Monthly Archives: July 2013

I’ve been switching up my fitness, so I thought I’d pop in on Sundays and share what my workouts have looked like each week. I’m on a mission to find a balance of things I love, that make me healthier, and that overall just feel right.

Here’s what happened last week:

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Sunday

Started off on Sunday with a super sweaty 90 minutes of Bikram. I knew this may be my only super intense workout for some time with my travel schedule so I really put in 110%. Oddly enough my calves were so sore for the next few days. Weird. I don’t think of any of those 26 poses particularly crazy on the calves, but that was the story.

Monday

Monday was a long one — I was up at 3:45 to catch an early flight to Columbus, Ohio. I got into town about 5:30 EST so it sort of felt like I had been going for a full day by then but I busted out my Tabata Timer and did some Tabata Squats and Tabata Push Ups. Not particularly crazy and very short, but at least I felt like I was doing *something.* I figured I’d get in a workout the next day.

Tuesday

I didn’t end up going to bed until after midnight (darn time change!) on Monday and woke up about 6 on Tuesday morning and really wasn’t feeling heading down to the hotel gym. After working a full day I still wasn’t feeling like hotel-gym-ing it so instead I opted to go on a long walk and play tourist. It was much more fun! I headed out for about 2 hours by myself and got to know some new places. Super relaxing until I got caught in a total downpour without an umbrella. 🙂

Wednesday

Wednesday was more of the same. I was out late that night meeting up with blog reader Meg (HEY GIRL!) and playing a riveting game of music trivia at a local bar, so I was um…not in bed early. I don’t know why, but I found the time change particularly difficult this trip. For some reason when I fly somewhere that is 2 hours ahead it is pretty easy to adjust, but 3 hours ahead just wrecks my ability to be asleep before midnight. No workout on Wednesday.

Thursday

Thursday morning I woke up at 6am and my first thought was “Holy hell I’m going to be up for the next 21 hours.” It wasn’t super Fitness Motivating…you know what I mean? I decided I was going to do 100 Burpees for time. I got to about 40 and was like SCREW IT. 🙂

Friday

I got home about midnight on Friday morning and then was up for the day when Garrett’s alarm went off at 5:30. My plan was to go to yoga at 9am but at 8:30 it seemed very difficult to think about changing my clothes. “I’ll just go at noon,” I thought. Though at 11:30 I felt the very same way. I ate some mashed potatoes and watched a marathon of Real Housewives episodes while occasionally putting away some clothes or throwing things from the washer to the dryer. The 4pm yoga class came and went, as did 6pm CrossFit. I just WAS. NOT. INTO. IT.

Saturday

My friend Kari asked me if I wanted to go to spin at 8:30 and I declined, thinking that this would seem very early on Saturday morning. This was a good call, as I didn’t even get out of bed until 10. You guys! It’s like I caught “The Lazy” when I went to Ohio. Apparently I needed a little more time to get back into the swing of things.

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I’m glad I front loaded my July workouts because last week was kind of a wash. I’m looking forward to next week since it will be back to business as usual. I’m trying to listen to my body and this week it has been telling me to chill the heck out, it is tired! Can’t wait to see what it says next week.

How were your workouts this week? Any PRs? Big accomplishments? Do tell….

I’ve been switching up my fitness, so I thought I’d pop in on Sundays and share what my workouts have looked like each week. I’m on a mission to find a balance of things I love, that make me healthier, and that overall just feel right.

Here’s what happened last week:

******

Sunday

I did a 75 minute Bikram class on Sunday and I was sort of surprised that all weekend I really looked forward to going to that particular yoga class. I’ve been doing a class at 4:30 on Sunday afternoons and it has been a nice transition from Weekend Mode to Back to Work Mode. By the time I’m done, home, showered, and eating dinner I’ve kind of been winding down for a few hours and thinking about what I want the next week to look like. I’m generally not dying to start any projects or tasks so I just come home and relax. It’s been calming and it has been helping me start my week a little more intentionally. That probably sounds silly, but it’s true and I’m liking it. I anticipate continuing it.

Monday

Do you know what today’s workout had in store? My FAVORITE — Bear Complex! Plus some other crazy stuff.

Garrett sent me this picture right before we worked out and it made me laugh. I hadn’t done Bear Complex since February, and instead of using the same weight for all 5 rounds, we increased weight each round which was tough! Bear Complex is a 5 lift complex that starts with a Power Clean, a Front Squat, a Push Press, a Back Squat and another Push Press. That is one rep. You Do 7 Reps each round. You complete 5 rounds. So yep, if you do the math it’s 35 reps per round, 5 times through. SHEEEEEESH.

If that made no sense, here is a video of the adorable Jen Sinkler demonstrating it. PS — are you reading her site? Because it is awesome! Serious girl crush. Increasing weight each time was RIDICULOUS. I started at 65lbs, then did 75lbs, 80 lbs (where shit starting getting HEAVY), 85 lbs, and then 90 lbs. 90 lbs was ugly. Real, real ugly. You are also not supposed to put the bar down and rest throughout each round of 35 reps, so at the end my grip strength was BLOWN. Also, on my last rep at 90 lbs I may have missed the shoulder press and bonked my head with the barbell. LAME 🙂

After the Bear Complex we did a 400m Zercher Sandbag carry. You essentially make a little forklift out of your arms and place the sandbag right there in the crook of your elbows. I don’t remember how much the sandbag weighed, but it felt heavy walking a quarter of a mile with it. It was a good core stabilizing exercise and was a total upper body workout! Harder than I anticipated, for sure. After that, we did a 200m walk holding a 65lb barbell overhead with a wide snatch grip. YIKES. My shoulders no-likey. But in the end it was a really great day of work!

