Workout Roundup: Game Plan (slightly) in Motion

Its time for the next workout roundup everyone.

I said that I’d have a gameplan to get back into the working out habit. We’ll just have to see how it goes. To be honest, I’m actually approaching this segment a little different this time so I have no idea what happens after this point as the working out hasn’t happened yet. You’ll be as surprised as me when we get to how much (or how little) that I’ve worked.

Week 1

Wednesday: Zumba

Sunday: Weight Training

Getting in a late evening workout does feel good. While I was about to do another Zumba session, I remembered my game plan and went with doing some weights/body weights while pairing up two fairly short workouts together but compliment each other well as it works the back muscles and the abs. These are my problematic areas so its my weakest and the most strenuous which is also why I don’t want to jump right back with something really tough.

Week 2

Saturday: Light Calisthenics

Crunches 20 reps x3
Squats 20 reps x3
Jumping Jacks 50 reps x3

 A light workout since I was having a hard time so to make sure that I could at least do a little something, I went with some quick calisthenics to just feel good about staying active.

Sunday: Heavy Chores

Its not exactly a workout session however, I helped out with putting up a car shelter for my mom and then did a bunch of garden work to get rid of the containers full of heavy wet soil to finish up the winter prep work to close the garden. Its not exactly a workout but they were both very active. It included a lot of walking and lifting and moving about that I actually had some muscle pain afterwards so I decided to pass up on any further workout.

That’s it for these two weeks of workout!
Not perfect but some things just didn’t work out in week 2 so I worked with what I could!

Workout Round-up: Making Things Work (as best as I can)

Welcome to a late workout recap for the last two weeks. Things didn’t quite work as I was caught up my black hole of TV series and then other projects and social experiments and doing everything other than working out. Week 2 did have some great improvement. Film festival season so expect a lot of walking logged for part of next recap also.

WEEK 1

Wednesday: Zumba

WEEK 2

Tuesday: Walking

It was a busy week so the only thing that I managed to kick off the week was doing some walking. It wasn’t a whole lot but the day took me for a few errands which rounded to about 5 kilometers. Its not a huge amount but its still something. I was speed-walking most of the distance.

Wednesday: Weights & Calisthenics

3 rounds each

Bicep Curls (15 reps @ 5lbs each hand)
Squats (20 reps)
Tricep Extensions (15 reps @5lbs)
Pushups (15 reps)

Friday/Saturday/Sunday: Festival and Walking

Friday: 6km total

Saturday: 2.5km total

Sunday: 2.2km total

This wraps up these past two weeks.
It might seem like I didn’t really do much but to be fair, I do a lot of walking for this festival as the theatres are well distanced from each other and I chose the films by movie preference and not theatre location.

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!

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. 🙂

Workout Roundup: A month later….

I think with this one done, we’re pretty much all caught up with this one month Fantasia break and getting things back on track to be right back to normal.

Clarification #1: I may not have updated it here but I didn’t completely turn into a slob.

Between Fantasia Festival and work, I actually did get some working out done. I did a weekly Zumba session of 30 minutes whenever I had time to slot it in. While I don’t remember the list of songs or the length of the whole thing, it was my attempt to keep on working out at the very least, especially since there was a wedding at the beginning of August to attend. However, working out may have decreased but we did step into the direction of eating healthier. So progress in general.

Clarification #2: Fantasia is a pretty physical activity!

The last clarification is that while Fantasia Film Festival as it says is really watching movies. The pre movie stuff includes speed walking almost every day of the event from work in Old Montreal to Concordia University to make sure that I got there in time to get in the movie. With that said, my speed walking time improved crazily. The cardio I put in was fascinating as I speed walked 30 minutes almost every day and then had to do the same after the movies to catch the bus back home. That’s an hour of some intense walking pace. Fun stuff…especially by the last few days of the episode when I was running on like 4 hours of sleep or something. Then we have the waiting around part which involves a lot of standing. I kid you not..my calves were cramping for the entire week after the festival ended.

With that said! Things have calmed down and we’re back to business and workout round-ups are resuming now. I might put them back to biweekly round-ups as I work through slotting in more workout sessions.

Let’s start on last Sunday..because well, that was when I got back into the determined mind set to get back into the groove of working out more than once a week.

Sunday: Pool Workout

The weather is no longer murderously hot so the pool was on the cool side but still, I wanted to head in to destress and workout. Water has a cool and calming effect and boy, did I need it!

Moves picked up a combination of Popsugar Fitness Pool Workout Videos.

