Workout Roundup

I apologize for the tardy post. These two weeks have been about digging really deep. I’m not going to lie that getting back into working out has been a mega hard uphill trek. As much as I acknowledge the necessity of it, there is always that lack of motivation. As I try hard to stay accountable here (and trust me, it really helps), I’m trying to also find back the push to make me want to find that perfect balance of workout that doesn’t put into a boring routine same thing every week but still enough to keep me challenged and motivated.

Weights & Cardio

Done with 5lbs dumbbells

Weights

After a series of days postponing workouts, I had to get in a few days in a row to feel less guilty. With that said, I’ve been trying to strengthen my arms a little so I went back to do another short arms weights workout. I chose the Tone It Up Sculpt Your Arms Workout.

Here’s the link of the Love (and Sculpt) Your Arms Workout!

So I did 15 reps with 5 lbs weight for 3 rounds.

September 7 to 9: DreamHack Event Coverage

This past weekend was DreamHack Montreal. As with event coverage, time runs a little thin on hardcore workout but cardio and excessive amounts of walking and stair climbing was definitely put in the mix here. I realized that I forgot to set my health app after I switched phones so I don’t have an actual amount of distance or step count.

For accountability purpose:

Friday: attended for 4 hours and sat about 20 minutes for eat and watch an esports match
Saturday: attended for 7 hours and sat about an hour or so for events and game trials
Sunday: attended for 2 hours and didn’t sit much at all. It was a quick in and out to grab remaining coverage

Overall…

I can’t say the last two weeks was a riveting success but getting one workout in a week is already a step forward to getting back into a routine slowly. That’s generally the idea. I realize that when I go too intense, the schedule gets warped and I just end up feeling bad that I let something slip whether it be a blog post or editing a video or keeping up with chores so I’ve actually been feeling great about the baby steps back into a solid workout schedule. Maybe in two weeks, I’ll be back and doing two workouts a week. I think thats a solid goal to set. 🙂

Getting into Shape 2018: Weekly Workout Revival

Hey everyone!

Its been at least 5 years or more since I wrote a Weekly Workout Recap segment. And that really is because the last few years, its been a horribly unhealthy and health ridden days. It killed my motivation and whatnot. I did do a ton of running and zumba in 2015 in preparation for the whole wedding thing. I feel like I did at some point revive the segment trying to get back into the groove of things, but it didn’t last for the above reasons again. Either way, my lack of health and fitness has lately really affected how I feel about myself so weekly updates, WE ARE BACK!

I’m not tracking by the balance and losing weight. My goal is to just feel good about myself and feeling toned and strong. I don’t necessarily feel that how much I weigh will do that, actually I never have, because if I build muscle, I’ll gain weight but it’ll be good weight as opposed to just building more fat. Either way, I’m trying to eat a little cleaner and less processed foods. The past year, I’ve tried to get back into the groove of things with my sheer desire and wanted to create my own little workout thing and the indecisiveness made it just take too long to start and then too late to begin without sacrificing the little sleep that I get. Then I tried to just keep to a schedule but things always got in the way, finally went back to my go to with the Nike Training program and I just couldn’t stay motivated, mostly because the workouts felt like they were out of my league and then I’d be in too much pain to do the next one in the schedule without risking injury.

Anyways, its already a pretty long story but point is, back then, I started out being super motivated when I did some Pumps and Iron or Tone It Up workout so I’m going back to where I had started and trying to complete the Bikini Series for Tone It Up which just started. And to stay accountable, I’ll share the workout progress. If you want to join in, they actually have a TIU app which tracks your fitness goals and has the daily workouts and 5 toning moves that changes every day.

