Some Workout Inspiration

Well, today I am feeling SORE! During my workout yesterday I did a few new weight training exercises, but didn’t expect them to make me so achy. It’s funny how that happens sometimes. I also changed things up yesterday by hopping on the treadmill for the first time in a long time. Recently, I haven’t been running at all and the nagging calf injury I’ve mentioned in previous posts has ceased to exist. It took 2 1/2 years to feel completely back to normal, but it’s been feeling so good lately that I stopped wearing my calf compression band during workouts. It’s pretty awesome!

Since I determined that running is the only thing that brings my calf soreness to a head, for the time being I’ve decided to just not run. After all, it’s one type of cardio I actually loathe, and there are so many other forms of exercise that I enjoy. However, since I frequently hike outdoors without an issue, I have no problem with treadmill incline walking workouts. I brought one back into the mix with this half hour routine:

I also wanted to share some motivational [workout] sayings I’ve come across recently:

And with that, I’m off to get ready for a weeknight date with my hubby! We’re seeing Gavin DeGraw and Colbie Caillat in concert at a venue called Humphreys by the Bay. The tickets were one of my birthday gifts from him. 🙂

I hope she sings this:

And he sings this:

“I don’t want to be anything other than what I’ve been trying to be lately. All I have to do is think of me and I have peace of mind. I’m tired of looking ’round rooms wondering what I’ve got to do or who I’m supposed to be. I don’t want to be anything other than me.”

My New Favorite Healthy Living Tool: The Fitbit

For my birthday, I received a fun gift I had wanted — the Fitbit (thanks grandma!).

I first heard about the Fitbit Tracker from one of my girlfriends, who uses hers on a daily basis and loves it. After using it for a week, I’m confident that I’ve learned the ins and outs of the device and can offer a good rundown, so here it goes:

The Gist of it: The Fitbit is a wireless activity tracker about the size of a bluetooth. It can easily be worn in your pocket or clipped onto your waist, which is how I’ve been using it. Ladies, it’s also suggested that the device can be worn in the middle of your bra, though I tried this for about 10 minutes and decided against it. Besides the fact that I could actually feel it clipped on my bra (whereas on your waist, you totally forget it’s there), I thought it’d be kind of weird if I wanted to check my Fitbit in public and then appeared to be feeling my cleavage. 😉

Basically, the device tracks your activity stats throughout the day. It comes with a charger (“home base” they call it) that plugs into your computer, and every time you walk within 15 feet of it with your Fitbit, it automatically syncs your updated activity info. You’re able to log onto the Fitbit website and check out your progress whenever you want.

Features:  

The first thing you see when you log onto the website is stats on how many: steps you’ve taken so far that day, floors you’ve climbed, miles you’ve walked, calories burned and what they call an active score. On the right side, it tells you how much of your goal you’ve accomplished so far that day. For instance, this morning I took this screenshot of my info:

The Fitbit also provides a graph of your activity levels throughout the day. Below is my chart from yesterday, where I note all the major activities that spiked the chart. The smaller increases are things like cooking, casually walking around doing things, showering, etc.

Here are my stats at the completion of what I deemed Sweaty Sunday:

Not too shabby right?! I’m amused by it noting an equivalent of the floors I climbed — as you can see, yesterday I climbed the tallest Sequoia!

Another reason I was interested in getting the Fitbit was for its sleep tracking. I have mild sleep apnea and don’t usually feel well rested when I wake up in the morning, so I was curious to see how many times it would say I wake up during the night.

To get the gadget to start monitoring your sleep, you slip it into the provided wristband and hold the Fitbit button down in order for it to start the timer. When you get up the next day, you hold the button down again to stop the timer and complete its sleep tracking. [I’m sharing this little tidbit with you because it took me a bit to figure out, as the Fitbit comes with no manual. I had to do some Google research on my phone at bedtime the first night to figure out how to work this feature.]

When your Fitbit syncs the next day, you’re able to see your sleep info from the night before. Below is actually the best night of sleep I’ve recorded in the past week. I only woke up 18 times compared to my typical 25-30, WOOHOO!

