Workout Updates: The Start of Healthy Living (Again!)

Welcome back to Workout Updates!

I can’t say that its going to be like the Weekly Workout Roundups which I stopped back in late 2014. You will still find this under Weekly Workout Roundups for now and they will normally be on Sunday late afternoon to get whatever workout I want to do during the day.  I know that this space is now really a lot of reviews and recipes and the likes but fact is, what I want this space to be more of is a well-rounded blog about lifestyle: healthy living, staying positive.  Its always been the central goal because even reading and watching movies are a central part of that living positive experience for me. You can see that its been gradually gravitating towards this sort of thing and its why its taken me forever to regroup and find a suitable domain name. Its still something in the works in case you were wondering.

Back to this, the goal is to do weekly workout roundups and to work out about two to three times a week (maybe three to four if schedule allows) and this is something I’m striving so hard to do. Healthy living is one of the focal points starting this year again. It’ll make me feel better and more positive altogether plus I have my cousin’s wedding to attend in late August so I need to lose some weight and look relatively nice. 🙂

Enough of this rambling! I promise these opening bits won’t be this long in future workout updates!

Wednesday: Last Minute Zumba Session

Warm-up – Dance MAs

Popee by Francesca Maria – Live Love Party

Worth It by Fifth Harmony – Live Love Party

Baddest Girl in Town by Pitbull – Dance MAs

I did a few other routines randomly from my list.  It turned out to be something like a 30 minutes of Zumba with a little cooldown of stretching. I just can’t remember the other routines. I’ll be better to jot them down next time.  I couldn’t make it to class this week either. Its what happens in summer but this is my effort to keep up the little bit of Zumba skills that I have.

Friday: Running

A sign of some outstanding social life, eh? 😉

This Friday, my mom had some stuff to take care of so I didn’t hang out with her for dinner and watching some TV together (like I usually do) so I decided to go for a run. This is actually the second run of 2016 so far. Nothing to brag about but I added another 0.5 miles to the run from the last one. This one felt a billion times better than the first run just because I could get into the zone and really  found my pace (kind of). It wasn’t constant enough though and I ran slower and slower as I went. I mean, my time is nothing near ready for participating in whatever 10 km runs or anything but I’m working on it. That’s the key! 🙂

Here’s a snapshot of my last two runs from Nike Running App.

For the purpose of this week, I ran 3.60 miles, which in what I comprehend better is 5.79 kilometers. That’s pretty good 🙂 I probably will do one or two more runs with this route before switching it up.

Sunday: Full Body + Yoga

I was going to do this on Saturday  night but totally slipped my mind and ended up playing games and falling asleep early and all that fun stuff. To be fair, gardening mode has been on so I did a little bit of gardening because I wasn’t feeling all that great so I took it easy. Sunday was a whole different story. It was gloomy so I wasn’t feeling as energetic but I did plan on doing some strength training and maybe a little of cardio and hopefully to stretch and calm down with yoga so here’s the idea of what I did.

Warm-up with Zumba

Full Body Workout

I love full body workouts because of their double duty moves. This workout packs in four circuits with ton of double duty moves that I’ve never tried before so its a lot of fun to do. Just saying..I was sweating bullets after this one. It felt all sorts of awesome! 🙂

Yoga

If you were around back when I did these roundups, you’ll see that I’ve already done this one before but I haven’t in a long while so to start off my yoga again, I wanted something a tad more focused on flexibility than the hardcore stuff which is the more recent Tone It Up one. It was my original plan but one of the moves intimidated me just a tad bit. Lets take it slower to build some confidence. 🙂 Let me say, I had a hard time with the transformation that went into a side plank which usually doesn’t happen. Just shows how much more work I need to rebuild the strength I had. I promise I’ll try the new one soon!

That’s it for this week! Nice and easy to start things off! Hopefully I can keep it up around 3 to 4 workouts a week.
It would be optimal to get back into shape. Plus, nothing works better than having a ton of you keeping me accountable.

Hope you enjoyed this Workout Roundup! 🙂
How do you stay fit/healthy?

Week 41&42: Starting Over Sucks, So Keep Going!

You know why I need to put that up front because I had to take a little break from working out because of my fall on that piece of ice.  Apparently keeping up and doing workouts was not helping and it came one day a week later that my knee just hurt like hell and I barely could walk without it aching.  So, the last two weeks have been more about eating well than working out.

Still, I managed to get in a few workouts.

First one was a short one consisting of 3 moves that I did 3 rounds of from Tone it Up for abs.

These only look easy but they were actually pretty tough after a while.  It was also very effective.  Great workout 🙂

Next up, I believe I’ve posted it before but I did a full Intermediate round for Tribesports’s Women’s Fitness Home Workout.

