I think all of us at Fit Fig & Friends were pretty busy last month — hence the lack of posts. For me it was the kids finishing school and Little League and end-of-school-year parties and all that sort of thing. School here ran until June 25th. Then last weekend we drove up to Niagara Falls to meet some friends and see the falls. Now we’re finally settling into our more relaxed summer schedule, though this past week was still pretty busy with appointments and to do lists.
I have also still not been 100% since my post weeks ago about being sick. It’s not like I’m still coughing or have any other terrible symptoms. I have just continued to have fevers every day with the occasional cold chills or headaches. It’s bizarre. Every time I think maybe it’s no big deal, maybe my body temperature is just permanently moved higher (my usual normal temperature is below normal, like 97-something degrees Fahrenheit), it spikes even higher — like a few minutes ago it read as 99.7 and a couple days ago it was up to 100 — and I feel extra crappy. Still not a high fever, but not exactly normal either. I came very close to calling my doctor this week, though I feel ridiculous having one stupid symptom of fever, but I was too busy taking my kids to doctors and appointments. Maybe next week. (more…)
Hi everyone! I’m Sara – a long time reader of FitFig and other fitness blogs, and I was excited to see her post asking for blog help! And even more excited that she accepted my offer to contribute to her blog, heh. In fact, I even won one of her Figaways once. I’m a 30-something, happily married, dog mom to three pups, who can’t resist a bargain. :mrgreen: I ramble on about my workouts over at My Basement Gym, and I have a variety of exercise interests – with body part splits with free weights being my first love. Though I do vary from that style often, since I also have a short exercise attention span.
I’m relatively new to the exercise video scene compared to many of the long time video workout devotees that I’ve meet on some of the internet forums. I bought my first workout video set in 2003, the original Core Secrets set. I had been weight training for about 4 years at that point (learning everything from books and magazines) and was looking for some more variety and got suckeredinterested by the infomercial for the Core Secrets workouts. I bought the rest of the workouts from that series as they were released, too. I’m still bummed that the series is discontinued. And while I haven’t reviewed any Core Secrets workouts on my blog yet, they remain some of my favorites and still make it into my rotation regularly. I slowly added more workouts to my collection over the next few years, starting with a few Jari Love and Amy Bento workouts – and even a few from Leslie Sansone, since I’m rather choreography challenged. I also saw Cathe’s workouts on FitTv, but it was a few more years before I actually purchased some of her videos. Can you say intimidated? (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…)
And here’s another awesome new contributor. Thanks so much, Kimberly!
Hi Everyone, I’m Kimberly. When I saw that Fig was wanting contributors, I immediately e-mailed her and expressed my interest. As I thought about what I wanted my first post to be, the words of my high school English teacher echoed in my mind “Kimberly, when you need to tell a story — start at the beginning.” So that’s what I am going to do.
My pursuit of a healthy lifestyle has not been an easy one. For most of my life, a high metabolism and lots of physical activity, compensated for my poor food choices. I was able to stay naturally thin until my freshman year of college. The demands of a full course schedule, late night pizza runs, and copious amounts of chips had me gaining “the freshman fifteen” and an additional 30 pounds.
This is the point where I would like to tell you that I modify my eating habits, became more physically active, and over the course of time lost the weight I had gained. But that is not what happened. Instead, I began using diet pills (at the suggestion of a college friend) which quickly lead to my developing an eating disorder. I battled my eating disorder for nearly 5 years before finally realizing that I needed help. With the help of my friends, family, and a great therapist, I have been ED free for 3 years. (more…)
If you’ve read Fit Fig before, you know I don’t do workouts with the words Boot Camp in them (except for oldie but goodie 10 Minute Solution: Kick Box Bootcamp*). It’s just not my thing. But I’m happy to pass it on to a lucky reader. Perhaps if you win you can come back and tell us how you like it!
To be in to win this DVD, just post a comment at the bottom. Tell us if you’ve done any of the 10-minute solution workouts or how you would like to use this DVD. Would you do 10-minute segments on different days? Tack on 10 minutes (or more) to other workouts? Do the whole 50 minutes as a workout on its own? Or heck, just tell me why you want it. (more…)
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.
Speaking of Anchor Bay, I once sent an email to Andrea Ambandos, who produces and directs most (maybe all?) Anchor Bay workout videos. This was before I had discovered Cathe Friedrich and some of my other current favorite instructors. I had noticed that the workouts directed by Andrea Ambandos were better quality than most others I tried. So like I said, I sent her an email, just telling her how I appreciated that her workouts were better and how seeing her name was a good sign that it was a good workout. I’m such a dork. She never wrote back. I saw her later on that Work Out reality show (is that still on?) when she was working with Jackie on a fitness video. Anywho, that was just a little silly Fig factoid for ya. (more…)
Hmm, tiny little blond teaching Pilates — now there’s a surprise. She reminds me of Kristen Bell — esp in profile. I pretended to be working out with Veronica Mars. I wonder what kind of workouts Veronica would do — probably martial arts. I gotta say — I love the little pink squishy ball. On the other hand, it’s awkward and superfluous in some of the exercises. On others it’s a lovely addition. Jury is still out about the ball. It also kept rolling away on me which is annoying when you’re on your back.
She moves very fast — which is good if you can keep up because you won’t be bored. She packs A LOT in. Definitely not for a beginner. Even though I’ve done Pilates plenty of times before I feel like I’m a beginner again postpartum. (more…)
I got this set of ChaLEAN New Deluxe Accelerated Fat-Burning Workouts to use with ChaLEAN Extreme but haven’t used them at all. I just prefer to choose other cardio than the CLX cardio as I’m not fond of drills and that sort of thing. I’ve been doing step aerobics or kickboxing instead and I’ve been doing yoga or other flexibility training from other DVDs as well. Instead of going through the rigmarole of trying to return them or selling them, I thought I’d do a giveaway and pass them on to someone else who will appreciate them more.
Here is what is included on 3 discs:
Disc 1: Extreme Intervals
Disc 2: Lower Body Extreme Zone & Extreme Core Circuit
Disc 3: Dynamic Flow Yoga
To be in to win these discs, just comment below. Tell us if you have done ChaLEAN Extreme or if you’d like to do it. Tell us if you would use these just as single workouts or whether you’d incorporate them into a CLX rotation. (more…)
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…)
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.
And while I haven’t reviewed any Core Secrets workouts on my blog yet, they remain some of my favorites and still make it into my rotation regularly. I slowly added more workouts to my collection over the next few years, starting with a few 
