenging but you should still be able to lift with good form. Today when I felt my form faltering on the shoulder section I went to lifting one arm at a time so I could be more careful with my form but still keep working at the same weight. If that hadn’t worked, I would have dropped down in weight.
I just finished a wonderful workout. It’s great to get my groove back and really get into my workouts again. For a while there I was struggling, especially with cardio.
I’ll start by telling you about yesterday’s lower body workout. I did Cathe Friedrich’s Pyramid Lower Body, which I hadn’t done in ages. It’s based on a pyramid weight system (hence the name). You start with 12 reps at your lightest weight, then go to your middle weight for 10 reps, and then do 8 reps at the heaviest weight. Then you work back down, 10 more at the middle weight, and 12 at your lightest weight again. It means a lot of weight changes, so it helps to have an easy-to-change barbell. It took forever with my previous barbell because I actually had to use pliers to loosen the bolts on that thing for every change. Even with my newer barbell I still wasn’t as fast as Cathe for most of the weight changes, so I had to pause a lot. One of my friends said she has two barbells so she would keep them loaded with the light and middle weight and only have to change for the heavy weight. I might try that next time since I still have the old barbell in the basement.
Anyway, it’s a tough workout with lots of weight changes but very straightforward traditional lower body work. Then she gets out a stability ball and does some floor work. These were pretty tough for me; I think part of the problem was I was using my new larger stability ball. When I had a foot or two up on top of the ball, it seemed awful high up there and hard to manage. I might have to bring the smaller one out next time and try it. Today I’m sore mostly in my hamstrings and calves, which made it hard to start today’s step workout!
Today’s workout was Tap-Less and Sweat More with Deirdre Morris. It’s a CIA workout from their last release, which I preordered and received ages ago. I don’t know why I hadn’t tried it out yet, except maybe that I have gotten so many great workouts to try in the last few months. It’s also hard for me to start a new step instructor because I am usually so happy with just Cathe Friedrich and Amy Bento. I came so close to just putting this one up for sale since I hadn’t used it, but I decided to give it a try first. I’m glad I did.
This was a fabulously fun and complex step workout with really fun pumping music. If you don’t like complex step, it’s probably not for you, and if I hadn’t done lots of Amy Bento step before I might have been completely lost. However, I found that complex as it was I kept going. I thought maybe I would just do one or two combos to try to learn them and then put in a familiar DVD to finish the rest of my workout. Instead I ended up going straight through the first 6 combos. On the 7th combo I finally got brain fatigue and put in Amy’s Advanced Step Challenge II to do the first couple combos of that one. Then I put Deirdre’s workout back in for the cool down and stretch (didn’t do the abs section yet). I was so surprised that I was able to plug right on through 6 complex combos, but that’s how fun it was. She doesn’t let up (I usually didn’t even know we’d moved on to a new combo) but even when I was stumbling along I was able to get back to where she was quickly enough. My main problem was that her terminology was a little different than what I know. For instance, what Amy or Cathe would call a “knee side to side” Deirdre called a “travel knee”. I think I’ve heard that term before from some other instructor, but it had been awhile. Fortunately that’s a really easy move anyway so I caught on quickly. Another good thing about this workout is Deirdre herself. She was straightforward and smiling and not at all irritating. Her voice was pleasant and not grating like some instructors. Her cueing was great as well.
I hope that Deirdre makes more step workouts and I would only request that she add an instructional section for some of the more crazy moves. That wouldn’t be a deal breaker, though. If and when she makes more I’ll be signing up to try them out immediately.
We don’t claim to be fitness experts. We don’t dispense medical advice and we're not qualified to do so. We are also neither nutritionists nor personal trainers. We are just women on the journey to better fitness and a richer life. Please consult a doctor if you are starting a new exercise routine.
I got these little Exercise Anywhere cards the other day and they are tiny little things. They definitely qualify as something you could take anywhere. They’re made by a company called NURU (