I did 3 rounds of this and it was so painful by the last round.  Dorsal Raises actually really helped my back.  One Legged Bridges were shaky mostly because I was doing a challenge and it already had bridge.  Any of these, by the third round started feeling pretty intense.

Now, whats amazing is that for the most part, I kept up with my 12 Days of Fitness Challenge.

My first full body accumulator workout challenge was actually aside from being painful for a few of these, it was also pretty fun and challenge.  The final few days were pretty crazy since it hit right before the holiday so I had a day or two of double days packed into one and those were the ones I cursed myself.

For the most part, doing those other challenges this year made 12 crunches, 11 lunges, 9 chair dips, 8 squats, 7 mountain climbers and 6 pushups feel like nothing at all.  4 Burpees aren’t extremely hard either and 5 Star Jumps were pretty cool. I personally hate Tuck Jumps because they are so hard to control and oh so hard to not injure myself again.  Still, the absolute worst part of all this was doing the wall squat.  I still hate it, from start to finish.  I did get better after 12 days but I still have such a long way to go.  I believe bridge was the one with the biggest improvement but I did a lot of it had to be attributed with just being bored of staying propped up for the full 3 minutes and have nothing but stare at my lilac ceiling.

It was still very awesome!

Whats not so awesome was my Dietbet.  Why? Well, not working out also meant that losing weight became harder as well.  So I pretty much stagnated and didn’t go any further and fluctuated in the last week between 133-135 lbs depending on the day.  Still, I hold true that I did change my eating habits and I look forward to keeping it up.  I’ve swapped in all whole wheat options now and I am looking into healthier substitutes even when I bake and cook, so everything is heading in the right direction and this week, I resume my workouts as well!

2014 goals coming up  tomorrow! Remember to drop by, k? 🙂

Week 26&27: Mid Challenge Update!

Two weeks has passed since I dedicated myself to some of the challenges on Tribesports community.  I announced what I was going to do HERE if you’d like to check it out!

14 days workout has passed by.  The first week felt extremely long as everything looked and felt so challenging.  However, after today’s end of the second week, the challenges have become a part of my routine but it still takes a lot to keep going.  Its a constant fight to do the challenge exercises for that day.

Finishing Day 14 today, I’ve gone from my initial Day 1 doing 50 body weight squats to tonight’s 135.  The every 3 days rest really works wonders to help recuperate a little. For the arm workouts, I’ve gone up to doing 2 sets of 29 tricep dips, 2 sets of 21 (full-body) push ups, and dropping back down to 4 sets of 5 bicep curls.  The improvement is that I’ve increased my weights. Its great to gradually feel stronger in my upper body which has always been my weakness.

This weekend being away from my home, the fitness centre forced me to increase the weights.  However, I did feel they were too much for me at the current stage so I went back down to 8lbs once I got home.  I have a weaker upper body and I need to try to avoid any injuries so I’m trying to push myself but not overly.

Coming to that, the new training log functionality on Tribesports is really awesome because you can log in whatever you did  or the ones associated with the challenges or workouts you set to do.  Its pretty efficient because it helps keep track of the progress made.  I find that not only motivational but organized.  That always helps, especially when my memory is a bit fluky and I have to recount the days I did or when I did what.  Seriously, Tribesports added something awesome.

As much as adding in extra cardio has been a big not happening phase, I did manage to squeeze in a full body workout last night at the fitness centre while my best friend was doing her jogging.  Eating too much on vacation tends to give me an excess supply of energy.  I did a workout called Tribesports Full Body Dumbbell Workout.

Click on image for workout details

I have been craving to do a full body workout in a while.  Sometimes, the challenges moves are so short and quick.  Even though they are tiring, nothing really beats the feeling of doing a full-body routine.  This one definitely is quite fun to do.  It covers a really complete set of muscles and I felt pretty much spent after that.  It didn’t appear to be as tiring but it really is efficient and I highly recommend this.

I’m ready to carry on and finish these challenges in style and come back next time with good news 🙂 If I happen to do another extra workout, I’ll talk about it next time!

Happy Monday! 🙂

Extra: Workout Roundup Updates!

I usually only post once a week to track my weekly progress.  I will still do that with selfies but I have just decided to take the 30 Day Fitness Challenges by Tribesports.  There is currently 11 different 30 day challenges targeting different areas of the body.  I might try to post updates but with that 30 Day Challenge in progress, maybe I’ll just do some Twitter updates.  I will definitely check back at the end of 30 days to tell you if I succeeded or failed.  Well, if I come back sooner, probably means I lost track and need to restart…

NO! NO! Positive energy has to stick around!!

