I have to say that I am not blogging as much as I thought I would on my week off.
Today is an absolutely gorgeous day. It rained like crazy yesterday and the humidity is gone from the air. It's sunny and not too hot and just a great day to get outside.
I trained with Kyle this morning at 8:15am and then came directly home grabbed the dog and headed to the park.
Grando. Living the Dream.
This whole food journal thing has been going on for two days now and it's proving to be a little bit more of a challenge. I keep forgetting to take it with me. I work for a fitness company and we always say that it takes about 21 days to make a new skill a habit, so I am not giving up.As I get further along in this whole blog thing, I am realizing when I started this I didn't really have any goals for myself for this blog. I just wanted a place to track my progress and share my experiences with whomever wanted to read about them. Over the last week or so I have started to think about where I would love to take this blog and I am thinking about setting some goals and action items on how to achieve those goals. If you have read my blog before, you will notice that I have changed up the layout. I wanted it to be a little prettier. As for the other goals, I will share them once I have finished setting them.
Today's workout was especially gruelling. I did hot yoga last night and Kyle hinted that I may not be properly hydrates as my muscles (especially my shoulders) were very sore and tired this morning.
Here are our workout details:
We started with one exercise and then added one exercise each round for a total of 7 rounds. 45 seconds rest in between each exercise.
1. Alternating lunges w/ 30 lb bar 16 reps (8 per side)
2. Seated Row w/ 40 lbs 8 reps
3. Swiss Ball Leg Curls 10 reps
4. Push Ups 8 reps
5. Rope Pull 45 second
6. External Rotation w/ 7.5 lbs 10 reps
7 Rounds in total
The hardest part for me today was the lunges. I have one leg that seems to have less mobility than the other. Nothing that can't be fixed with a little hard work (by me) and a little expertise (by my trainer).
Lastly, one of my goals this summer is to sweat once per day. I adore all things lululemon and one of the reasons why is because of their inspiring manifesto. I have embraced this as a part of my own personal manifesto is:
Sweat Once a Day to Regenerate You Skin.
In hot yoga last night out instructor praised us for taking the time to sweat in order to cleanse and detoxify the largest organ in the body-your skin. We all know how important it is to exercise and lift weights but it was a nice reminder about how important it is for your body to actually sweat. Namaste.My Trainer:
First of all – cool dog! He looks like he would be fun to have around. Like Tara mentioned, the weather here (London) is so nice today that nobody wanted to be in the damn gym. That gave us all the space in the world to go about our business and go about it we did. Hot Yoga always seems to do something funky to Tara’s shoulder(s), but she toughed it out and shoulders weren’t the problem soon enough. You don’t really get the sense from her description below how much she despises barbell alternating lunges from a platform. It’s a terrific exercise for the lower body (obviously), but especially with that extra effort to get back up to the platform from the bottom. How good the exercise is seemed to be lost on Tara quickly as I saw about 70% of the scowls I’ve ever seen from her this morning … and they were all about this lift. However, she powered through and had one awesome workout! Other than getting Tara lean and mean, it’s going to be fun getting her as strong as possible before the run in Ottawa.
People’s aerobic capacity bottoms out at about eight weeks (depending on the person), so there’s only really one way after that, in my experience, to make some faster – make them stronger. By strengthening Tara’s legs through deadlifts, squats, lunges, etc, she’ll be strengthening her push off as she runs and ever so slightly increase the length of her stride. Big deal right? Well, when I get her stride and extra ¼ inch, add up how many strides she does in a half-marathon, and it makes for a lot more distance covered, in other words, a lot faster time. Runners don’t need to work on endurance in the gym – they do that when they run. Runners need to strength train in the gym so their anaerobic system balances with their aerobic system. That’s why Tara will be passing suckers all day on that run.
P.S. – I like the “sweat every day” manifesto (as Tara so eloquently put it) too. It reminds me that our bodies were meant to move. Get out there and go move!
Happy Reading,
Me + My Trainer
