Hey everybody, just a couple of quick bits before I get to today's post. The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty sparse thanks to assignment-overload before finals, so that's one forewarning on there. Also, I usually post on Sundays and Tuesdays. With schedule's changing for exams and heading back home for break, those times are in a bit of flux. I'm going to be stopping the Sunday SOTU posts, but will still be posting twice a week. The SOTU posts were way more involved than I had expected them to be. I'll eventually make my way back to writing them, but I think it's for the best right now. I'm aiming for regular blog posts on Tuesday and Friday mornings, trying those days on for size. It's really just to make it all a bit easier for me. Moving on though, back to your regularly scheduled post! 

Three years ago, if you had told me that I would be meditating almost daily and doing yoga 2-3 times a week, I would have called you crazy. I used to be super anti-yoga. I thought it was just a trendy fad for rich middle-aged women. You know, the ones who always go yoga and plates just for the hot-as-all-heck teachers. In my mind, yoga was a waste of time.

Two and a half years ago, I nearly broke my shoulder at a riding lesson. It had been partially dislocated, rolled back into place, and then used for the rest of the ride. After visiting everybody's favorite place, the local ER, I was given a sling for a few weeks. Months later, I was still having regular pain in my shoulders with use and changing weather. I should have gone to get the MRI like the doctor said. Instead, I just kept working through the pain.

A year and a half ago, I was unable to do certain workouts because of the stabbing pains in my shoulders. Any arm workout was out the window. Even longer runs made it ache for days. I knew it was time for me to do something about it.

That same summer, I was invited to a yoga class by a friend. Little did I know, it was an advanced hot yoga class. And it was probably the longest flipping hour of my life. I hated it at first. I was sweaty, challenged, frustrated, and about 10 minutes in Down Dog, my arm felt like it was about to fall off. But I persevered through the class, and the next 40 minutes flew by. The rest of the class was doing more advanced twists and inversions, as the competitive soul I am, I certainly wasn't going to be left behind! In that first class, I learned how to communicate with my body, I was learning to better control muscles that I didn't even know I had. By the final stretches at the end of the class, I was doing things I hadn't done since middle school, most exceptionally touching my toes. It was a big deal for me. As the class was winding down, we moved into a meditation for ten minutes. I couldn't have rolled my eyes up into my head any further. I was a strong believer that meditation was a complete waste of time. But, having paid for the class, I was going to make the most of that. It wasn't a difficult meditation, just Savasana, corpse pose. As we lay there, I became vividly aware of the sweat covering every inch of me. All of the sudden, I was absolutely dying. Then out of seemingly nowhere, a cool wet cloth appeared on my face. Not expecting it, I nearly jumped out of my skin. It felt great as the room slowly cooled down, being the last class of the night.

The next day, I was in pain pretty much everywhere. All those muscles I was using? Oh yeah, definitely felt all of those the next day. But I was hooked. From then on I've tried to do yoga whenever I could. Classes in DC are pretty pricey, so my go to is Brett Larkin's free classes on YouTube. I aim for 1-3 classes per week, usually two classes every Wednesday morning, one of which ends with some sort of meditation.

Now that I'm doing yoga more often though, I've been dying to get some new yoga gear, from mats to pants and everything in between.

Yoga Post! by m-personally featuring scented candles

I ventured onto Polyvore to out my wishlist all in one image. The Manduka Flux legging is a personal favorite of the whole list, I love the ribbons at the bottom! The Cancer muscle tee from Confused Girl in the City is great because 1) its cute, 2) I can wear it for anything, not just working out, and 3) it totally indulges my secret love for astrology. The weird bean-shaped thing is a meditation cushion from Gaiam. I really want to try to meditate more often, and this cushion really serves a double purpose. My yoga mat is super thick, so it's comfortable for yoga on pretty much every surface. But for meditation, I like to have a little extra cushion. I've tried sitting on a towel, but that doesn't cut it. A cushion is just a little bit of extra comfort for meditation! The crescent shape is also really great, helps adjust my seat, that way my knees are sort of below my hips when I sit Indian style.

Speaking of which, the room is empty, so I've got to get my yoga in for today! Until next time,

Writing to you from M, Personally
Namaste!
brett

Fitness Yoga

6:00 AM

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.

Fitness

6:00 AM

Hello everyone ans welcome back to my Weekly Workout Post! We're going to start today's post off right with Day 2 of Brett Larkin's 18 Days of Yoga.

I've sort of turned this daily series into a weekly one for me. I've got plenty of time for more, but I've only got the free room once a week! This week's theme was Ease, something I definitely need to add to my life after the absolutely crazy past few days. The class was 45 minutes long, and suited my level much better than last weeks adventure. The twists and stretches felt amazing on my left side, but not so great on my right. A few years ago I sprained my shoulder and I still have a micro tear in the tendon, which makes a lot of yoga poses more difficult for me, limiting my mobility and strength. Classes with a lot of downward dog are pretty much the first circle of hell for me, after 10 minutes with all that stress, my right shoulder starts to tremble! I liked this class because there was very little downward dog or plank pose and the stretches didn't strain my body too hard, just enough to be tough. It started out pretty tough, the first 25 minutes were definitely trying, but I stuck with it, and it slowed down towards the end and felt great for me. This week's meditation was Savasana, corpse pose, and definitely my favorite. It's so relaxing for me and it's the real reason I stuck with yoga after trying it a few years ago!