Bikini Series – Week 1

Monday (didn’t jot down the moves so just working with memory for Monday and Tuesday)
Arms (2 rounds of 15 reps)

Bicep Curls
Shoulder Pulses
Reverse Flyes
Squat Presses
–can’t remember what the last thing is–

Tuesday
Total Body (2 rounds of 15 reps)

Reverse lunges with curls
Pushups
Bikini Walkouts + Tummy Tucks
Squat Jacks
Bicycles

Wednesday

Didn’t have time for 5 Toning Moves
Ended up doing a 1.5 km walk at lunch

Thursday
Total Body (2 rounds of 15 reps)

Walk 2.5 km at lunch

Single-Leg Deadlift (each side)
Weighted Chop (each side)
Side Plank Crunch (each side)
Plank Row (each side)
High Knees (30 seconds)

Pushing through my own lack of motivation and got a late quick workout in despite getting home late from the dentist and having a late dinner. The small triumphs are what builds habits in my mind. 🙂

Friday
Yoga and Abs (2 rounds of 15 reps)

Bikini Walkout + Plank Jack
Shoulder Taps (each side)
V-Sit
Rock the Boat (each side)
Seated Side Opener (30 seconds each side)

Saturday
HIIT & Abs (2 rounds of 15 reps)

Squat Jacks (30 seconds)
Mountain Climbers (each side)
Toe Touches
Squat Jacks (30 seconds)
Down Dog Booty Lifts (each side)

(extra: do 30 seconds mountain climbers after each round)

Sunday
Arms & Cardio

5KM Run & Walk (or as my Nike running app says 4.69km)
Total time: 33:15 mins

(2 rounds of 25 reps)
Shoulder taps (each side)
Plank taps (each side)
Bridge & Press
Bent-over Row
Cross-body Curls (each side)

Overall…

This week was a lot of making myself get back into the groove. I don’t think that realistically working seven days a week even if its just 15 minutes sometimes works but I’m going to try my best and also start adding in not only the 5 daily toning moves but also some Tone It Up workouts. Thats the plan for the next 3 weeks until the Bikini Series is done. Week 2 of Bikini Series is out. Check it out HERE. Arms and abs have always been my weakness so those double duty things like walkouts and Down Dog Booty Lifts were the hardest workouts of this week that I needed to really push myself to complete. For the record, I don’t have resistance bands, or I might have them but I can’t remember where it is. So just to not murder myself, I did some of these just normal without the added resistance. I’m pretty happy with just staying on track for week 1.

That’s it for Week 1 recap!
It definitely feels both painful and awesome to be working out again.
Can’t say that I’m particularly in the groove since most days I still want to just not do it but end up finding some motivation.
Let’s keep me accountable! And well, tell me if you are working out to stay fit as well. Let’s encourage each other!

Workout Round-up!

Its time for another workout roundup!

I’m not going to lie! I’ve been super busy so walking around and standing and sitting is a lot of my life. But, the last two weeks, I’ve started getting in some more workouts and its a toss up between Zumba and when its too hot, workouts in the pool. Also two that from the post that I had wanted before but didn’t during this (almost) two months of no workout updates.

Here’s a few for you! 🙂

Warm-up 02- Marlon Alves Dance MAs

Pool Exercises [Fully Body Workout] – Popsugar Fitness

*Only one I didn’t do is Water Treader because my pool isn’t that deep.

Pool Workout [Ab & Core Workout] – Popsugar Fitness

Summer Ab Routine &  – Tone It Up

Sleek & Slender Abs – Tone It Up

I need to get a much more routine workout schedule going! Things are hopefully slowing down after Fantasia Festival ends next week! Kind of… I’ll be back with another update/workout round-up soon. 🙂

How are you staying active this summer?

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 4: A Little Bit at a Time :)

Week 4! I can hardly believe that I’ve been back in this workout thing for a month.  Its really made me feel a whole lot better. My mind and concentration, even my energy is better than before.  Not to mention, aside from feeling sore, I feel really great about myself.

WEDNESDAY: 15 MINS FULL-BODY WORKOUT by PopSugar Fitness

Also called Fast and Furious Calorie Burn (on Youtube). This workout is pretty intense.  When life gets busy, I try to get these intense workout bursts to stay active.  I’m slowly gathering a good little bit of these and I want to try new ones so that I can keep the workouts diversified bit by bit. The instructions are done really well so its easy to follow even if you are focusing on the moves and there’s demo before each one before moving to the reps for the move.  At the end of this, it feels extremely hard to do for some moves.

I love this one a lot and I’ll probably head back to do this again to see how strength improves.