Another feature that I find really neat is the ability to sync my Fitbit info with the iPhone app I use to log in my daily food intake, MyFitnessPal. I have used this app for awhile and find it useful to monitor my nutrition and to see if I’m lacking somewhere, consuming too many carbs, not getting enough of a certain vitamin and so on. So now, I still log my eats into MyFitnessPal, and then it’s reflected on my Fitbit page. Below is a snippet of yesterday’s info:

I’ve also found that I like using the timer feature on the Fitbit. I’ll click it on before I go for a long walk with Harley, and am able to see how long our walk was and how far we went.

The Fitbit is most accurate as a pedometer and isn’t good for monitoring some of my usual workouts  — such as biking, yoga and weight training. So besides walking or hiking, I still log my workouts into MyFitnessPal. (I do this as accurately as I can by wearing a watch that monitors my heart rate.) Initially, I thought the device would be able to monitor my heart rate during exercise. However, once I add the workout to MyFitnessPal, it syncs with my Fitbit info and adjusts accordingly.

So far, I’m really enjoying my Fitbit and the info it provides me with. Even though I workout and go for long walks with my dog on a daily basis, this gadget motivates me to get up and move as often and as much as I can. If you’re looking for a tool to help you step up your game in living healthily, I totally recommend getting a Fitbit!

One Sweaty Sunday

Well, another weekend is coming to a close. As always, the past few days have gone by quickly!

Lately it’s been warmer than usual in San Diego. 90 degrees and hotter is typical for a lot of places in the summer, but it feels pretty toasty here since I’m used to it constantly being my ideal temp – 75! I started off my Sunday sweating outdoors when I took Harley for a long walk to burn off some of her crazy puppy energy. She’s been really feeling the heat and tuckering out quickly, and by the end of our walk around the neighborhood trail, her tongue was out and she was ready to relax in the AC.

When we got home, I wanted to exercise and I did 2 workouts from Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred DVD. Her routines are no joke! About half an hour into it, Adam walked into the house and said, “Wow, you’re really sweating!” Why yes, yes I am. Mission accomplished! 🙂

Post living room workout, Adam and I headed to La Jolla for an afternoon at the beach. We went to a good surfing spot (he surfs, me not so much) I had never been to before, which was in a gorgeous area with elaborate homes and cliffs that people were parasailing near — hence the photo above. It was a nice hike from our car down to the beach, and my glutes definitely got a workout heading back up.

Usually on the beach in San Diego it feels nice and breezy, but today I was feeling hot. It was one of the rare occasions when I took a dip in the Pacific to cool off!

Moving onto food, this evening’s dinner was pasta primavera, a dish I enjoy making when I want to clear out any veggies from my kitchen that are nearing the end of their prime:

When throwing together a pasta primavera meal, you have a lot of choices as to what you feel like including.  Here are the basic guidelines I always follow:

#1 – Pick your veggies. For me tonight, this included broccoli and zucchini that were nearing their end, cherry tomatoes, red bell pepper, and spinach, along with some fresh basil to give it some pizazz. I usually adopt an “everything but the kitchen sink” mentality and include any veggies I have around.

#2 – Pick your pasta. Angel hair, penne, elbows, spaghetti, rigatoni… the possibilities are endless! Tonight I used whole grain farfalle.

#3 – Boil a pot of salted water and cook pasta according to directions. Meanwhile, chop all your veggies into bite sized pieces.

#4- Choose a sautéing liquid. To keep the calorie count low, I used white cooking wine. You can also opt to use any kind of oil or broth. Heat a bit of the liquid up, along with a few cloves of minced garlic (optional).  Saute veggies until softened, adding liquid in every so often once it absorbs.

#5 – Combine veggies and cooked pasta.

#6 – Season with whatever you wish — I added Italian seasoning and mixed up salt and pepper. Add some flavor with either a bit of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and/or butter, and combine well.

#7 – Optional: Sprinkle a bit of grated cheese on top for added flavor.

It makes for an easy breezy, healthy and yummy meal!

I’m off to watch tonight’s episode of True Blood, so I’ll leave you with an awesome quote I recently came across:

Wake Up (Your Body) Call

“To have a friend and be a friend is what makes life worthwhile.”

Fun fact: Today is National Girlfriends’ Day. Shout out to my amazing girlfriends, love you ladies!