Here’s what I did:

• Jog (in-pool) 5 laps
• Core Rotation (30 reps each side alternating)
• Jump with Knee Tucks (40 reps)
• Shuffle
• Superman Kicks (30 seconds)
• Jog 5 laps
• Straight Leg Kick (30 reps each side alternating)
• Core Rotation (30 reps each side alternating)
• Jump with Knee Tucks (40 Reps)
• Superman Kicks (30 seconds)
• Breaststroke (5 laps)
• Freestyle Swimming

Monday: Zumba

Sunday: Weight Training

There you go! That’s how the week went down!

Two workouts is pretty decent for myself honestly. This week was a little rough for our home so, I’m fairly happy that I still managed to do this. Honestly, that is what I’m hoping to achieve on a weekly basis: a cardio workout and a weight training. Cardio can be something like Zumba or running but it can also be a long walk. So we’ll see what I come up with. Its honestly finding the motivation to keep going on and just staying active. Eventually, I’ll move it to three times a week. Especially with hiking in our plans, I’m hoping that things will be good once things once again settle down because apparently the theme of 2018 is not a moment of nothing.

Workout Round-up: Week 9 &10

I’m going to be reasonable now and say that from now on, I might be changing this to biweekly. Weekly commitments are a little intense. Even biweekly sometimes gets a little crazy, mostly because as much as I want intense workout schedules, its actually proving to be more stressful than it being a healthy change in my life. So I’m doing mostly workouts on day offs from work. During the week, I tend to do a lot more walking and well, with Fantasia season, its a lot of standing also.

I think right now, I have some great routine set with Zumba and pool workouts. Honestly, I know it sounds crazy but these two things combined actually do quite well plus they put me in a fairly happy place even when I’m dying of fatigue to push a little more.

Week 9

Monday

We opened our pool finally so I’m super happy to get back on a back to back day following off last week’s Sunday pool workout with a little of the same. I did do an extra round here from the day before.

To be fair, I didn’t write it here as workouts but Friday, Saturday and Sunday was Montreal Comiccon. I spent 5 hours on Friday, 6 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday pretty much walking and standing around a lot covering the event with the exception of four 45 minute conferences. Its one of the main reasons why I kind of took it easy during the week to kind of rest up for the intense weekend.

Week 10

Saturday – Zumba & Freestyle Pool Exercises

Pool exercises: Knee Tucks, Shuffle, Breaststroke, In-pool jogging

As I thought back to the past week of recuperation and trying to get a workout in, I doubled down on the Saturday workout with a longer Zumba routine than usual and put in a few more routines that I had to learn so it was harder as it switch things up. After that sweaty cardio session, because we’ve just been stuck back into a heat wave, I went into the pool to cool down but also get some freestyle pool exercises inspired from the pool workout above. I love doing a few rounds of 30 reps for knee tucks and then doing shuffles in between. I did a lot of jogging around the pool and also worked in some swimming with practicing the worst form I have which is breaststroke so I had to focus a lot on the form and getting that slow and steady but effective.

Sunday – Zumba & Pool Workout

Pool Workout (2 rounds)

Another hot day over here in Montreal! I took the time to do a normal set of Zumba workout, this time with a few more familiar routines. I did research a pool workout and this time decided to focus on abs and core. It was a 2 rounds cycle. Because my pool is different from the one here, the crunches were a little harder so I fell for a few more reps and longer times for the other workouts while adding in some knee tucks at 30 reps. I still did some cardio with jogging and again, some more swimming.

Overall, a lot of the same but I was pleased with just getting that bit in.
I did have some walking around here and there to get from one spot to the next for the events, just didn’t bother to write them in.
You should expect that Zumba and Pool workouts (hopefully find more workout options) to be the summer focus.
If the weather cools down a little bit more, I will go back to getting in some jogging time, probably in August.

With that said, biweekly recaps is the new structure so I’ll see you with an update in 2 weeks! 🙂

Weekly Workout Roundup – Week 7 & 8

Week 7

Week 7 was quite the fail but I did manage to get one workout in on Sunday. So I’m going to just cut to the chase and talk about that!  Its time for a Sunday Zumba workout!

Week 8

We are starting fresh this week and I vow that now that everything is pretty much done, I’m going to get back on track.

Monday

Walk – moderate speed
Distance: 3.7km
Time: 40 minutes

Saturday

• 2 Hour Gardening (a lot of squatting..)
• 1.5 km moderate walking (evening walk)

Sunday

Our pool is finally open and today is literally 42C with the humidex and for those who don’t know, we rig up an A/C unit in our bedroom to cool down the house with our fan. Surprisingly with the new roof which is white to repel the heat, it helps to keep the house pretty cool. However, no better time to go hang out in the pool that my husband finally got to work after last year’s crazy algae problem. We spent almost an hour in there and of course, it wouldn’t be right to not own up to my promise that if he got the pool open again that I’d do an extra lot of pool workouts.