SATURDAY: DETOX YOGA & PURA VIDA 

I needed to get some yoga in and since I was going to a arts and crafts show and going to taste some alcohol, I wanted to do a detox session before.  This one is supposedly very good for hangovers and I can actually see it really working out for that.  Its to help boost metabolism and I definitely felt like it got my blood flowing but also relaxing.  Its a few moves and the sun salutation.

I followed this through with Pura Vida Workout from Tone it Up. Its one that I haven’t done in a long time.  A full-body workout again.  I didn’t quite feel it in my legs while I was working out but today (Sunday), when I woke up, its been reminding me how hard that workout was.

If you click the image, you’ll have the actual link with a video for this workout.  Some of these are a little hard to understand from the description but its a pretty good workout.  The dual movements covers the full-body. Spider Monkey Push-up is a pain to do.

FYI, I did 20 reps for first two moves while I did 10-15 reps for the last two. Completed 3 rounds.

OVERALL

I’m not hitting the 3 times a week nowadays.  There’s just too much stuff to do.  Still, this weekend, tracking my body transformation is starting to be motivating because I’m seeing better results this week. Thats my inspiration.

I’m totally back on track.  Its great to see my body heading in the right direction.  Its an amazing feeling to get back some of that feel-good element, reduce stress and start feeling more confident about myself (and my body). Loving it! 🙂

Week 3: The Most Satisfying Pain

Week 3 was a whole lot more motivating.

Its because I now have geared my mind (or at least for the past week, I did) to go workout when I was having writer’s block.

Lets get straight to it, nothing else to write 🙂

MONDAY: BEACH YOGA (TONE IT UP)

I haven’t done this one in ages.  This was almost the first Yoga workout that I tried to get me interested in it.  It was really relaxing.  Rem

Remember my last week ended with that crazy Pumps and Iron workout on Sunday? Yeah, my abs were aching for 4 days (at least).  So I figured that Yoga would be a good idea to stretch out my abs.  It did but it also worked it like mad.  I always forget that Yoga is very abs heavy…

Its imprinted in my brain now.  I assure you of that.

WEDNESDAY: 50 MINS TOTAL BODY WORKOUT (POPSUGAR)

This is a little trickier because its five 10 minutes workouts so I’ll try to see if I can get the videos since its hard to embed the Popsugar videos from their video player.  Easier on YouTube.

If you just want to check it on one post and flip through it, click HERE!

Part 1: Light Cardio and Core Warmup

A pretty good warm-up.  It definitely get the blood going and ready to move on to the more intense stuff.

Part 2: Cardio Focus and Calorie Burner

This one works fairly well, except while I’m working out its hard to focus so much on the whole body coordination and it took a lot of effort to get some of the moves right. I’m guessing the second time will be better.

Part 3: Arms and Shoulders

My weakness is arms and shoulders. Kind of sad because I used to do dragon boat and that should be my forte if anything, although there’s a whole lot of abs work involved and the whole body.  A common misconception non-dragonboaters might have. Anyways, my shoulders are extremely weak and I’m trying to strengthen it right now.  This workout was pretty intense.  Its nice to have the 3lbs because it was the perfect weight.  Hopefully I’ll be able to go up to 5lbs after a few more weeks.

Part 4: Legs and Bottom

I didn’t actually do the full 10 minutes for this one because I didn’t go and search out the YouTube version. The one on Popsugar TV was really lagging and it was a tad inhumane to do it like a million times more than the fit instructors there were doing.  And I wasn’t a huge fan of the workout so I just moved along.

Part 5: Yoga Cooldown

I’m pretty happy with this yoga workout. The variations and whatnot were really good.  It was a cooldown but it still had a good bit of work involved.  Plus, the instructor is one of the best I’ve tried out. I didn’t really have to watch her, provided you have a general knowledge of what bench pose, warrior 1 and warrior 2 is.

Since I cut a little off of the Part 4.  The whole thing took me about 45 minutes to do. Pretty efficient total body workout.

I had planned to get another workout in on Saturday night or Sunday evening but I wasn’t feeling well on Saturday night so I skipped it instead. Sleep was a little more important.

That was my workout week! I’m all better now. Just a little bug that hit me for an evening apparently.

Before I go, here’s a little workout inspiration:

Happy Monday! 🙂