Indoor Body Sculpting – My Favorite Winter Workout

Now that the hype of the holidays has died down, I hope you’re ready to gear up for happier healthier 2015! To help you shake up your gym routine, I want to share my all-time favorite Winter Workout. I LOVE heading to my local gym, plugging in my headphones and moving through these body-sculpting exercises.

There are 3 key reasons I love to the do this workout in the winter as opposed to warmer seasons:

  1. Build Lean Muscle Mass – It’s critical to strength train in the winter. Lean muscle mass increases the metabolism to maintain a healthy body temperature and help prevent winter weight gain.
  2. Show off my workout clothes – Since the workout requires a wide variety of equipment, it needs to be done at a gym. If your gym is anything like mine, it can be a bit of a fashion show. I once got annoyed by the “see and be seen” vibe, but now I don’t mind because I rock my super cute activewear from Target® C9. Better yet, I don’t have to go broke to look fierce and fabulous!
  3. No worries about bad weather – Snowstorm? No problem! This workout should be completed indoors since it has several stabilizing exercises.

I designed this workout to sculpt the entire body, so it consists of 9 sets of exercises (3 Core, 3 Lower Body, 3 Upper Body).

Complete each exercise in a set for 1 minute and then repeat. This means each set of exercises takes 4 minutes. With transition time and a little rest, the entire Body Sculpting workout takes 45 minutes. When done correctly, your entire body will feel tight, toned and very sore the next day – trust me! If you have any questions, post a comment below.

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Target® C9 through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about Target® C9 all opinions are my own.
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Better Sore Than Sorry: Activity alternatives to avoid skipping workouts

better sore than sorry

We had some crazy cold weather in Dallas this weekend – an ice storm to be exact. Consequently, many of my favorite group fitness classes were cancelled, which kind of put me in a funk.  A big part of me wanted to just skip my workouts all together and curl up on my couch.  Fortunately, while doing some internet browsing I came across this article, 10 Questions to Ask Yourself before You Skip Your Workout, and it became very clear to me that I needed to get my butt off of the couch and into my workout clothes.  While there’s nothing wrong with resting (our bodies do need adequate recovery), I’m really glad I went ahead and got some alternative activity in.  My workout schedule this weekend went like this:

  • Thursday = Run up and down the stairs in my house for 10 min + 50 push ups + my 10 Min Abs vol. 1
  • Friday = TaeBo 60 min fat blaster DVD + dancing around in my living room with ankle weights on to some of my favorite jamz
  • Saturday = Turbo Kick + Body Pump (my gym opened for a few hours – yay!)
  • Sunday = Hot Vinyasa Flow Yoga

Now that I’m getting ready to embark on my work week, I’m feeling energized and happy that I didn’t skip my sweat sessions.  In fact, I think changing up my routine actually benefited my body – I’m pretty sore in areas that I don’t typically focus on.

For the Dallas readers who are still going to be stuck at home tomorrow, here’s a 15 minute workout video created by yours truly that will get you sweating 🙂  You can knock this bad boy out in your home with no equipment.  The routine is designed to get your heart rate up, work all of the major muscle groups and burn 150-200 calories.

Enjoy the workout, be encouraged  and have a wonderful week! xoxo, Brit

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD-j-uHj5V4&w=420&h=315]

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