I often like to start off my days with some movement. Sometimes it’s just a few yoga poses (I talked about my favorite ones here), other times I take Harley for a nice long walk. And then there are days when I like to get sweaty first thing in the morning. Today was one of those days, so I did the following easy breezy workout. The idea is to do a very quick cardio routine, with your heart rate up the whole time. With some quick stretching immediately following, it’ll take around 15 minutes and is a nice way to get moving before heading to work, class, or wherever your day takes you.

Whenever I hear someone say they “don’t have time” to exercise, I think of how doable it is to spend (at least) 20 minutes working out on most days, doing simple routines like this. If I have a super busy day ahead of me, I know that a short workout is always better than no workout at all! Remember, every little bit counts when it comes to your health.

All About the Legs: Today’s Circuit Workout

Remember in yesterday’s post I mentioned having a great workout? Yeaaaa… this morning I woke up super sore. The kind of sore when putting on a seatbelt seems like a difficult task (no joke). I really didn’t want to skip exercising today, but also knew that I was limited by serious muscle soreness. So what’s a girl to do? Get her butt to the gym for a strictly lower body workout!

Here’s how this routine works:

• Start off with a 5 minute warm-up.
• In between rounds, do 5 minutes of cardio of your choice (I cycled).
• I used 12 lb dumbbells. Adjust your weight based on your strength level.
• When doing exercises 1 side at a time, right rep + left rep = 1 total rep
• This workout took me a bit shy of an hour to complete.

Some explanations of exercises from around the Web:

• Static Reverse Lunges (shown without use of a step)
• Donkey Kicks
• Jumping lunges
• Squirm Crunches
• Plie Squats

Hope I can move tomorrow 😉

Good night!

My Favorite Yoga Poses

“Yoga is so universal in its principles and so holistically beneficial, it is possible for any person, young or old, religious or agnostic, to embrace and enjoy a practice.” – Christy Turlington

Ever since I can remember, my grandpa has been a yoga instructor. I used to participate in his classes when I was younger. But as I entered my teen years, I remember thinking that yoga was too boring and slow for my liking. In recent years, I’ve discovered more challenging forms of yoga that are more my style because they have me breaking a sweat, while making me feel long and limber.

I now do yoga a few times a week, and love to practice it on days when I’m feeling sore from my more hardcore workouts. I also enjoy doing a bit of yoga when I wake up feeling sore and stiff, and will do anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes of poses, depending on what I have time for.

The best part about yoga is that it’s meant to be a practice where you embrace your journey in progressing and becoming more flexible, balanced and strong. I usually rep most of the poses out to get my heart rate up a bit, holding the position at the end for a good 15 seconds or so. Here are some of my current favorite yoga poses:

Tree Pose is a good one to start with:

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I always do a bunch of Sun Salutations:

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Camel Pose feels great when I’ve got a sore back:

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I like doing reps of Chair Pose to wake my legs up: 

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Dancer Pose is fun for balance and flexibility:

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I tend to throw some Reverse Triangles in in the midst of my Sun Salutations:

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A fitting name I think, the Warrior 2 pose makes me feel strong and is tough to hold if I have super sore legs:

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And lastly, Warrior 3 is all about concentrating on balancing:

I did some of these poses this morning after I awoke with a funny soreness on the right side of my neck and shoulder for the second day in a row. I felt better initially, but a few hours later, was experiencing a shooting pain from the top of my neck to my shoulder blade whenever I turned my head. It was distracting me from working, and I wound up getting a massage this afternoon in hopes of ironing it out a bit. After cringing in hurts-so-good kind of pain during my hour massage, the area now feels a little better and isn’t quite as tight. I rested it today by doing a strictly lower body workout of cycling 20 miles, and am off to ice it now. Fingers crossed that my tweaking muscles will resolve themselves quickly! 😉

A Circuit Workout to Do Anywhere

*Fun news: I made a little cameo today talking about my experience volunteering at the Humane Society on one of the blogs I read often called PB Fingers! You can read it here.*

Well my bags are packed, I’m ready to go…

That is, if you consider this being packed and ready to go:

As usual, I’ve grossly underestimated how much time and effort goes into me packing for a substantial amount of time! I’m not sure if this is totally nutty, but when I pack I feel the need to try everything on, lay it all out, then match everything with shoes, jewelry, and underwear (is this normal?!). I got this far and decided to take a break and take Harley to the dog park, mostly out of guilt that I’ll be kenneling her tomorrow. Now I’m back home, procrastinating packing even more and blogging instead. 😉

I am very excited that I’ll be flying to Jersey tomorrow, and can’t wait to spend time with my family and friends!