Here’s what I’m starting with:

30 Day Squat Challenge!

I’d feel ridiculous if I just did 50 squats on one day so I decided to pair it up with 30 Day Arm Challenge!

30 Day Arm Challenge

I can tell you after the first two days.  Those 250 squats end goal looks quite far.  BUT those pushups look even farther, even unattainable. My boyfriend told me that I have to work the muscles that I dread because they are weaker and the aftermath just hurts more. Here’s my chance, right?

I’m already saying this, if it gets too crazy, I will stop one challenge mid month.  My bet is the arms because I probably need some extra training first.  I’m just giving this two challenges at once a shot.  I will definitely finish one! If I do quit one before, I probably will try to start another challenge on a stronger part of my body while I strengthen my upper body more 🙂 Sounds like a good plan? I think so…

I can tell you this also.  With this, I will definitely try to get in more cardio since it’ll leave me more time to do that with shorter workouts 🙂

NO EXCUSES! I CAN DO THIS!

All of you are my witness now! I’m dedicating to do this challenges which means at least 11 months, whether consecutive or not, I’m not sure, but I will do it 🙂 I’ll be back with an update post on October 1st!

Anyone want to join my craziness? 🙂

Week 25: Motivate! Fast Faster Fastest!

Okay! I’m running out of catchy headings for my weekly workout roundups and just writing Week# is kind of bland and boring…That was from two workout shirts I bought at Walmart.  Although, I probably need more shorts than workout tops nowadays, but they don’t have these motivating slogans.

This week, we’re back into my freestyle weeks! I have a few workouts I want to do already but we’ll try to keep it with a relatively normal schedule of at least one core workout, one full body and hopefully this week a lower body and put in at least a day of cardio.  Two would be better, but we’ll see! It is the Labour Day weekend coming up.

Monday

Nothing motivates me more than starting the week with a workout! It sets my week off full of energy, or at least more energy! Today was a tough day at work, as all I wanted to do was go home and sleep.  I have no idea why I was so tired since I slept earlier than usual the night before.  Either way, Monday is my abs/core day! I went ahead and did the workout that I’ve been contemplating doing but kept putting off from Pumps and Iron called Side Plank Workout.

You can always count on Nicole at Pumps and Iron to kick my ass with her workouts! Obliques are my weakness and I suspect because of dragonboat, my left side is oh, so weak.  At the second set, the left side exercises felt like my arm was going to crumble under my weight.  My right side felt that way in the 3rd round.  This one worked not only my obliques but I felt it in my shoulders and my arms during the workout! Definitely a winner!

Tuesday

My eye infection is still around.  I’m starting to think it’ll never get better but thats just how I feel when I get sick with something else.  I called early in the morning so that I could get a doctor’s appointment. Unlike last time, this turned out to be such a time-consuming task where my doc was an hour in delay, she did give me another antibiotics and referred me to an eye specialist if that failed to work out.  After that, I stood and waited for my mom’s bus from Toronto to arrive which was yet another hour or so in delay where I stood and walked around. Turned out to be a day off…

Wednesday

I had my temp job after actual work.  It did finish earlier than usual but we were mad fast and crazy efficient.  Thats what happens when its with a crew thats all used to the job now.  At times, all the boss has to say is go there and we know what he wants done.  Lots of packaging merchandise for shipping and then carrying things around and clearing up area.  Manual work equals a workout, right?

Thursday

Today I decided to do a back/butt workout.  No one quite kicks my ass doing a booty workout quite like Tone it Up girls so I did the Love Your Booty Routine.

I did this 3 times in a row.  What is crazy about this workout is that I didn’t feel like anything until the third set came by and my legs were all shaky in all the workouts.  I’m pretty amazed that I made it through and man, I was a sweaty mess.  Now I know what I need to work on a lot more (or maybe it was just really humid). Either way, this one is awesome 🙂

Friday

I was going to go jogging at the basin where I usually  have dragonboat practice even though I couldn’t join into practice but it decided to pour outside.  Normally, I’d still go out, but thunder, lightning and eye infection all didn’t seem like such a smart move.  Had to get myself an off day…

Saturday

I had a pretty decent long walk after brunch today with my friend under humid weather but at 10:45pm, I started feeling guilty that I i didn’t have a more intense workout so I looked through pinterest since I sat around to pin some workouts to my getting in shape board and did this one:

The song was almost as long as the workout, I had to end it with 15 more jumping jacks to not feel like I cheated the one song deal 😉 Its not particularly hard but it was pretty intense especially with the one song thing at the back of my mind.  Well, you know I can’t stop at an intense 4.5 minutes workout so I decided to try another song (which I didn’t like) and the workout was way longer than the duration

Other than that, this one might have been a little tougher.  Or it was just because it was the second workout of the day.  10 minutes intense workout sounds like a good enough day.  At least I don’t feel guilty anymore 😉

Sunday

After spending 4 hours to get tickets and then having other errands to run, the only exercise I did was stressing, practicing piano and walking around, then getting drunk off two Sour Puss mixed drinks at a barbecue.

