So because of some big plans coming up, I have a little bit less than two months to get myself through this weight loss plateau I'm at right now. I did really well and it's taken me about a year to get to this point where I'm happy and confident with my body on a majority of days. There's always the off day, but everyone has them every now and again. Long term, I want my thighs to be a bit less soft, I definitely want my back and shoulders to be stronger, and I would love to one day have Pinterest-able abs. Short term, I just want to work off that stubborn belly fat and a bit off the sides as well. I have a decent amount muscle underneath of that, but I've been struggling to shed the last bit of fat covering my half-abs.
I had been lacking some heavy motivation to get my butt moving on these workouts. I had enough to do some half-assed 30-Day Challenges, but I knew I wasn't pushing myself as hard as I could be. So in comes the pressure from an, ahem, foreign source coming in with those big plans giving me a heck of a lot inspiration to move my behind!
And with that, I sat down, did a little research, and overhauled my fitness routine in order to reduce or even get rid of those last trouble areas so I'll be looking extra good and feeling extra confident when those big plans finally come to fruition.
Before, I had been doing a combination of two different 30-Day Challenges as a workout. An overall one with sit ups, triceps dips, and pushups simultaneously with one doing just squats. I started to do a little research though, on the effectiveness of 30 Day Challenges. What I found was that challenges like that don't actually work that well at all. Because it's the same workouts day after day, once you get the muscle tears, you don't let them rebuild, sort of negative the purpose to working out to build muscle. These challenges also ignore other facets of health and fitness, like proper nutrition or working around previous injuries. Even more, 30 days of the same exact exercise, again, and again, and again, gets to be really boring. Because of that, as well as not seeing results after trying challenges of all kinds, I decided to drop the challenges and start something a little more efficient.
Now workout-less, I was on a mission to find something that fit my needs. I wanted a workout that didn't require a gym. I don't like going to the gym and I really don't have the time to take the extra, like 20 steps to go. I also wanted a workout that had some variation. I get very easily bored of the repetitiveness of the challenges, and I wanted a workout that would force me to try different exercises. I didn't want to work just on one muscle group either. Though most of the fat I want to burn is in the tummy area, isolating workouts doesn't do anything for burning fat in the area. I wanted a workout plan that would last for about a month, since that seemed like a good amount of time. It's not so long that it gets repetitive, but not so short that I can't get into a groove for it. Lastly, I wanted a plan that had flexible schedules. Because I'm working around my and my roommate's class schedule, I can't workout for hours every day. I generally have about 60 minutes max to workout 3-5 days a week.
To top all that off, I wanted one that either built in runs OR gave me time to work my running schedule into the plan. I had decided to focus more on my personal overall fitness for the next few months as opposed to my running. I'm not tossing in the towel on my marathon goal! It make more sense to work on my whole body first, before I try to push it's limits with an insanely long run like that.
Finding something that fit that schedule was certainly a task to say the least. I practically have more requirements for a workout than a boyfriend. Despite a bit of trouble, I ended up going with the Nike Training Club app. I decided to go with a four week Get Lean plan. They have 5 days of workouts, which was a lot when I first looked. Breaking it down, 2 days are just running, and 1 day is dynamic yoga. There's enough wiggle room where the workouts are on free days for me, and I can easily swap it around to keep my busiest class day free of workouts. I'm a little over a week in now, and it's going great.
The runs really push my distance, but not so much so that I'm struggling to complete them. Next week has a 5 mile and 3 mile run. The five is going to be tough, but not impossible. Hopefully the weather is in my favor that day!
On the Dynamic Yoga days, I add on one of Brett Larkin's Online Classes (link to her channel) afterwards. Nike's yoga involved a lot faster paced flow with a lot of muscle work. It's great, but it felt like it was more of a workout than yoga session. Adding in a really light stretching class from Brett allowed me to cool down with yoga, stretch out my muscles after a week of workouts, and center myself again before jumping into the weekend.
I'll have to write again at the end of this plan to give it a bit of a review. I might repeat this workout plan again or if I'm feeling really confident with it all, I'll jump ahead to the next level up! I'm off to go drag myself through some burpees, but until next time,
Writing to you from M, Personally.
0 comments:
Post a Comment