Week 49: Breathe Through It!

I’m halfway done with the Nike Training app Get Toned program at the end of this week.

I’m pretty happy because I think my discipline is pretty much back and the motivation has arrived also.  This year’s cold weather has made me develop some pretty bad eating habits which I’m trying to make amends with.  But, amidst all the stuff I need to improve on, I’ve realized that I’ve gotten used to eating whole wheat bread.  Its more of a tolerance but its healthier so at least there’s one good option.  I just need to find some way to create some form of balance in my diet.

Let’s go and check out the 4 days of workouts: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday!

Tuesday and Wednesday are the same as last week with respectively 30 mins Kickin’ It and 15 mins Dynamic Yoga.

NTC 30 mins Kickin’ It

Nothing’s really changed for this one about how I feel.  Some of the moves are more natural to do but still tough.  The ones that murder me are the broad jumps (since I have limited space) and tuck jumps just murders me every single time. Still, I made it through, at least that was the awesome part 🙂

NTC Leah Kim’s 15 mins Dynamic Yoga

I love myself some yoga.  Its re-energizing and its so relaxing to just clear my mind. Plus, it helps with doing stretches to ease the pain from the previous day’s workouts.  Last week, I had issues with the continuous variations of side planks.  I’m not saying this week, I didn’t have problems but I pushed through a bit easier.  I just have such horrible balance especially on my left arm.

On Thursday, I had a new 45 minutes workout called Competitor. Here’s what that looked like:

NTC 45 mins Competitor Workout

This workout was very similar to the week before’s but it had a few new exercises that I really liked it.  It was pretty intense to get through and I kept wanting to give up but still, it was so energizing at the very end 🙂 Call me crazy but I kind of like those inch worm to push ups and also the push away balance.  The more difficult ones is side crunches to burpees and single arm plank rows. Well, it just shows that they work out what I hate so thats why I loathe it, means I need to embrace them more often and get better!

My next weekend was scheduled on Saturday but since I ended up being out all day and then having some weird stomach flu symptoms, I had to skip and realized that when you skip, they just cut off that workout and I couldn’t access it again.  So I had to improvise this afternoon.  I started one of the workouts and realized it was too hard so I’ll attempt it when I’m stronger in my upper body.  Instead, I switched over and did one round of this workout on Pumps and Iron called 5 to 50 Ab Workout.

This one was super tough but I was really into doing a core workout.  However with my health not really at par, I didn’t want to push myself too much.  Still, this one includes some pretty crazy ones.  I had trouble with balance for the alternating superman plank. And I HATE HATE HATE windshield wipers, especially when they are followed with leg lifts.

But you know me, if I cut back on one thing, I’m going to make it up with something less intense but still a workout to make me feel better. I decided to do some yoga to help clear my mind and to get some stress from my body 🙂 I decided to try out Tone it Up’s Love Your Body with Yoga. Here is the video!

Seriously, I love these yoga videos and I’m happy that I actually know what she’s talking about.  Its one thing I’d love to improve in and learn more about.  Maybe I’ll look into getting yoga classes for the summer and check that out. Maybe you know some workout sites with good yoga routines/videos? Please tell me if you do! 

This week’s workout and my health was not such a great match but its been really keeping away some pretty bad bugs, I think.  Sweating it out really does work.  Or at least I’d like to think they do. Plus, its been keep my mind and body in balance while I’m figuring out what to do with a few things that I discussed with the last post.  Thats always a good thing too! I actually think maybe I’ll get in another short yoga stretches to help with my sleep. Thats also been a bit funky and irregular…

Hope your weekend has been awesome and fabulous! I actually have a lot of stuff lined up: reviews and recipes (at the very least)! 🙂

Week 48: Exploring a New Program with NTC!

A few weeks ago, I downloaded this app onto my phone and I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it work.  Apparently, connecting to Facebook didn’t work so I just signed up for new account and voila, the Nike Training Club app worked.

Earlier this week, I started setting up my Nike+ account and decided to choose which program to use and I chose “Get Toned”.  It has been what I’ve been working on for the past while so after consulting with my boyfriend, he agreed it was what I should be doing also.  After choosing that one, the app set me up with 4 workouts scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday for 4 weeks!

I figured instead of having to figure out what to do spontaneously, which is what I do and it sometimes kills my motivation, I decided to give it a shot. I jotted down in my notebook each of the workouts since I’m not all fancy and able to do lovely pics (which I should learn to do).  I just hope you can read my writing.

First workout up is Tuesday’s 30 minute workout called Kickin’ It!

NTC 30 mins Kickin’ It

Sorry for the mistake there.  That 1 min Squat Jumps is supposed to be there. And the scribble in the bottom is “IT Band Stretch with Resistance Band”. Now for the actual workout, Kickin’ It was pretty good.  it was a great to really feel my heart rate.  Whats awesome about each of this and the following ones (except yoga maybe) is that there are always warm-up and end with some form of stretching.  It works the full body so it feels great! 🙂

Wednesday is when I started to get how this program worked a bit more and I realized that this app is pretty cool because you can get a short demo video of how to do the move which is always helpful especially for dynamic yoga and I’m a mega beginner.

NTC Leah Kim’s 15 mins Dynamic Yoga

The world of dynamic yoga is pretty crazy. The ending of this was intense especially with the different forms of side planks. I was pretty much screaming at the app to relieve some pain.  It was intense. Still, hating it just means it was targeting my weaknesses and with time, it’ll get better.  The one that was really challenging is crow pose.  That one will take a lot of practice.

Thursday brought on the 45 minutes workout and this was a mega sweat session called Stinger.

NTC 45 mins Stinger

The sweat session was really in the length and the repeat of the sequence for 3 times. Plus, a lot of it was also that it was a lot of new moves that I’ve never done before so my body had to adapt to that.  By the third round, my body was tired but more fluent with the moves.

I was so happy to take Friday off and then last night, I did Saturday’s workout Flex Machine (my boyfriend laughed the name).

NTC 30 mins Flex Machine

THE most intense workout of this week had to be this one.  It had to do a lot with the middle part with lunges, lateral hops and froggers.  I hate froggers with a passion because I have zero endurance with this.  On top of that, with all the energy zapped out of me, I had to do toe touches when I barely could keep my legs upright, much less push through to do toe touches.

I have to say it felt great to get back to some intense workout weeks.  I love doing the 4 times a week workout schedules.  I do intend to keep up with this for their full program so it should carry on pretty much till  Week 51 and then for the last week for this weekly workout sessions, I’ll figure out something to somewhat celebrate the one year mark 🙂

I don’t like to advertise or anything on my site but I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with Nike Training App, especially since its free and it pretty much has a instructor that calls out the time and tells you when to change your workout and it takes into account the getting equipment and getting into place before moving onto the next exercise.  Its pretty well thought out and I’ve learned a lot of new moves for warm-up, stretches and the actual exercises.  Lets see if it’ll actually tone my body just a little while I adjust back to eating well again.

Also, if you’d like to try the workouts and you can’t read my writing, just tell me.  I’ll tell you what it says.  I don’t have the best handwriting…

Have you tried Nike Training App? Any other apps you know good for working out?