OVERALL…This week really didn’t go too well as in the quantity of workouts but it did go well in the intensity and how I structured them.  For the most part, I’m really getting a good idea of how to target certain areas of my body when choosing a good workout and able to find one that works well without overexerting.  This week’s recommendation has to be the Side Plank Workout.  You ask why? Because nothing screams a good core workout like working on your obliques and if you get some other muscles to get involved like shoulders and arms, then its definitely an efficient and amazing deal 🙂

I’m looking at some challenges and if weather cooperates, a lot more cardio (especially ones I can do indoors) to increase that aspect.  I’m definitely on the right track.  I went through my 4 selfies from front, back and side to see the improvement and as little as there was, I do see a difference.  Its motivating to see any amount of change and its a booster to remind myself that everything I’m doing as a concrete reason behind it 🙂

How do you track your progress?

Week 20/21: Getting Back on Track!

Week 20 pretty much was sickness the whole way but still its part of the year so I’m going to  keep it going to keep my workout tracked.  Ear infection, cold symptoms and the whole kit..it wasn’t fun.  Along with work having the mega huge deadline, energy and feeling better really wasn’t on my side.  I decided that since I had 10 days of antibiotics, I would let my body rest and recover as much as I could before jumping back into the workout!

Week 21 was partially still under antibiotics! August 1st marked not only the start of a new month but also the end of my antibiotics and feeling better enough that I couldn’t resist working out again.  My routine seemed to have gone totally crazy after not having my workouts and my stress went completely off the charts.  Trust me, if something had gone just a little wrong, I would have burst into tears and bawled my eyes out! Even though I still have a bit of a cough left, I decided that I had to get back on track before my mental volcano erupted…for everyone’s benefit 🙂

Thursday (August 1st)

I wanted to push myself to the max but knowing that I’m not fully recovered, I decided to head on over to Tone it Up and see what was scheduled. I ended up with Under the Sea Routine! Its a full body body weights routine that I had to do 3 times.

I love body weights and I was able to complete it 3 times.  It did make me realize how not working out and being sick had really affected me.  I was sweating bullets after this.  Just that Dolphin Dive move was murdering me in every single way! Last time, I already had started tracking how I actually looked physically…since I didn’t really do much, I decided to start over and took another set of pics of myself to track how my body was changing: front, side and back! Of course, I won’t showcase those pictures here because I don’t want to frighten anymore but maybe..if I have even progress to see a before after effect 😉

Friday

I took this day off.  Mostly because as much as I want to push myself to do a workout, I had to make sure my body was able to handle it.  With all the injuries and sickness this year, I felt it was time to change my workout routine a little to make sure it didn’t result in any more injuries.

Saturday

The desire was there but with my cat waking me up at 5am continuously till 7am.  I finally gave up but was too tired to do more.  I wanted to do a cardio jump rope routine but ended up drafting my blog post and waiting for my friend to tell me what he wanted to do.  My exercise that day consisted of shopping 😉 Talk about fun and relaxing 🙂 If you didn’t read about what I did get, well, you could drop by HERE!

Sunday

This weekend really turned out to be a lot busier than I expected and although there was no actual workout done.  I did manage to get my fingers exercising with piano (while my ears weren’t hurting from the sharp notes on the piano and the crazy emotional pieces).  I also went to an exhibit called Planet Shark: Predator or Prey at the Montreal Science Centre which required a bit of walking and standing for more than an hour.  I will post about this exhibit tomorrow (afternoon, most probably) 🙂 My boyfriend and I took a stroll around Old Montreal as well.

This is a short startup post but without all of you in my head watching my progress, it just doesn’t feel the same! I’m still pretty disciplined but hey, a little motivation and support always helps 😉 I hope to be changing my diet/eating habits soon, adding in more cardio workouts mixed with more yoga to keep things in balance and really putting in time to tone and lose some body fat if possible! Stay fit and healthy and maybe those cold bugs will stay away from me in the second half of the year 😉

I’m not completely sure if I will keep doing weekly updates on my workouts.  Maybe I’ll try Biweekly and then drop down to Monthly updates.  Its less time consuming and well it would be more of a monthly roundup by the time I get to that phase ;).  Just need some motivation to get back on track! My goal is 4 workout per week 🙂

Hope everyone is having a fantastic Monday!

