Workout Round-up: Working Back up to Par

I can finally say that I’m somewhat pleased with how these past two weeks went. I wanted to get workouts in and I worked hard to even find just like 10 to 15 minutes rather than not doing anything at all. I did three workouts in the first week and only two in the second. The last one before done right before this post goes up, but that is because I insisted on getting the minimum two I want to do. Its just making the effort to get it done and when I do accomplish that goal, it makes me happy.

 

Monday: Short Zumba Session

DreamHack coverage wrap-up took longer than anticipated on Monday following. Its usually the case with fatigue just hitting hard but I wanted to get in a workout so I ended up doing a short one at 11:45pm. Not optimal as it cuts into sleeping time but a 10 minute session is better than nothing, right?

Thursday:  Weights & Yoga

I have the worst back muscles ever so I figured out that I’ll do that and it was fairly challenging. Then I went on to do  yoga that I haven’t done in a good few months (if not an entire year). Let me tell you that the side planks were so painful. I guess its time to work out the abs more.

Sunday: Hiking

Location: Reserve Naturelle des Montagnes Vertes

Trail: Etang/Decouverte

Distance: 9km

You can check out the details of the hike HERE. Its our first hike after my husband whole health debacle scare. We’re hoping to get another hike in but we are still waiting on some results and also on medication to hopefully fix the issue. We’re still keeping it rather gentle.

Wednesday: Zumba

Nothing like a session of Zumba to keep things happy and light. The week was fairly ridiculous and stupid on all levels so my stress level was really high. Zumba is my go-to destressing thing.

Sunday: Calisthenics/Weight Training

A final workout before we wrap up this week! I asked my husband who helps me out with figuring out workout stuff a lot to just give me different sets to do. This is what he came up with it.

3 rounds of each set

Set 1
Push ups x12
Bent Over Rows – 5lbs each hand x20

Set 2 (15 reps)
Overhead Extensions
Bicep Curls

Set 3 (12 reps) – 5lbs each hand
Lateral Raises (dropped in 3rd round)
Front Raise
Reverse Flies

Set 4 (15 reps)
Squats

Survived that one! Lateral raises are my death usually so it wasn’t surprising that my shoulder starting to hurt so I stopped that in the 3rd round and just did front raises and reverse flies (is that how you spell it?). Either way, it felt good to get back to weight training and slight calisthenics.

That wraps up these last two weeks!
Goals for the next two weeks? Get in some ab workouts. 
Maybe go for a jog if it doesn’t get really cold.
Keep up the 2 workouts minimum per week!

Unboxing: FabFitFun Summer 2016

Three months went by so fast! We’re here with summer edition of 2016 FabFitFun!

If the Winter 2015 and Spring 2016 wasn’t enough to keep me on board, I have no idea what would. Summer is around the corner and I know two products in the box already. At least I know one for sure because we had a choice of colors. Other than that, lets jump right into the unboxing! 🙂

Unfortunately for this time, I only kept the overview of the Unboxing video. There was some issues with the beginning that would be too much to edit. However, I did round everything in the box up in pictures as well!

FabFitFun [Summer 2016]

FabFitFun Everday Beach Waves Spray

I’m not much of a beach girl. Its also the fact that there are beaches around here but I never really know which are the good ones. I guess I prefer waterparks. Plus, my place has a pool that my husband puts a ton of effort to start up every year that it just doesn’t justify it. But I do like to sit around the pool and read so this spray to condition and protect hair is pretty cool. I’m eager to try it out because that also means the weather is fantastic and awesome!

Stemulation Daily Micro Derm Scrub

I’ve never heard of Stemulation before and to be honest, I haven’t found an exfoliating scrub that works well with my skin except for the one from Vichy products. This is a gentle exfoliating cleanser for face and body to remove dull skin cells. I’m going to give it a go and see how that works.

