Cardio, Home Workouts

Active Recovery #GottaHaveIt

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Goin’ hard is great, but be sure to give your body some down time. On the weekends, I literally wear myself out teaching group fitness classes. So during the week days, I try to mix in an Active Recovery workout. For instance, this morning I did this “Treadmill Recovery Workout” at my hotel gym. It’s great fitness option because it keeps my cardio up, burns calories (about 250) and lets my joints recover so I can go hard next weekend.

Keep in mind, that extreme (high intensity) workouts are not intended to be performed more than 3X per week. This means no CrossFit or running sprints every single day! If we don’t give our muscles time to recover, they never rebuild. We want our muscles to rebuild because that’s how we develop more lean muscle mass. More lean muscle mass = more strength AND more calories burned while our bodies are resting – yay!

Try my “Treadmill Recovery Workout” on one of you lower intensity days and let me know how it goes. Enjoy!

Take it easy every now and then! Lots of luv, Brit

 

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Inspiration & Motivation, Lifestyle

Get to STEPPIN’ – Life with my pedometer

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SO… along with cutting back on the booze, for my 28th b-day I also committed to wearing a pedometer everyday.  In case you don’t know, a pedometer is a little device you can attach to your body and it counts the number of steps you take.  I got the idea from my friend Megan who consistently wore her pedometer every single day of our vacation in Italy.

Basically I’m on one of these 10,000 step plans.  Recent studies show that it takes 10,000 steps (equal to 5 miles) per day to manage your current weight.  As many of you know, I’ve lost over 20 pounds in the last 2 years and I REFUSE to gain it back.  So the 10,000 step plan is my new method of ensuring I don’t slowly pack back on the pounds.

First off, using the pedometer is cheap and simple.  I bought mine at Academy Sports & Outdoors for about $20 and I simply clip it to my belt or bra strap every day.  Altogether, I didn’t realize how sedentary I am every day.  It’s cray cray!  My daily step count was all over the place – literally.  On an average day when I do not workout, I only walk about 3,000-4,00 steps.  YIKES!

Getting my 10,000 steps in each day is still work in progress, but I’m constantly improving.  Overall, I think this is legit so def try it for yourself!  Here’s a little photo diary of my pedometer experience:

1st day with the pedometer, sitting at my desk all day and only at 4,693 steps at 8pm – not a good look 🙁

Feeling very eager and determined on day 2 – walked/jogged on the treadmill for 30 min and walked around my office multiple times for over 12,000 steps!

Lazy day working from home.  Had to head to the gym to make up for a LOT of steps!

After teaching 1-hour Turbo Kick class +6,000 steps putting me well above 10,000 by 6:15pm – a good look 🙂

Morning run and Psycho Gym workout got me over 8,000 steps by lunch time.  YAY!

Sunday church + brunch left me with a major step gap 🙁

Went for a Sunday afternoon stroll around my neighborhood to get my extra steps in.  Mission accomplished!

Here are a few ways that I incorporated more steps into my day to make may daily 10,000 step quota:

  • Park in the parking spot furthest away form the door to my work building
  • Get up and walk around my office every couple of hours
  • Walk on the treadmill or around my neighborhood to make up for missed steps
  • Stand at my desk, and sway side to side instead of sitting (awkward I know, but it works)

How do you get your steps in? Please do share!

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Cardio, Home Workouts

So…the treadmill isn’t so boring after all

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Me gettin’ a sweat going on the hotel treadmill, Thursday 5/17

This week I had to travel to Cleveland for a client workshop, meaning my only option for a workout space was my “lovely” hotel gym. Unfortunately, this hotel’s gym consisted of 1 treadmill, 1 broken elliptical, and a yoga mat…that said, I had to make the best of an unfortunate situation. This got me thinking, I need to have options for effective and engaging treadmill workouts to hold me over in times like these. So, I put together these 3, 20 minute treadmill workouts. Each one burns 200-350 calories – NOT BAD! Hopefully you find these exercises helpful. If you are trying to get more into fitness but don’t have a treadmill at home, then you might want to check out something like this FitnessVerve. What’s not to love about having you own home gym?

Feel free to print, try out for yourself and keep handy when you’re looking to shake up your treadmill routine. Also, don’t forget that a jammin’ 20 minute playlist ALWAYS gives you a boost – Enjoy 🙂

  1. What Goes Up…Must Come Down (walking) – Walk at a speed of at least 3.0/mph. Start at 0.0 (zero) incline and increase the incline by 1.0 every 1 minute. After 10 minutes (when you reach level 10 incline) lower the incline by 1.0 every minute until you get back to 0.0 (zero).
  2. Walk, Sprint … Repeat (sprinting intervals) – Start by walking at least 3.0 mph and 1.0 incline – NEVER GO BELOW 1.0 INCLINE. After 3 minutes, sprint at least 7.0 mph for 2 minutes. Repeat the walk/sprint cycle 4 times for a 20 minute workout.
  3. Slow and Steady Wins the Race (jogging) – Start by jogging at least 5.0 mph with an incline of 1.0. After 2 minutes, increase your incline to a level that is “challenging” (i.e. makes you breathe heavy, difficult to talk). Keep the incline here for 3 minutes, then take it back down to the starting 1.0 level. For the next minute, increase your speed to a faster jogging pace, at least 6.0. Repeat this 5 minute cycle 4 times.
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