I did a variation of this one about 2 to 3 times depending on which moves. It did definitely give my obliques the most workout. Refreshing and fun. I actually even did some swimming but its hard to really quantify how much of swimming it did. We didn’t sit around so we were just moving about a lot. Anyways, I love pool workouts because my shoulder and knee joints sometimes take the zumba and the weights really badly so this helps a lot. I’m hoping to find some more exercises to keep some variety going.

That’s it for the last two weeks!
Sorry for combining both together but Week 7 was kind of a disaster so it was just easier to do it this way!

Weekly Workout Recap – Week 6: Slowly Back on Track

Suffice to say that things were not doing too good in the last two weeks. Last week in particular only managed to get in a Sunday workout. Still, one workout is better than none. I do want to keep at least a 3 workout thing in whatever form I can manage. With that said, there was a lot of creativity and things working out to make it happen.

Let’s just check it out!

Monday & Tuesday

The first two days of the week was the overwhelming crazy E3 coming to an end. With that said, it included a lot of coming right home to work on drafts and getting in the recap posts over to That Moment In. We were plagued with time zone differences as usual as well as just being bombarded with all kinds of news. Don’t get me wrong, I love every bit of it but just not so easy to get in workouts.

Wednesday

A day of unexpected events took its turn for Wednesday. Tuesday’s recording wasn’t able to be done so we did another recording after work. BUT..it was not a rest day. I had planned to go for a long walk at lunch and with an unexpected power outage at the office for an hour, I ended up having an earlier lunch and doubling the time I intended to go for a walk.

Distance: 3.3 km – moderate walking

Thursday

It was a busier day at work with lots of little tidbits to get taken care of. Ended up not getting any workout done.

Friday

Another walking day scheduled in during lunch time.

Distance: 2.5km
Time: 30 mins
Moderate speed

Saturday

Zumba time today! I’ve decided to diverge away from the Tone It Up workouts as they were making it slightly routine and boring so I wanted to change it up with cardio. I can’t seem to find time to go out to run and my area has recently had a uncaught kidnapper/predator in the neighborhood so the city also advises against it. Its why I like Zumba as it raises my spirit and energy, a decent amount of challenge and is a full body cardio workout. Some repeats from last week but overall, some routines I just randomized on my Zumba playlist on Youtube.

Sunday

Father’s Day ended up with family visits and getting other things done. You’ll read about in the next Weekly Adventures. I did do a little gardening today. Although, I can’t say it was particularly exercising, especially since most of my day was spent E3 edits for Game Warp for next week.

Overall…

I’m slowly making the best of a busy situation. I got some Zumba in and a lot more walking than I usually did which was my form of exercising. I have been having some knee pains so the running has been taken off for a little bit until I get some running tape or whatever you call it. Things should slow down next week so I’m going to try to get back to weights, more Zumba and hopefully some jogging/walking sessions.

Weekly Workout Recap-Week 5: The (almost) Week Off

It happens to everyone, that week off that is simply inevitable.

Week 5 was all about no workout. It had many reasons. Last week’s hike was the reason for Monday not happening as I always need a rest day to not strain my knees more. Then Tuesday, my lady problems started so cramps hit me all the way into Wednesday. Yoga would have been an option bu then Thursday came the reality of the house having absolutely no groceries left so I was already making a choice between eating one better meal and one not so good one which doesn’t work so great in the big picture so I had to do that. Then, Friday was a pre-scheduled fun day to check out the Grand Prix festivities in town and came home to my husband catching an odd bug so it was scampering to go get him meds and make sure he was okay with everything. The weekend hit and it was all about E3 and chiro and other errands that I don’t have to take care of during the week to the various reasons above.

There are no excuses to not working out. Trust me when I say that things sometimes just don’t happen. I did however, get in a lot of extra walking time to kind of make up for the lack of workout. I took walks during lunch and then took walks to run errands downtown before going home. Grand Prix Friday also had a lot of walking around which was great. There are some wins in these situations and to make the best of what I have to do and what just can’t be done.

I debated to not put up the post but I want to stay accountable and honest about this workout journey because I am serious about getting back on track. Plus, I’ve been getting a lot of motivation to do the 5K run in Montreal in September which I have been thinking about lately.

With that said, today was when I put my foot down and decided to make some time between everything and waiting for the E3 Xbox press conference to start to make up my own cardio stuff by putting together by doing some Zumba from Youtube. Here are the vids below!

Here’s the Sunday workout, everyone! Give it a go if you want! Its like exercising and partying all at the same time!
The exact boost I needed!

For now, Xbox E3 has now started so back to Game Warp duty! Have a fantastic Sunday!

My Weekly Adventures #62 I’m 32!

Welcome back to this edition of My Weekly Adventures!