Because I had a lot of things I wanted to get done today, I knew a trip to the gym wasn’t in the cards. If I have a lot of little things on my to-do list, sometimes being at the gym just makes me anxious to rush through my workout and scoot out of there. So instead, I did a quick cardio circuit routine in the comfort of my own home.

How it works:

• The workout entails 5 rounds of pretty basic moves that get your heart pumping (I finished it in a little over 25 minutes.).
• First round: do 50 reps of each move, except for the last 4 moves, which you’ll do 10 of every time.
• After you’ve completed all the moves, move onto round 2, where you’ll decrease your reps by 10 and do 40 of each move. Repeat this 3 more times, doing everything (but the last 4 moves) in sets of 30, 20, and lastly, 10.

Well friends, I must stop putting it off and actually get on with packing because the season premiere of True Blood is on soon. This is NOT a show you can watch while packing, and so I need to finish up and give my full attention to watching it! Good night!

Dog Beach Date + A New Biking PR

Love this quote.

Speaking of moving, today I hit a new biking PR. Let’s get one thing straight, I’m no avid cyclist. I think mountain biking is a lot of fun, but most of the cycling I do is on a stationary bike at my gym to get the cardio portion of my workout in. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that recently we got new, more high tech bikes, and I’m having fun setting distance goals when I do longer rides.

I began alternating the resistance every other mile, keeping my heart rate between 60-65% for a mile, then upping the level to bike at 70-80% of my max heart rate for a mile. At first, I just wanted to get to 15 miles. Then it became 20. Next I hit 25. And today, I went past that to 26.2. I got to 26, and then thought, hmm why not go an extra .2 in honor of the marathon I have no desire to ever run? 😉

This made me curious as to how far a marathon is for biking. Googling it gave me a lot of different answers. All I know is that typical road races can be 100’s of miles long. If I ever decide to train for a long bike race like that, one thing is for sure… I definitely will be needing butt pads (as mine starts hurting after about mile 8!)!

I was proud of myself for getting to 26.2 in 80 minutes today because I wanted to quit most of the time and kept telling myself to just go one more mile, to just keep moving. The fact that I wasn’t really feeling it but wound up setting a new PR reassures me that we are capable of pushing ourselves to do more and keep going if we set our minds to it. Next bike session, I just might do 30 miles!

Dog Beach 

Tonight I took Harley to the dog beach for some playtime. I usually take her for a long walk sometime during the day whenever I can fit it in. But today I was chugging along with work and didn’t wind up walking her much at all, so I figured it’d be good to get to the beach and wear her out a bit.

Harley is NOT a fan of the water. It’s really funny to watch her run around when it’s low tide, because she’ll chase other pups around everywhere until they get near waves or puddles, at which point she’ll stop dead in her tracks.

Case in point:

She’s quite a character.

I’ll leave you with a pic of tonight’s sunset:

WOD: A Triceps & Chest Circuit Routine

Happy June and Friday!

According to my calendar, today is Go Barefoot Day. Apparently it’s also National Doughnut Day. I’m celebrating the former by walking around barefoot, though I pretty much always do that…

I’m excited that it’s June 1st for a couple of reasons:

The start of June signifies the real downhill slope of my marine’s deployment, as he supposedly will be coming home in July (the key word here being supposedly…Anyone involved in the military knows that if there’s one thing for certain, it’s that plans are constantly changing, but we’ll pretend that it’s totally happening according to schedule unless we’re told otherwise 😉 ). The thought of him being home makes me ridiculously happy.

The other awesome thing about June beginning is that I’ll be heading back east in a little over a week to see my family and friends in Jersey. I haven’t seen everyone since December and I am so excited to spend time with my loved ones. I have lots of fun plans going on while I’m there, and will be staying at my parents’ for almost 2 weeks. WOOHOO!

Today’s Workout

I find it amusing that I instinctively typed “WOD” (Workout of the Day) in my title. This means that CrossFit lingo is finding its way into my vocabulary even though I don’t even do CrossFit!  That is how mainstream it has become, or perhaps just how much I hang out with CrossFit lovers..