Week 14: All about the Abs!

I love working on my core and this week’s daily challenge is for our abs! My goal is to eventually get some 4 pack or 6 pack.  I think that’ll look quite awesome! So, lets start off this week.

Monday

Today’s goal was 30 minute jog and doing the butt exercise from Tone It Up followed through with our daily challenge of today’s being 100 squats throughout the day.  I never do the jogging stuff so forget about it.  At my job, there is no chance I could start doing squats, so after taking a really long walk with my boyfriend like 45 minutes or something, I took a break and then did 100 squats straight through.  After that, I took another little break and instead of that same exercise every week, I switched it up and did the Brazilian Butt Workout featured by a fellow blogger, The Haute Bunny that I found on Pumps and Iron’s workout roundouts a month or two ago.  That workout owned me big time.  It murdered me after one round.  I had to stop even though it was supposed to be 3 rounds.  Just to give you a quick idea of the rundown of one round, here it is:

• 20 Plie Squats
• 20 Donkey Kicks per side
• 20 Fire Hydrants per side
• 20 circling Donkey Kicks per side
• 20 Frog Jumps
• 20 Side Lungers per side
• 30 alternating Split Jumps (here’s where it starts going downhill)
• 30 Alternating Sliders
• 30 Hip Lifts
• 20 Lunge Kicks per side

For the full workout, please click the link above!

Tuesday

Man, another rainy day! I decided to take a day off since everything was in pain from either stress or just yesterday’s workout.  I did manage to get the daily challenge done! 50 Lunges each leg! I broke it down into 2 times of 25 each leg during our evening planning for my vacation with my boyfriend.  First few days are generally planned.  Now for the 2nd half!

Wednesday

I really hate to say this but I had to postpone tonight`s workout another day.  I tried to do the daily challenge and it proved that hurting my wrist wasn`t good.  So I did 15 burpees and called it a day to give it some rest.  The daily challenge was to do 50 but I took the better option.  I will try to make up for it on the weekend when there aren`t any daily challenges.

Thursday

My wrist is all better. It just needed a little rest.  I went straight for the doing 3 rounds of the new workout St. Tropez We`re On Our Way.  You will see the exercise on the left.  It was a full body workout that was pretty intense.  It had awesome warmup exercises, same as the ones I use for dragonboat and followed through with some double duty moves that was really fun.  In between of each round and then 2 times with a 2 minute break in between, I did my daily challenge of 5 times of 2 minute planks.  The last one really killed!

Friday

Since I missed out the awesome tough combo workout day on Wednesday and I wasn’t in the mood for the workout they had planned, I decided to do 2 rounds of Pura Vida workout.  For the daily challenge, it was to do 20/20/20 TIU Tummy Tucks.  I can’t do them midday but I sure can get it in during the morning before work.  Then I snuck them in before and after my workout.  These still get painful to do by the 3rd set but at least I feel that my strength as improved so I have better muscular endurance.  A step in the right direction! 🙂

Saturday

Today was crazy! The weather being perfect helped motivate me to go crazy cleaning for a good part of the morning.  Eventually at 2pm, I managed to take a break and do a cardio workout from FitSugar.  I’ve been wanting to try out some workouts and simples recipes from their site so I found this one HERE!  It starts off with a light cardio warmup then lower body stretch, then jumps into the actual workout with burpees, jump squats, squats, pushups, jump rope, ab work, tricep dips (not in that order). It was totally awesome!

Originally, I had planned on a really long bike ride (like 30 km) but because I got caught in doing chores ( I know its not normal), I ended up waiting for my boyfriend and we walked to do groceries and then we went out for another walk in the evening after dinner 🙂 It was just too beautiful outside to not make the best of it.

Sunday

I took it easy today since my muscles were screaming in pain! My legs were feeling extremely weak from so many days of working out.  I’m seriously considering to lower it to 4 days a week workout.  Sounds about right 🙂

However, I did not just sit around and do nothing.  I ended up doing an hour (and a bit more) of DDR, plus I did some stretching throughout the day to help the muscles.  It was nice to do some indoor cardio and move around!

OVERALL…This week was pretty good.  I managed to get in 5-ish days of workout.  I balanced cardio and strength training.  At this point in time, I can be positive that I won’t reach 100 miles by the end of next week. However, it has upped my normal amount of cardio.  Plus, this week was all about the Abs and I did all the daily challenges and even kind of made up for the burpees by doing some here and there throughout the weekend. My abs are feeling fantastic and starting to look a lot better.  I need to keep pushing hard and adding more cardio, plus focus on full body workouts.