This post comes a little later than usual. To be honest, I was just taking it easy since I took today off to relax and enjoy my birthday. I am getting older and this past week has been busy with new project launch and lots of catch up on stuff to be more on track and organized. Its been an uphill trek after being functional again a few weeks ago with the new PC. Luckily things are going very well now and I’m hoping it will go that way. Although, the last few days, the stats were absolutely meh but after so many years of doing this, I love just sharing what a little bit of everything so the stats don’t bother me anymore. Maybe its the enlightenment of getting a little older. 😉

This is going to be a really short one since there honestly isn’t much to recap. I was looking back and realized that the last two weeks didn’t have much going on. I debated about posting today but hey, why not! A little bit of something is better than nothing, right?

Getting Ready For Running Season…Very Slowly

The snow is melting away in our yard and I can see the tulips starting to come out and the strawberries are sprouting some new leaves as well as some other plants here and there. Which means that as the weather gets a little more stable and mild, I’m getting back to running season. I haven’t ran in a year. In fact, working out has been so sparse in the past year and a half that I really need to get back on track to just basic exercises. With that said, I started scheduling in little improvise workout programs for myself at home, just like 30  minutes of Zumba routines from Youtube 2 times a week. Its going okay…can’t say that I’ve been incredibly disciplined but working out is definitely always in the back of my mind and I make a solid effort to get even 20 minutes in when I have the time.

I’m hoping to start actually running somewhere like mid to late April depending on how much overtime I have at work and how that affects my own calendar.

The Husband’s Birthday Weekend

My husband, better known now as a contributing factor of Game Warp as Stunt Gamer had his birthday last weekend. Yes, our birthdays are a week apart. You haven’t heard the weirdest part yet when it comes to coincidences and our families other birthdays. Either way, for his birthday weekend, he got to relax like crazy and over the Saturday and Sunday, I made it a full day of meals pretty much, there was a brunch, a dinner and a birthday dessert. I posted last week about the dinner HERE. And well, above are the cupcakes (because the cake version of this would be crazy) that I made for him. It was a Chocolate Cupcake with Nutella Filling topped with cupcake icing and a Ferrerro Rocher.

I’ll share the next two recipes very soon. We also went to go see Tomb Raider for his birthday and while the theatre experience has me really angry, the movie itself was pretty fun. I’ll have that review going up very soon as well. Lots of upcoming stuff, right?

New Project: Movies & Tea Podcast

If you missed it this week, my awesome Game Warp co-host Elwood and I started up a new podcast and the debut episod went live this week. We apparently hate free time. Thats our running joke. Between us, we have too many projects and who are we kidding…we love it! Movies & Tea sparks from the idea of each season looking at a different director and their movies. Of course, some will have more than enough movies but we will pick a selection or batch together a few so that the season will be about 6 to 8 episodes long. Right now, we are looking at releasing on a biweekly or once every three weeks or something. We are pretty flexible with the schedule. This is a fun and casual project since we love talking about films off air during production meetings and stuff.

The kick-off director is Paul W.S. Anderson and this episode looks at his directorial debut full length feature, Shopping.

You can follow us over at the blog where you can catch all the episodes HERE.
Like us on the Facebook page HERE.
Thanks for listening!

Turning 32!

View this post on Instagram

Spending my #birthday at the #DreamworksAnimation #exhibit at @canmushistory #HistoryMuseum

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on Mar 31, 2018 at 12:11pm PDT

How about that? Time sure does fly and I’m 32! Honestly, I don’t really feel that different. If anything, with all the projects going on, its making me feel very energetic and youthful like never before. I kind of have to be since it is the gaming scene and embracing new stuff and new game ideas and same goes for the movie industry and whatnot. I feel like the past year, I’ve grown a lot as a blogger and podcaster among many other stuff that I love to do. With that said, I usually don’t like to make a big deal of my birthday so its just been a relaxing day with my husband. We headed for a little day trip out to check out the Dreamworks Animation Exhibit in the Canadian Museum of History before it ends next weekend. Its a ton of fun since other than that exhibit, there’s some permanent ones there about the full Canadian history and its like 4 floors of stuff to look at and its paired with the Children’s Museum as well as includes a Dreamworks film which we missed since we got there too late and it was a decision between seeing exhibits or seeing the movie and just one exhibit. Plus, the movie was Shrek 4 and I stopped watching Shrek after the 2nd one so it wasn’t particularly intriguing. With that said, the exhibit was very unique and I loved seeing the art work and all the sketches and music and more. Super cool stuff.

No worries! I’ll do a coverage/recap post some time next week. More upcoming…

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
Hopefully, I’ll be reporting back with some more exercise progress next time (if work hasn’t drained me).
You already know whats upcoming for the next week or two with all that I talked about up there. 
What have you been up to?