Week 12: Intentions and Goal Setting!

I never follow Tone it Up completely but this week, I’m drained out of focus, so they set the Inspirational Challenge which is all about intentions and goal setting.  I felt that it would be cool to check that out. I’ll write about what the thing we have to do each day of the week as I move along.

Monday

After 4 days straight of working out, I had to give my body a break.  Plus, with my boyfriend’s change in schedule, we had to shift date night a tad earlier 😉 Date night is all about the 3rd movie of May that we wanted to catch: FAST AND FURIOUS 6!! Everyone was anticipating most a bunch of super hero movies or sci-fi or even horror..for me, it was really Fast 6! I mean 2.5 hours of turning off my brain and watching something loud and intense with my fave Vin Diesel and The Rock.  I’m down for that anytime 🙂 I’m going to leave the rest for the review that you can find HERE if you missed it!

However, I want to talk about the start of the inspirational challenge. Our work today is to write down the top 3 goals for the rest of Bikini Series! Mine will be to increase muscular endurance, happy with how I look in the mirror in anything and to stay healthy 🙂 I don’t know if thats how I do it..but its all more long-term but its still goals, right?

Tuesday

Today is the new workout day and we were introduced to Thailand Tush Workout!

This was actually really fun.  I didn’t expect it to be as hard as it turned out to be. To me, this looked pretty relaxing but those Glute Burners really burnt.  By the 3rd round, I wanted to just stop midway.  However, I toughed it out as always 😉 Pretty fun! Then I ran off to reread my goals for the inspirational challenge.  It said to visualize and see how you feel about it.  I felt pretty happy thinking about it.  To see myself accomplishing all those things made me smile and I know that I can do it 🙂 No modifications needed! I’m going to work hard to get there!!

Wednesday

Tonight’s workout looks extremely long with two separate workouts planned.  The first one was Surfer’s Paradise.  You’ve seen that one over and over again for the last few weeks.  Still, here is the video to refresh your memories! I did 2 rounds of that.

Then afterwards, another throwback with Sunkissed Abs workouts.  A full workout is 3 rounds for this one so I managed to do three even though honestly, I wanted to give up at 2.  My abs were burning.  It was a nice one which focused a lot on the core.  On the side note, today’s inspirational challenge is to think about it for 15 minutes and visualize and feeling incredible.  Somewhere in the thinking, I came to the revelation that this weekend, I will take a picture as a before version and really start working on compiling some healthy recipes to incorporate in my diet this weekend and we’re going to make things happen! Eventually I’ll look fit in the mirror 😉

Thursday

Those killer Thursdays again! Double full workouts again! We start with the Santorini Bikini Ready Workout. I did 3 rounds of these at varying between 10-20 reps depending on the exercise.

This time around the Scuba Dives felt a bit easier.  However, those Coconut Crunches are still quite painful to do.

Second up, we have the Bikini Strap Toning Routine.

I only did two rounds of this one.  For one, I have dragonboat practice planned for tomorrow.  Plus, those rear flies kill my hands on my metal dumbbells. I need to upgrade them for this one and I don’t want to do that just yet.  I’ll find some way to modify it eventually. 🙂 Plus, today’s Inspirational Challenge is to make 2 small changes to the current plan to make differences.  I chose to bring healthier snacks with me and eat lunch outside which will allow me to stay active by taking a little lunch walk (except when it rains), if I miss one day, then I make it up on the weekend with extra distance on my bike ride or jog!

Friday

I’m trying to get myself to keep up with Dragonboat as much as I can.  Since I have some other plans coming up that I’ll be missing it. I decided to go again. Dragonboat is really awesome! I took a 2.5 km walk before practice while hydrating myself like crazy.  Then on the boat, we did some awesome drills and I was working on some problems to make my stroke longer.  We were also testing as a team how fast we could push our stroke rate without harming our technique. It was a great practice!

Today’s Inspirational Challenge is to let someone know.  I actually told my boyfriend about this and that I was going to start tracking the way I look by taking pictures of myself every month or so.  Plus, I encouraged him to join me on all or some cardio workouts 🙂

Saturday

I started today off early and super efficiently did a ton of chores…then after an hour, I sat back down to rest and before I knew it, I was out and about.  I didn’t end up doing anything….I’m a bit ashamed of that.  It was supposed to be my cardio catchup day but the crazy 38C heat was killing me.

Sunday

I went for a 10.2 km bike ride (6.34 miles) which accounts 1/3 for the 100 By Summer Challenge.  So I clocked into another 2.11 miles.  Seeing as it came to less than my needed daily cardio.  I decided that I needed to do some more cardio so I went to do 45 minutes of DDR. Then at night, I went for another 1 mile walk with my boyfriend to get enjoy some of the nicer cooler weather as it got a bit more windy.

My old bike that desperately needs an upgrade!

This week went alright on the cardio level.  I’m gradually increasing it but if my calculations are correct (and they are), I need to do about 30 miles PER WEEK starting now in order to get to 100 miles by the first day of summer.  I’m thinking of starting to do extra cardio everyday even if it means walking or biking, whichever it is.  If things go as planned, it should be no problem.  Plus, this week only had one new workout and thats the Thailand Tush Workout.  Its a pretty good workout for the glutes.  I enjoyed it quite a bit through the pain. Its definitely worth a try! Plus, I think that doing the Inspirational Challenge was useful.  It helped me visualize where I want to be and highlighted the additional elements I needed to work on and just little changes to implement and its these small changes that will make the big difference 🙂

Now, I’m charged up! I know where I need to go and all I have to do is keep going! Summer is pretty much here and the weather has slightly settled in so I can bring up the cardio! The first bike ride felt awesome and spending quality time with my boyfriend is fantastic as well so we will definitely keep this up for as long as possible 🙂

Any sports/exercise/cardio you like to do when summer and the heat arrives?