This week, I definitely had the most fun with Brazilian Butt Workout on Monday.  It was only one round and I wanted to cry.  I look forward to the day I can do the full 3 rounds and not have to stop because I couldn’t do the move at all.  One day it’ll get there! Second one was the new workout, St. Tropez.  It felt awesome and its the one that has caused me to feel so much pain in my legs.  However, I did try out the FitSugar cardio workout on Saturday and that one was pretty sweet too.  I can’t choose which one is better but they all fit a different purpose.  Try it out if you’d like 🙂

Oh…one more thing! This week, I rounded up 16.3 miles, tallying up to 72.8 miles done! 27.2 miles to go before I accomplish the 100 miles by summer.  Who knows? Maybe the weather will be in my favor and I’ll manage to get in lots of cardio 🙂 We’ll see, right?

Hope you all had an awesome Monday (even when it doesn’t feel that possible some times)!

Week 11: Getting Better and Payoff Motivation!

This weekend, it proved that I could still fit in the dress and I looked decent in it also :).   All the hard work and pushing through all the crazy sickness that kept resurfacing on and off didn’t stop me from working out intensely and also changing the way I ate a bit.  Everything together made me really happy that all the effort I put in wasn’t in vain because I was happy with how I looked in the dress.  Thats already saying a lot, because I rarely am pleased with how I look as physical appearance.  My body always acknowledges when it can just break out and destroy me.  Thankfully the next day was a holiday so I stayed in to sleep over excessive amounts (my boyfriend is shaking his head and saying its not enough) and relaxing to get rid of the massive cough and cold that came back.

Monday

Sleep, cough, Ricola, True Blood Season 4, Bates Motel catching up…that was all that my Monday had. Then Nyquil at night to knock me out! Workout plans banned from my boyfriend and Star Trek plans postponed to Wednesday as well!

Tuesday

Most of the symptoms seemed to have subsided today so I felt that sweating a bit might help get some bad toxins out of my system so I did the new workout.  It wasn’t too too intense and it was a relief to actually be active.  This week’s new workout is called Santorini Bikini Workout.

The last two exercises in this was probably the toughest although by the 3rd round it was pretty tough to do a full 20 reps on each side for the Seahorse Sizzler.  Pretty good exercise for someone like me getting out of some crazy sickness. 🙂

Wednesday

DATE NIGHT! Star Trek: In Darkness movie night for me and my boyfriend.  Check out the review HERE if you missed it! We enjoyed a hot dog and some fries at the theatres before the movie and then came home and got ready for work.  Relaxing day that we both needed 🙂

Thursday

Back on my workout! Today is a somewhat relaxing night.  After some grocery watermelon and various fruits lifting, I’m ready to do some strength training with Malibooty Workout. I hate working that problem area because its so painful but it had to be done.  I’ve done this one before and I’m neutral to it.  This time, it felt extremely hard but I did all 3 rounds 🙂

Friday

After evaluating my health condition, I felt I was ready for Dragon boat practice.  Dropping to part time means that I actually have to go to some practices.  At the basin, I got in 2 kms (2.5miles) of jogging/walking.  Then I did some lunges and squats and running on spot a few times to keep my heart rate up before practice.  Practice was an hour long and it felt great to be at the basin and back in the water! My love for dragonboat will probably never diminish and I’m aiming to go again next week.

Saturday

Another dreary rainy day! I just wish that it would stop raining on the weekends so that I can get out and do some cardio.  I was hoping

to do some biking this weekend but now, I guess it’ll have to be postponed. I ended up doing an hour of DDR, which is aerobic dancing so I’m using that as their 3 miles of cardio as per their dance class 🙂 Since my muscles were all still very tired from dragonboat practice, I took the day off from strength training but instead went on to clean the kitchen!

Sunday

I took two days off earlier this week so it means that I have to do a workout today! I went for a 2 mile walk with my boyfriend.  After that I came home to double workout. I started off with one I’ve done before called the Sexy Legs Workout from Tribesports. Following this one, I did one from Pumps and Iron where Nicole revamped the original 8 minute Abs into her 2.0 version. You can see that along the left side.  It was super intense and my abs literally wanted to kill me by the end of it.  I never felt them contracted like that before.  I think if I keep this up, I’ll be having some pretty intense abs going on. Now, if only I could control my eating habits, then maybe that six pack might be possible 😉

THIS WEEK

I ended up actually getting in 5 workouts in this week. The sickness at the beginning of the week feels so far away now (maybe thats because this week feels incredibly long and you can look HERE, to know how I felt on Friday).  It really didn’t help that the weather was gloomy all the way through.  Thank goodness by Sunday evening, we started getting the sun peeking out!  As an update, I did 13.5 miles of cardio this week.  I’m still off track from the expected 17ish miles but I’m positive when the sun comes back, I’ll be able to do a lot more cardio.

