Holy Major Muscle Loss, Batman!

Well folks, it's been a busy week in Healthy Heather Land. Between work, the mom/wife thing, speaking, and training, I've been as antsy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.  So it is glad to have a few moments to sit here and write to you.  Ahhhhh.......

But what's been really nice is that throughout all of this craziness happening during the daylight hours, my early am workouts have been stupendous.  Great running, great plyometric training, great interval traininer, just great!  Until I go to lift weights. 

And then....not so great.

In the past few months I have focused so much on endurance training, plyo, agility, etc. that my weight training has really suffered.  I had noticed (and mourned) the lack of definition in my arms and made a mental note to do something about it, but until I actually started incorporating more weights into my workout, I didn't realize how weak I had really gotten.

I am proud of how much I can lift!  I am not super-strong, but I have always gotten a kick out of being able to out-lift the guys and go low reps/heavy weight.  It's fun!  But this week I've had to consistently drop my weight down a notch or two.  Not fun! It has been humbling, let me tell you.  It was a wake-up call that while I've been gallivanting around town running and cycling and whatnot, my muscles haven't exactly stood around waiting for me to get back.  How rude.

So I pretty much have my work cut out for me: hit the weights.  After the half-marathon next month, the weights and I will be making up for lost time.  Dead lifts, squats, pyramids, 21s, shoulder presses....I'm getting all nostalgic just thinking about it.

One of the coolest things about fitness is that there is always a new project, a new goal, a new milestone.  I can't wait to have my bodacious arms back...and then I am going to give them a good talking to! :)

Good day!  And good weekend!

Leaps and Bounds: Functional Training

Not me. Please. My hair is WAY shorter.

One thing I can really appreciate in the gym is functional training.  Luckily, my new trainer Justin has loads of it.  Today's workout was a perfect example of the kind of functional cross-training that is needed for...

Tri-Fit FRIDAY!

Yay! Plyometrics! 

If you're not familiar with tri-fit, its a sport that combines strength, agility, speed, and bedazzling, all of which convene in one weekend of endorphin-fueled competitions of skill and endurance perfect for ADD athletic types everywhere. You can read more here.  I suck at pretty much all of it but dang, it sure is fun!

ANYWAY, today's workout was a great tri-fit workout.  I started out with some sprint intervals, and then we moved on to some compound exercises, which was a nice break.

Then we went totally old school with a bunch of drills:

high knees

butt kicks

bounds

squat jumps

jumping split squats (I haaaaaate these)

and these little "three forward jumps, one big backwards jump" things that we did both forward and laterally. That was fun as long as I didn't look in the mirror and lose my balance.

All in all, it was a great start to the weekend!  Check out the links above and give some of these exercises a try, or visit this website for lots of good video examples of plyometric training.  If you like them, do some more!  It's just that easy, folks.  You just DO IT.

Good day!

Oh Captain, My Captain

It's a bittersweet week at the gym.  It's Captain Awesome's last week.  Well, it's his last week training the morning crew.  A couple of weeks ago he announced that at the end of the month he would be changing his schedule and working at night.  Something about grad school, an MBA, blah blah blah, I don't know, I wasn't really listening.  I was too busy trying to pick up the pieces of my broken life.

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration.  I think I took it pretty well, actually.  The last time he said he was leaving I almost cried.  And then he didn't leave.  But this time he really is.  We met our new trainer, Justin.  He seems cool and I am sure he will be great.  If he's not, I'll make him be great. 

So now we are in our week of lasts.  Today was our last Plyometric Monday.  I jumped over the box.  I JUMPED OVER THE BOX.  For real.  Four risers.  Jumped over it.  I was so estatic that I stood up on my box, saluted Awesome, and said in my best theatre-student voice, "Oh Captain, my Captain."  Unfortunately, Captain Awesome is just a wee whippersnapper who was probably in daycare when that movie came out.

Here's the clip in case you fall into that category.  I highly recommend you watching the whole thing because:

Robert Sean Leonard is soooooo cute. 

I should add him to my Facebook album of Cute Boys Who Look Like My Husband.  Ethan Hawke is cute, too, but not so much in the tall, dark, and handsome way.  Robin Williams is annoying.  Robert Sean Leonard is not in this scene because, well, if you haven't seen it I don't want to ruin it for you.  Anyway, watch it and you'll understand.

So, this week is a tribute to Captain Awesome, who is by far the best trainer I have had to date, and which will likely inflate his already secure ego and make the rest of the week miserable for everyone.  I will really miss working out with him, so much that I kind of hope he flunks out of graduate school so he will come back and teach me how to do cool stuff.

Have you hugged your trainer today? 

Plyometric Monday!

I asked for this. 

I specifically remember saying to Capt. Awesome, "I want to do more plyometrics. Let's make Mondays plyometric days."