Today at the gym I did one of my beloved circuit sessions. The strength training exercises focused on working my triceps and chest, though I also worked my legs quite a bit. I love combining weight training moves with movement to get my heart rate up and get the most bang for my buck. What you need to know:

• The workout consists of 5 rounds, each with strength training, ab moves and cardio.
• I used 12 pound weights. Adjust your hand weights based on your strength level.
• When exercises are performed that involve doing one arm/leg at a time, 1 rep = doing one on each side of the body.
• In between each round, do 5 minutes of whatever cardio you choose (I biked). Take minimal rests.

If you aren’t familiar with some of the exercises mentioned, here are descriptions I found around the web:

• Tricep Kickbacks
• Overhead Tricep Extensions
• Plie Squats
• Tricep Dips
• Squirms
• Oblique Twists

And don’t forget to eat something healthy post-workout to refuel! Today I ate a blueberry banana bowl:

• 3/4 c frozen bluberries
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 scoop vanilla protein powder (Designer Whey)
• 1/4-1/2 c unsweetened almond milk

I also ate some of these yummies:

I’m off to get ready for a get-together with some girlfriends for dinner. Hope your weekend is off to a great start!

Minimizing Muscle Soreness

This morning when I got out of bed, my first thought was ouchhhhh, what workout did I do yesterday? 

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The answer to that is NONE! I had taken yesterday off from exercising since I worked out every day last week, and knew I could use a rest day. The delayed onset muscle soreness (48 hours+ delayed) I’m experiencing is from my workout on Saturday, where I did some weight training exercises I haven’t done in awhile. Typically when I’m sore 2 days after a workout, I’ll first feel some aches the day after, but for some reason, that wasn’t the case this time.

I sort of have a love/hate relationship with muscle soreness. Obviously it’s not fun to have a hard time lifting my arms above my head (yes, that’s happening right now), but at the same time, it makes me feel like my workouts are challenging my muscles and making me stronger. I find myself sore pretty often because I’m constantly switching up my exercise routine.

The interesting thing about muscle soreness is that we don’t know a whole lot about it. There’s been an ongoing debate about both the cause and treatment of delayed onset muscle soreness. Though it was once believed to be caused by a buildup of lactic acid during an intense workout, we now know soreness occurs because of microscopic tears in muscle fibers and connective tissue, and is part of the adaptation process that leads to greater muscle strength and stamina.

Though I’m not an expert (and just admitted to feeling sore a lot!), there are some things I do often that I feel minimize the amount of muscle soreness I experience:

• Always warmup – I start my workouts with 5 minutes of cardio and some dynamic stretching (such as arm circles) to get my muscles warmed up before jumping into intense exercises.
• Eat post workout – I make sure to eat within an hour or exercising. I’ll have at least 15 g protein to help repair and rebuild my muscles, and also eat some carbs to boost my insulin levels (thus, helping my body to more efficiently utilize the amino acids from the protein I’m eating).
• Ice, ice, ice! I’m constantly icing muscles post-workout (especially my nagging calf injury) and really believe in the power of icing to help with the amount of soreness I feel.
• Stretching – It’s controversial if stretching actually helps with muscle soreness, but I do it after every workout. It can’t do any harm and feels great to stretch out after a hard workout.

Ok… maybe not that kind of stretching!

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• Rest, but don’t rest too much. The day after an intense workout, sometimes I’ll give myself a complete rest day. But then the day after that, I get back to it, even if I’m still sore. Other times I’ll do some low-impact aerobic exercise the following day, like a long walk with my dog, the elliptical, or my favorite sore muscle workout, yoga. Low intensity exercise increases blood flow and diminishes muscle soreness. So, even if you’re tempted to curl up in a ball in pain and not move for days, your body will feel better if you get moving.
• Treat yourself to some heat or a rubdown. Getting in a hot tub, sauna, or hot bath is also thought to increase blood flow to your muscles. Better yet, a massage does that too. Unfortunately, with my marine deployed, I don’t have anyone to nag to massage my achy muscles! I’m not able to get a massage every time I have muscle soreness (though I wish I did), but it certainly makes me feel better when I do.

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Because it was only my upper body that was feeling sore today, I skipped the weight training and was all about the cardio, setting a new max on the spin bike – 25 miles in 75 minutes 🙂 Here’s to hoping my butt and legs aren’t sore tomorrow! Off to get out my ice pack…