Summer & Rose Yoga Towel (Dream Big)

One of the choices we got to pick. I haven’t unwrapped mine but I believe it was Dream Big that is with this microfiber Yoga towel. This is extremely useful for me especially because yoga becomes a huge part of my life along with being more active during summer. Actually, all year round I try to sneak in a session here and there. Its been a while though. However, its time to get back to it. It works wonder for stress and clears my mind a lot. Plus, I’m not really flexible so its challenging and I like being challenged. 🙂

Osea Atmosphere Protection Cream

I’ve never heard of atmosphere protection cream but I think its a brilliant idea. This one can be used as an invisible base before makeup or mixed with foundation. However, it is a moisturizer that protects skin from dehydration and damage. I like that a lot! Such a useful product for the summer!

Passport to Beauty Gpyset Luminous Lips

Lip gloss right here! I don’t use gloss a lot but rather just chapsticks if I want to ease the chapped lips. However, its something to try out. This one came in three shades. Mine is called Flower Child and its packed with Vitamin E and says in the booklet that its rich in hydration and antioxidants. That sounds pretty awesome! 🙂

Betchsicles Ice Pop Molds

Its the summer! I always think about making popsicles. Last year, I didn’t end up doing it but this year, I have a ton of ideas and I just got a lot of the ingredients. I already have some popsicles molds which I could use but I can always use more and make more variety! Plus, these ones are champagnes shaped. How cool is that?

Trina Turk Canvas Tote [Seas The Day]

The other product we got to choose. I like the shade of blue they used for this one and its pretty neat as a play on words for “Seas the Day”. Perfect for a day out with friends and just heading out to parties or whatnot.

Bonus: Burt’s Bees BB Cream

I’ve never explored the world of BB Creams much. I did get one once and never ended up using it because I had that eye infection a few years back that wouldn’t go away. This is a sponsored product and some other people got the cleansing oil. I think this is pretty nifty especially because I never knew Burt’s Bee made this product.

Compeed Instant Blister Relief

My guess is this is also a sponsored product because there wasn’t a mention in the booklet. However, this is a great thing just because summer means sandals and at times, I get blisters from it and instant relief sounds like a sweet solution.

Here’s the unboxing wrap-up!

Overall…FabFitFun Summer 2016 box was full of fun goodies. Yet again, I learned about a ton of products I normally would not encounter. There’s a ton of stuff for just hanging out in the sun and skin care and those are fave things to do. Its all really useful and that is a plus. I’m most excited to try out the Osea atmosphere protection cream and really happy about the microfiber yoga towel and absolutely in love with the tote bag.

What product peaks your interest in this unboxing?

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 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! 🙂

Reviving an Old Segment: Weekly Workouts!

I took a little bit of time to get this revived mostly because when I do these segments its really to get myself back on track.  Its been hard to even find an ounce of time and energy to.  The last few weeks I’ve managed to get 2 workouts in.  I believe that I’ve gotten myself back into the state of mind.

Winter is coming around.  Holidays are around the corner.  And a whole lot of sitting inside at home is going to happen since outdoors activities happen once the weather gets cooler and colder.

For a reviving workout, I’ll share a few workouts that I may have already shared but some of you are new here, so it’ll be fresh 🙂

I won’t be doing everyday updates on the weekly but rather just workouts I’ve done. Or some things I join in: campaigns or whatnot.

Its been a few weeks of sporadic working out and I’ve actually revisited a few workouts and tried some new ones. Lets get moving! 🙂

1) Pop Sugar’s 30 minutes Capoeira Workout

2) Pop Sugar’s Do-Anywhere Circuit

 

3) Tribesports: The Core Workout

 

4) Pop Sugar Yoga Workout

5) Pop Sugar Fire Up the Core Circuit Workout

I think 5 is enough. Right now, most of these are repeat training ones.  I love the Capoeira one but I always get really close to injuring my shoulder so I know that I need to work on that.  Strengthening my hamstrings and my shoulders are a must at this stage.