So the weekly yoga is done, now time to move onto the much less fun part, the daily workout.

To recap, I split Day 9 up into two days, as I had a hectic weekend. Yesterday was getting back on track with Day 10, and today is Day 11. It's going to be tough getting out of bed tomorrow with all these stretches and workouts!

Day 11:
22 Tricep Dips
30 Mountain Climbers
110 Crunches
15 Oblique Squats


Because of that earlier mentioned shoulder, I've started modifying my tri dips and I've gotten much better results. Instead of the usual stance with a chair in sort of a triangular pose, I sort of make an M shape with my body, almost a table, but my belly isn't flat. Then I bend my elbows, lowering my upper body and core for the same workout of the triceps. It's not so much weight on the shoulders, which is really helpful for me
The crunches were hard for me at first. I was thinking, how do you do 110 crunches at once?! But once I started breaking them down into sets of 20 or 30, counting up to 10 or 15 and then back down, it seems like so much less once you're doing them!
As for the oblique squats, the best way to explain them is with this gif:

So 15 of those should be fun today and absolutely awful tomorrow morning!

Today's fitness motivation is super true. People have started to notice how my body has changed, and it feels absolutely amazing when people look at you and ask, "Have you lost weight??"

And after working every day to become stronger in mind, body, and spirit, seeing the all of your work, dedication, and literal blood, sweat, and tears culminating into the goal you've been striving to achieve, nothing feels better!

Until next time, stay active, drink your water, and Namaste.

Writing to you from M, Personally

Check out last week's WWP here!

Fitness WWP

9:08 AM

source

One of my goals this year is to be able to run the Marine Corps Marathon next October. In order to do that, one requires a serious level of fitness. A level that I pretty severely lack. While my goal may be a bit loftier than possible, I like to set this one high. I'm okay if it takes a little longer than I wanted it to, since personal health and fitness is not something to joke about.

I'll be writing more about my personal fitness goals another time, but becoming healthy and active has been important to me for a while. And especially over the past year. Because of that, I want to keep myself motivated to get and stay fit. Part of that is going to be holding myself accountable by telling other people. And you my dear readers, are often going to be those people.

Every week, I will post that day's workout, for you all to try and enjoy. I'll post it every day on my Twitter as well!

So without further ado, here is the Weekly Workout Post #1!

The Daily Workout today was:
15 Basic Squats
15 Kickback Squats
6 Tricep Dips
10 Mountain Climbers
30 Crunches

This morning also featured some yoga from Brett Larkin's Channel.
I started out with power slow flow, which was an intermediate class. I shouldn't have been so ambitious, as it proved a little difficult for me. I decided to go with Day 1 of her 18 Days of Yoga series, and skipped around through the class a bit (not good, I know!) as I was running out of time and getting a bit frustrated with myself. I ended up doing about 30 minutes of yoga this morning. I didn't want to end on a bad note, so I followed through to the meditation sequence on the end of the Day 1 video. I've never done meditation before, outside of meditative breathing techniques for anxiety or Savasana. In Brett's video, we did about 6 minutes of meditation, including 2 minutes of Kapalabathi. And it was actually really great. While I wasn't super comfortable on my towel and I was a bit impatient through it all, once I finally resigned myself to sit and actually stop for a couple of minutes, it was great. I 100% recommend Brett's videos to anyone, just make sure you pick one that fit's your workout length and skill level! I'll link the two I did below:


60 Minute Power "Slow Flow" Yoga
"A power yoga class that doesn't rush you! Perfect for midday but practice it anytime. Sweaty & serene!"

Day 1 HOPE - Strength and Surrender
"In this 35-minute class, we learn the yogic breathing that will guide us through the rest of this challenge and tone the abs and legs w/ lunges and seated core work."












Until next time,
Writing to you from M, Personally

Namaste!




Check out the next WWP here!

Fitness WWP

7:21 AM

As we all get back into the swing of classes, it's always hard to bend a summer workout schedule AND a summer clean eating plan to fit a new school schedule. And even then it's hard to manage both schedules and not lose your motivation to workout! With my usual motivation currently abroad, lately I've had some trouble getting myself out to my runs, starting my body weight challenge workouts, and I haven't even made it to the gym once! So I figured I'd put together some fitspo for myself and for anyone who needs those extra reminders to get up and moving some days!

Before I start, I want to say that these are pictures that I find inspiring towards my fitness journey. Not everyone finds the same things inspiring! Just take that into account before you get too grumpy about it all :)

And on that fittie note, I'm off to do some homework and then go to my meetings for the day. And of course fitting in my run tonight, regardless of how tired I am or how hot it is! Always make your work out work!


Writing to you from M, Personally

Fitness Fitsporation

7:11 AM