Tuesday

On Tuesday I set my alarm early to hit up a 5:30am yoga class. When my alarm went off I was SUPER CRAZY tired and so dehydrated that it felt like I had spent my Monday night out drinking on the town. (Uh, spoiler alert: I didn’t.) So I went back to bed! I KNOW. Crazy. Except not really, because I’m trying to be a little nicer to myself and sometimes that means sleeping in until 6:30 and letting dry shampoo save your work day. REST DAY, for the win!

The combo of hot weather, CrossFit and hot yoga has made me pay a lot of attention to my levels of hydration lately. A couple of weeks ago I picked up this coconut water/electrolyte mix and I’m kind of obsessed with it.

Read more about it here if you are intersted.

Wednesday

Wednesday was just about THE WORST day at work — I needed a “Mental Health Day” when I got home and the CrossFit WOD on tap involved eight 400m sprints. I just wasn’t feeling it. I was kind of bummed because deadlifts were also on the menu, but I just could not muster up any desire to run after such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I ended up going to a Bikram class and it was great. Just what the doctor ordered. Also: sweaty. But that’s a given, I guess.

Thursday

Woke up bright and early and met my friend Heather (hi Heather!) at the box. We’ve been trying to squeeze in at least one 6am workout per week together and it is so fun to have an accountability buddy. Of course, when I read that the workout was going to involve Bar Facing Burpees (Top 3 on the list of exercises I hate) I may have given her the side eye. 🙂

The first 15 minutes was set aside for working on Bar Muscle Ups which HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, NO. No I can not do those even a little bit. So I worked on my kip, which I so rarely work on. Funny, because it totally hasn’t gotten any better with all of that NOT working on it. Weird. 🙂 (It was a lot of work like this. Bonus video of my boyfriend Jason Khalipa. :)) I guess I should do that more often.

Anyway, after that the workout was as follows:

6 Minute AMRAP of:
5 Full Squat Snatches at 85lbs
30 Double Unders

Rest 2 Minutes

6 Minute AMRAP of:
5 Shoulder to Overhead (I did a push press) at 85lbs
10 Bar Facing Burpees (I look silly and uncoordinated doing these)

I managed to eek out 3 rounds + 1 rep on the first AMRAP and 3 rounds + 5 reps on the second. I actually really enjoyed this workout because it was hard and short. Those snatches felt heavier than I thought they would, but the bar facing burpees felt easier than I thought they would. So…win? I don’t know. It was nice and I had tons of energy all day at work!

Friday

Friday I had the day off from work and I was so excited to just do what I wanted! Turns out, what I wanted was to start the day with a 90 minute Bikram class. Ah, to just be able to get up leisurely and go to yoga at 9am. WHY AM I NOT A LADY OF LEISURE? It was a great class because I feel like I’m seeing so much progress every time. Gotta love that when you are doing something new, right?

It was a great workout session and then I went home and showered and Buster and I met up with Garrett on his lunch break and we took a 40 minute walk around the Capitol. It was gorgeous and felt like such a leisurely treat in the middle of the day.

I relaxed for a bit after that and watched Orange is the New Black on Netflix. Have you watched it? So good! (Though not surprising considering how much I LOVED the book.) Good thing I got in some relaxing because Garrett + I ended up going to a 6pm CrossFit class together when he got off work.

The wod was as follows and I have to admit, I kind of phoned it in after all that activity already:

LIFT
Front Squat: 5-5-3-3-1-1 (95lbs, 115, 135, 145, 155, 165)

METCON
15-12-9:

Hang Power Cleans (I scaled to 75lbs bc I was tiiiiiired)
Ring Dips (I scaled to doing dips on a box because no chance in hell I can do ring dips)

Saturday

Saturday morning I was up bright and early and headed out to a Spin Class with my friend Kari. The class was called “Music Video Saturdays” and I was curious as to what the hell all of that meant. It ended up being an hour of super fun interval mixes set to specific music videos. I little Pitbull, Britney and Rhianna can really make an hour of intense bike riding go by fast. I’m still learning how intense to go when I spin and there are so many things to monitor with respect to watts, rpms, blah blah blah — so it is fun, but definitely not something I feel I’m a pro at. Great way to start the morning though.

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I feel pretty good about this week’s workouts as well as the month so far. In 20 days I have managed to fit in a workout on 16 of those days — and I’m definitely getting in full, non-active rest days as well while trying to balancing the intensity with CrossFit and Yoga.

I purposely front loaded some activity this month because as I mentioned I am off to Columbus next week and I am still unsure what the workout situation is going to be there. It’s pretty long work days and hotels and well, many reasons to NOT workout you know? We’ll see how it shakes out.

Any PRs for you this week? Awesome workouts? Do tell….