I’m looking at some 30 day challenges right now but can’t decide which yet.  I need to get back into the Tribesports community and to get back on track with this working out thing 🙂 So far, I’m balancing between body weights, strength training (with weights), adding some cardio and yoga to balance it all out.  Most of my cardio is from either jogging in place or playing DDR (on higher intensity).  As you can see, PopSugar is my new fave workout site.  It has so many challenging but refreshing workouts.  I hold true that I love the circuit workouts.  Those ones are fantastic: intense and the next day, your body tells you that it was a good one.

I’m excited to get back into it.  Consider this a pre-workout segment.  The official first week is right now. Another update on Sunday or Monday  (hopefully, regularly)! 🙂

Week 32&33: Sore is the new Sexy!

I’m really enjoying updating everyone with my workouts on biweekly basis, only its been so uneventful on the workout front.  As much as I hate using the excuse of having no time, my life has been consumed with work and cleaning, prepping for the new season, returning my room to a habitable state.  That, in itself is a mega workout. I think all the dust and allergies might be causing my brain to forget some workouts but here are the ones that I do remember.  Even though it wasn’t a lot, they were all super intense and crazy awesome.  I’m brainwashing myself after everyone that sore is the new sexy because thats how I feel the following days…

First up is a repeat workout that I like a lot called No Excuses Workout from PopSugar Fitness.  I especially like to do this one when I have skipped a few days to motivate myself.

Circuit one has to be the hardest to complete as always.  This time around, I did the push-ups with the full form and not modified.  If you have back problems, Superman move is the BEST! When I pulled out of the one minute from Superman, my entire spine adjusted itself.  It felt like my chiropractor just worked her magic. 🙂 Its going to be intense but its totally awesome!

When in doubt, I always go for some yoga.  It helps me relieve a truckload of stress and calms my mind so that I can get back to full productivity.  Fitsugar came out with a workout video for something called TMAC Flow. Its some type of modified intense yoga.  This routine takes only 10 minutes and it felt all kinds of great 🙂

But goodness, can someone please give me some flexibility? More yoga should be the solution, right?

I definitely did take that as a sign this past weekend when I did frequent yoga moves to relieve the hip pain.  Isn’t it just awesome being a girl? Monthly hip pains, cramps, migraines…I get those in extra strong dosages all the time but its even worse when I’m mega stressed.  If you suffer from this horrible fate as I do, maybe you’d like to try these moves at this link HERE 🙂

Final workout I’d like to share is the highlight of this week.  A workout to train for the zombie apocalypse 🙂 There was a few ones I was looking at for the Run For Your Lives Campaign at Tribesports but since its been raining a lot the last few days, the whole going to the playground to help with the equipment I lacked at home was not able to be done.  I ended up doing the Zombie Survival Under Siege Workout which is completely body weights.

30 minutes of doing these sets of exercises as many rounds as you can.  I managed to do 2.5 rounds.  My last half round ended at the 30 second side plank.  This workout kicked my butt.  Plus, I realized that walking lunges are at least 10 times harder than alternating lunges.  Talk about burning in my legs…that did the job right away and my legs still feel a bit sore from this workout 2 days ago.

*Takes a deep breath* Just remember this:

My goodness, am I feeling ever sexy 😉

Lets hope the next two weeks, I’ll get some more sexiness in. But then, I’ll be starting a new 30 day challenge for November so we’ll see if the next few days I can squeeze in some workouts!

Week 18/19: Vacation and Sizzling Heat!

Lets start by Week 18! I pretty much took off that week mostly because I was on the road and well, I pulled something in my shoulder and my tricep at the same time and it got worse during the vacation.  I had to skip out on that Sunday’s 2km race.  I did try to do some of the Beach Yoga routine but that didn’t work too well.  I did do a whole lot of stretching and walking around for shopping at Kittery outlets and sightseeing!