This week’s recommendations has to go to the 8 minute Abs 2.0 from Pumps and Iron because it really kicked my ass and I guarantee you I will work hard to do it more often. Its slim choices this week for new workouts but there are aspects I like and dislike about the New Tone It Up workout Santorini Bikini.  There is definitely a good level of challenge 🙂 Give it a shot if you’d like to have some fun!

On to a new week! I’m loving feeling healthy and good! Its going to be awesome! I can feel it! 🙂

Happy Monday!

Week 7: Staying Motivated!

Following Week 6 bad end of week and taking all weekend to pull myself out of that mental rut, working out really helped but my body refused to want to actually get up and do something.  Going into the office on Monday was tough, but work is work and there really isn’t much choice with our HUGE deadline coming up in 2 weeks. The goal this week isn’t anything fancy. Its just with one goal in mind to be able to stay motivated, keeping up the workout intensity and most importantly, no excuses, just do it!

Monday

Day 4 Core Challenge! The abs were ripping and every rep felt like super painful! I only managed to get this done though while I was waiting for dinner while my mom and her friends was making dumpling and congee and all sorts of cool food.

Tuesday

Day 5 of Core Challenge! You already know I’m in pain so I’ll spare you.  After that, I went ahead and did the Tone it Up exercise TLC Workout.  The picture under shows the routine.

I did this circuit for 2 times.  Seeing as I did the Core Challenge already and I didn’t want to overdo it. I gave myself a pass and let the Core challenge count as one set to fulfill the 3 set goal 🙂 It was tiring but felt absolutely good. I wanted to only do 1 set but then I felt bad for slacking off and cutting off overall workouts so much that I pushed myself to do one more time of the circuit!

Wednesday

I had my chiropractor appointment today.  Usually after these, I don’t like to over exert so I just did the Day 6 of my Core Challenge and left it at that! Plus, its been a tough week health-wise so I’m trying to not be too tough on my body…

Thursday

Dragonboat day! And somehow all my track pants decided to vanish on me, thank goodness I found my shorts.  Practice was awesome. it was full training in the paddling pool.  We did the same sequence the whole time over and over again, working on our technique as we swap from lower intensity (aka active rest) to high at around 95% power.  I really felt in the last practice how my training in the last (few) week have helped in building muscular endurance.  After practice, I was exhausted but I made myself do the LAST DAY of the Core Challenge! 🙂 I DID IT! YAY!

Friday

After having an intense week, I took Friday off instead to rest my core a bit.  Most of the workouts I do have to use it, so it seemed wise to let them recuperate a bit.  Plus, I had an early day with the girls on Saturday morning to find a bridesmaid dress and for the bride to be to find her evening gown.  I haven’t done such intense shopping in a long time..so lets see how it goes 🙂

Saturday

Saturday was crazy.  We met up at 9:30am to head to the Plaza St Hubert, which is a street for shopping and dresses and all that cute wedding stuff.  We spent a morning there and then ended up finishing our shopping back on the shore.  Lots of walking! BUT…both me and the bride to be found our dresses! WOOHOO! Despite being extremely burnt out, I felt bad for not working out, so I went ahead and did what I supposed to do yesterday night called Summer Slim Workout.  I repeated this workout 3 times!

Especially after this dress purchase, I cannot lose this.  My body can only slim down and not gain AT ALL! This was pretty good.  “Tipsy” had me really working hard, “Row the Boat!” was painfully hard to control the move without dropping the weights on the floor and “Ultimate Summer Move” gave my hips some bruises..or it felt that way. An alright workout I think 🙂

Sunday

This is usually my day off but seeing as I took Friday off and took it easy on Monday and Wednesday with just the Core Challenge, I had to stick in another workout.  After having doing some physical exertion from taking down the car shelter, I did this Saturday’s workout was this one called Gettin’ Slim without the Gym!

I only managed to do one set before everything started screaming in pain.  I let my body rest.  This week has been intense already with the 7 day Core Challenge and finishing that up.  I realized it was more exhausting than I had imagined.  Still one set is better than none.

Looking back, I ended up only doing one day of complete rest.  This was overworking my body more than I had imagined.  I have to take note to  take it easier when I do my next seven day challenge.  However, it felt good because it means that even through all sorts of fatigue, working out has become a routine.  It actually felt weird when I broke out of the routine and skipped the workout on Friday.  I felt bad for not doing it on Saturday so I did one and pushed through it.  At times, its even helped me to be more energetic afterwards.  Its even helped me with my sleep, which has been lacking in the past while.

