Exercise has always been a big part of my life as a source of personal development and mental and physical health. Especially since becoming a mom, working out has been an absolute necessity for maintaining my energy and sanity. If you’re expecting or are a new mom, check out my my top fitness fundamentals for getting in shape after babies.
The obvious challenge with exercise is finding the time and motivation to get it done. My biggest tools for overcoming desires to skip workouts is making realistic goals and having a firm schedule that makes time for my workouts. If I do my advance work planning out what workouts I’m going to do and when, I take the thinking part out of the equation making it an easier decision to get out of bed in the morning. Beyond resisting the urge to snooze, which takes some serious mental fitness, when I create my own fitness plan I am genuinely excited about my workouts and feel a very strong physical and mental sense of accomplishment when I complete them. I’m a big advocate of pre-programming workouts, and I prefer to schedule out one month at a time. In my experience this practice helps with both creating a well-rounded fitness plan and staying on track with my goals.
I am particularly excited about this week because it’s my first day back from taking two weeks off after having a number of medical procedures done on my legs. For the past few months I have been battling with a venous insufficiency problem spurred on from my pregnancy, and after seven procedures and many veins lazered and removed, I am finally recovered and cleared to resume normal activities.
As I’m bursting at the seams to get back to it, this week I’m starting the blog with my fitness outlook for the week. I run 1-3 miles every morning with my dog Max and pair that with a 15-20 minute high intensity interval training (HIIT) workout. I’ve never been much for the gym or fitness classes mostly because I would rather be outside and hate to waste the limited time I have to workout going back and forth to a gym or studio. I do take a variety of fitness classes, but only a few times a year and mostly when traveling. All of the workouts I do on a regular basis are very conducive to busy schedules and can be done at home with minimal equipment. As I’ve been off for a couple weeks, this particular series is focused on shaking the rust off with full body workouts to build back up my strength and endurance.
Monday
This is my variation of “The 300” workout with a lot less weight and pull ups than the original, because Mrs. Leonidas had to get in shape for the film too 🙂 .
Tuesday
This is a 16 minute workout. You will need a Tabata clock to mange the clock for this workout. There are a number of options available on the App store that you can download to your phone or tablet. If you aren’t familiar with Tabata, it’s a HIIT style workout where you pick four exercises (ex: squats, lunges, burpees, etc…) and complete eight two minute rounds working hard for 20 seconds and resting for 10 seconds. A traditional tabata workout comhpletes one exercise at a time, but I prefer to do alternating exercises so that during each two-minute round I complete one set of each exercise. Either way you end up doing four rounds of each exercise.
Wednesday
Set up a timer that’s visible from where you are standing. I use the stopwatch feature of the clock app on my IPhone. Every Minute on the Minute (EMOM) complete 5 reps of each exercise.
Thursday
Four rounds. Complete corresponding reps of each exercise with each round. First round is 21 reps, last round is 9.
Friday
The total workout completes 50 reps of each exercise. 