Now, my arm is getting a bit better so this week, I need to get to working out! This week I’m taking a break from Tone It Up though and I’m going to research and freestyle Week 19 🙂

MONDAY

My arm was a lot better today.  I did want to workout but my boyfriend advised me that since its just the first day it felt better, I should give it one more day to rest up just to not strain it again.  Reasonable and logical, so I did that!

TUESDAY

I started up my workout a bit late tonight but I had an idea of which ones I wanted to choose from.  In the end, I chose to do this one!

I only did it once through, mostly because my arm wasn’t really up to it yet.  I felt like it was starting to be too much so I was a probably a better choice to stop.  I’ve never been one to be good at normal burpees.  I can do about 15 normal burpees before I need a break but somehow these side burpees were crazy hard and well, I guess because I had to do them on both side, I did do 10 on each side before I started feeling not too good so I kept those at 10 reps (each side)  even on the way down the ladder.  One of these took my 20ish minutes to do.  I had to test run a few Turkish get-ups before I proceeded to the actual workout so that took a little more time. This was an awesome workout.  I look forward to the near future (hopefully) when I can do it 2 times! 🙂

At night, after a nice shower, before bed I did this Sweet Dreams Yoga Sequence from Fit Sugar. I can tell you that I slept like a baby.  I didn’t even want to get up the next morning.

Wednesday

My monthly chiro session today after work! I need it so bad! My back and shoulders have been killing me.  Even my neck started off getting some pain too.  The yoga I started doing was helping but I needed some more routines.  After chiro, I never push too hard so I decided to do some Yoga.  I chose try these Yoga Poses to get rid of back fat which you can find HERE.  Lots of balancing involved and some were pretty intense!

Thursday

I took today off.  Low energy and plus, yesterday’s yoga moves was a bit intense and I felt it.  So I decided it was wise to take a little break.

Friday

Summer cold kicking in by the time I got home.  It wasn’t too bad until insomnia hit me at night.

Saturday

After sleeping 3 hours, it didn’t help my cold at all.  I woke up feeling pretty much like absolute rubbish with cough and sneezing.  I cancelled all activities and stayed in to wait for the Internet installation guy to come upgrade my Internet.  Might I say, as I’m typing this the network is going all crazy.  I did feel like I needed to try to sweat it out and energize myself before, so I did this little 5 minute workout from FitSugar.

I did energize me! I can tell you that much.  For the most part, I tried cough meds all day to keep myself all good and well.  Very effective! I would definitely recommend to do it when you are full on healthy.  I might even consider it as a Saturday morning workout before a morning jog or something 😉

Sunday

That weekend workout plan went down the drain the moment I woke up with a massive sore throat.  It was no joke.  I wanted to rip my throat out of my body and I tried everything the moment I woke up: warm water, rinsing my mouth with salt water, sleeping.  Eventually I woke up, ate a bit, drank lemon honey water and then it helped a lot more.  Slept some more and drank about 10 glasses of water just in the morning and went to get rid of toxins a whole lot.  That was my Sunday. Which is also why I didn’t do my usual personal post for Sunday.  Felt like I should mention it here, I was really determined to get rid of this damn cold for the next day!  I did look up some Yoga moves to help with my congestion and did a few of them.  You can find them right HERE! It did help a little bit…

OVERALL…This week was all new workouts! If you want something intense, I recommend the Double Ladder Workout.  If you want to relax, try the Sweet Dreams Yoga Sequence before bed.  If you want something to wake you up at the start of the day before you take a shower, do the 5 minute Energizing Workout and you will be ready to charge through the day 😉

 This past week was not productive at all.  I did get 3 days of workouts in, even though they were light workouts.  The effort was there and I wanted to but with a lingering tricep pain at the beginning of the week and then my summer cold knocking me down, it was the best I could do. At least after a full day of running around and waiting to see a doctor at a walk-in clinic today, I have been given antibiotics and ear drops to counter an ear infection. As this post goes up, I am going to take a nap and rest up to let my body heal.

Hope everyone had a great start of the week! : Stay healthy!