Next week is going to be a tricky one, so lets see if I can find the physical energy to workout after the mental energy exerted at work… I’m sure I’ll hold on! Now I have an extra goal… to stay and tone up for the next month till my friend’s wedding 🙂

Week 6: Pushing through Fatigue and Pains!

At my last week’s update, I went through a very sickly Sunday which made me break my Core Challenge that I had wanted to.  The week started off at about the same note and it was learning to push through the fatigue and pains (and mild sickness).  Coming out of that and finding the motivation to workout!

Monday

This is usually a workout day but I decided to swap it with Wednesday because I was in too much pains (girl problems…).  Plus, the work day was stressful to the max with lots of obstacles and challenging clients to deal with.  All in all, I sat around and finished a movie with my boyfriend. That review is HERE! Then, continued onwards with this 90s popular Hong Kong TV Series that I used to love 🙂 The days when there were NO cell phones and when your vehicle broke down, you had to stand around and wait for another car to drop by before continuing on with action.  Real obstacles 😉

Tuesday

Rain is continuing on for forecasted the next few days, meaning the schedule workout for this week, I’m going to move things around in hopes that this weekend will give me time to do some outdoor workout planned for this instead.  I’m going to follow one of the two on Tone it Up planned for Monday and put it for today.  Its the Your Wild Child routine.

And then I follow it up with the Cocktail Dress Workout. For these ones, it was supposed to be 4 sets for Wild Child and Cocktail Dress Workout.  I matched them up but did 2 sets each.  Still it was an intense workout.   My core is going to scream in pain along with the rest of my body.  It was great match with cardio to start it off and then body weights, followed with some strength training/(more) body weights for the whole body.  It was fun and a great way to start the workout week 🙂

Wednesday

Restart of  Core Challenge Day 1! Matched with those awesome 8 Double Duty Moves I had last week which left me in agonizing pains for 2 days afterwards. I only managed to get one set of those moves in though since I started working at 10pm which is pretty close to going to bed.  That core challenge is a killer though, always leaves me with some mega contracted abs.  Its makes me know that I worked them hard 🙂

Thursday

Tonight, dragon boat practice is back.  Its sad to see that it’ll only be 2 more practices after this one or something like that of indoor.  Then my routine needs to be adjusted with this extra hour (actually 2+) as everything shifts to occupy the commute and warming up time for something else.  I’m definitely going to miss it.  However, life does take a front seat and the online courses and assignments won’t complete themselves, piano history won’t enter my brain by themselves.  We did 2 sequences of 8 times 20 second intense and 40 seconds active recess then went to 4 times of 30 seconds intense and 30 seconds active recess (70%).  Along with some killer body weights/cardio outside that required a whole lot of body coordination in between the sequences.  Finally we ended it with 4 times of starts. It was a refreshing practice 🙂 Very efficient but I didn’t have time to do Day 2 of Core challenge.  Guess I’ll have to restart again…

Friday

Snowstorm in April! We’re Canadians, its supposed to normal (thats what the radio said).  At least it says that it’ll be 10+ Celsius afterwards.  Today’s line up is cardio with Jump Your Heart Out Workout.  I ‘ve done this one before but its fun so I don’t mind doing it again. I did it once for a warm up and to bump up the heart rate.  Then, I followed up with the 3rd try and Core Challenge Day 1!

Its been a crazy day and I need this! Its been a challenging day and its made me tip over to make certain decisions and pick up my act.  If I didn’t do that, I’d either want to punch something or just wallow in self-pity.  I don’t do that now so I resort to something that helps me release all the stress and anger and depression that ever feel.

Saturday

I was going to go for a run but seeing we have snow on the ground. I won`t do the jog, instead I changed it to a home circuit challenge I found on Tribesports: The Leg, Chest and Core Blaster! I only did it one time. I’ll do the full challenge as I train more. Those squat hops were a lot harder than I had expected… next week I’ll try to do the whole thing 😉

Core Challenge Day 2 HAPPENED! It was painful and I can picture tomorrow being even more painful but I can already feel them and at the end of this, it’ll be good 🙂

Sunday

I spent a good many hours working on doing taxes all day! This was a nice break when my brain refused to turn anymore for the numbers.  Core Challenge Day 3 was great and painful! During half way through each of the planks, my abs were ripping in pain! Thats the only exercise planned today! Afterwards, Take it Easy (physically)!

Overall, this week has been interesting and fun! The Wild Child Workout was really fun and I’d gladly do the full sequence again. It was a great cardio workout.  Now, I also have new goals to accomplish to complete the actual challenge for the Leg, Chest, Core Blaster next week! It all felt awesome! 🙂 Continuing on to Week 7! And its all planned out!