So I can't act like this is anyone's fault but my own.

But I have good reasons!

1. I need to sleep more.  The 5.5 hours/night average that my GoWearFit tells me I am getting is not healthy, and I need to get more.  So, that means sleeping later and not starting cardio at 4:00 am.  So that means maximizing the time I am at the gym.  So that means plyometrics.

2. I'm bored. I've been doing the maintenance-friendly cardio and weights routine for a while now and its time to shake it up.  I want to be *fit* not just un-fat.  There's a difference!

3. If I ever want to successfully do box jumps at the Ultimate Fitness Challenge, which I do, I need to learn how to jump.  Hours on the elliptical ain't gonna cut it.

So, that's how I found myself holding medicine balls while leaping, bounding, and hopping over benches and cones this morning.  I gotta say, it was the best workout I've had in a while.  Lots of fun, heart-pumping, and when I uploaded my GWF afterwards, it burned the same number of calories had I gotten up at 4:00 and done 45 minutes of mindless cardio.  So I scored an extra hour of sleep, too.  Yay!

Give plyometrics a try this week to build strength, speed, and balance, and just to do something different!  Here's some sample exercises to get you started.  Have fun, be safe, and get ready for Wednesdays.

That's when we start boxing.

Good day! :)

That *&%^ing Box

When I pulled into the gym this morning and saw a different trainer's car instead of Captain Awesome's, I was relieved.  On Monday I told Capt. Awesome that I wanted Wednesdays to be plyometric and agility days, so I can start getting ready for the Ultimate Fitness Challenge in November, and because I am a masochist.  I haaaaate plyometrics.  I really hate jumping.  And you know I hate that damn box.

So when I learned that Jennifer was filling in for him today, I thought I was off the hook.  I like working out with Jennifer because we always do different stuff and she comes up with a lot of compound exercises, which keep my heart rate up and my GoWearFit calculating away on those calories.  So we set up a circuit full of fun little things to do and I got to work.  And then she said, "oh, I forgot to set up your box."

The box.

That 21 inch plyo box is the one solitary thing in the gym that scares me.  I mean like really scared, mental block, go to jump and then freeze scared.  It's one of those things that just gets inside my head and messes with me.  But I want to master it, cause that's how I roll. 

But we set things up in a different way: we kept the box a little low (2 risers and a step) and put a bench behind it so I could squat/tap the bench in between jumps.  It really helped!  I did 8 or so and then moved on.  The next round, she added a riser, and I did 13.  The final round through the circuit, I completed 15 jumps.  Having the bench behind me really helped me not be scared I was going to fall backwards and break my coccyx (which happened to a friend of mine and kept her out of the gym for WEEKS, the agony).  I still really disliked jumping, but I have to admit I didn't hate it.  That was nice.

Okay, so for a lot of you out there jumping on a box is not that big of an accomplishment.  But for me, it felt like I had climbed Mount Everest.  And more importantly, I didn't get out of doing plyometrics today like I thought I had, which means that Ultimate Fitness Challenge training has officially begun.

Over the next few months I will be highlighting some of my favorite ladies of Women's Tri-Fitness, the athletes who inspire me, intimidate me, motivate me, and teach me how to do things that are outside of my workout comfort zone.  I hope you are as inspired and entertained by them as I am!  I look forward to introducing them to you.

Have a healthy day!

A Little Bit 'o Faith

Have you seen my Zen?  I lost it. I had it, like, two weeks ago.  I was floating through my days, happy as a clam, feeling strong and well-fueled and smug about how nicely my little life was going, and then....it was gone.

Well, some of it remained.  Just enough to remind me that the rest wasn't there.  LOL  And then, I got an email from a friend who was going through the same thing.  She's been on a quest to get in shape for a while,but hasn't yet hit that spot where enough things are going well that she's motivated to keep it up.  You know what I mean: that mental zone where you actually look forward to plyometrics because you can see the physical results of doing them, and you feel so much better from fueling yourself with good food, and you're getting proper rest and everything is just great. 

Instead, she was in "why-haven't-I-lost-weight-I've-been-doing-this-for-three-days," mode.  We've all been there. Our instant-gratification lifestyle has programmed us to believe that weightloss can and should be as quick and easy as downing a protein shake.  So it's hard to be patient while we wait for our hard work to reveal itself in results, and it is hard to have faith that the zen will happen.  But it will.  It takes patience and faith, but if you are putting in the hard work, it will happen.

I promise.

Okay I'll be honest - I don't know if I will ever look forward to plyometrics. But I do know that whenever I am consistent with clean eating and regular, disciplined, challenging workouts...in this euphoric natural-high state of happiness just finds me.  And it is sooooo worth the wait.

Have a little faith. It's happening right now.