Valentine’s Day Partner Workout

Happy Valentine’s Day!! Whether you’re celebrating big or hating on the holiday, just enjoy some time with your partner, friend, relative, or pet!

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I put together a partner workout that you can do with any of the above people (although your dog might just make you do all the work!).

Sweat it out with someone you love today!

Valentine’s Day Partner Workout

(This is best done at a park or somewhere that you will have a little bit of room)

Warm Up: Between the two of you, complete 100 squats. You can break it up however you’d like, but you can’t both squat at the same time!

#1. Fast Jacks

Partner 1: 50 Jumping Jacks

Partner 2: Push Ups until Partner 1 finishes

Switch roles and then repeat!

#2. Burpee Challenge!!

Partner 1 does 1 burpee, Partner 2 does 1 burpee, Partner 1 does 2 burpees, Partner 2 does 2 burpees….

Keep going up the ladder until someone can’t finish a set!

Pro Tip: I highly suggest making a bet for this one…massage for the winner?! 😀

#3. Run it Out!

Find about a 15-20 yard space and mark it.

Partner 1: Sprint to the marker and do: 5 push ups, 10 squats, 10 sit ups, sprint back and tag Partner 2 to do the same thing.

Complete 5 rounds of this!!!

Happy Sweaty Valentine’s Day!!!

Question of the day:

Are you a lover or hater of the holiday?

I’m indifferent. I like spending time with my man, but hanging out at home with a movie is fine by me.

Holidays, Exciting News, and Wisdom Teeth

Hey all! I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year’s! Mine was really low-key and I’m totally fine with that. I’m battling a nagging wisdom tooth today and doing whatever I can to try to relieve some of this pain!

Holiday Recap

This holiday season had me in Kansas with my boyfriend and his family. It was also pretty low-key and while we did do a bit of shopping and running around, there was also a lot of down time as well. We spent time with his family, shopped, cooked, baked, played games, went to a Chief’s game (in 9 degree weather!!!!!) and relaxed. With two full time jobs that have me running around Los Angeles every day, it was a real nice change of pace. It snowed for a day or two, but after that the weather was pretty clear.

I enjoyed the break and am finding it difficult to motivate myself to get back into the swing of things. Eek! This is a problem considering all of my pending projects that I’d like to accomplish in the coming months!

Exciting News

I wanted to share some exciting news with you guys!! While in Kansas, I only had a access to a gym for one day. The rest of the time, I was able to create some super-effective workouts that were done in the living room with NO equipment. I even got the rest of the family to join in for some of them. I can tell you that they were some really TOUGH workouts, but they were easily scalable and took anywhere from 15-45 minutes. I am also happy to report that I actually LOST a pound while on vacation. Of course, the scale doesn’t mean much to me, but I do use it from time to time just to know where I’m hanging out. It truly is JUST a number and not a true representation of anything, but it can be a guide to see where your body tends to stay and what makes it fluctuate most.

Anyways, with that said, I couldn’t help but think that I’m not the only person to go on a vacation and not have access to a gym. It can be awkward to ask to borrow a family member or friend’s car to go to the gym, and the day passes can be costly. While this has been in the making for quite some time, I finally decided to put together an e-book called TravelFit that will include workouts you can do ANYWHERE with NO equipment required along with some healthy snacking/meal tips for when you’re on vacation or out of your normal routine. It should be available towards the end of January and I cannot WAIT to share it with you all!

The e-book will include: 

-15 different workouts that can be done ANYWHERE with NO equipment required

-Healthy Snacking/Meal Tips for when you’re out of your normal routine

-Ways to scale any workout to make it easier and/or harder, as well as to accommodate any weaknesses

Weeee!!! I hope you guys and others will enjoy this! It’s something I’ve been putting a lot of effort into over the past few months and finally putting it together has been really fun for me!

Thanks for a great year! While I didn’t post quite as much as I’d hoped, one of my goals for 2014 is to change that. I’m focusing on making some changes in my life in the near future and blogging regularly will be a part of that change.

Did you travel anywhere for the holidays?

How do you keep your fitness goals in sight when you’re on vacation? 

The 6-Week Challenge: WBBC

Wowza! It’s been a while. I’ve been a busy little bee, working my tail off. But hopefully I’ll be posting a bit more as of now. Hope you’re having a great week! November is truckin’ along….

News:

This past Saturday (November 2nd) marked the 1st day of the WBBC 6 Week Challenge. What is the WBBC you ask?

The World’s Best Boot Camp is just as it implies. It was started by a former Desert Storm Vet, John Burch. I met John at my gym in Santa Monica and when he told me about the upcoming challenge, I was all about it.

Here’s a photo of me doing a dynamic stretch on Day 1

So what does the 6 week challenge entail? Well, as you can imagine, I will be attending a boot camp 2-3 times per week that focuses on a lot of the basic movements mixed with CrossFit movements: squats, push-ups, sit-ups, burpees, kettlebells, and more! The other part of the challenge includes cleaning up my diet (which is pretty clean already, but tightening up a bit), and doing my personal best to accomplish my goals.

To give a little insight, on Day 1, we did a baseline workout and took measurements. I will be doing some video diaries each week to update my progress (I’ll post the links as soon as they’re posted each week) and I’m hoping to come out with successfuly results at the end! By December 14th, I will be re-testing my baseline workout from Day 1 and taking measurements again. I’m IN IT TO WIN IT and hoping that I will have some GREAT results to share!

There is no better time than now as the holidays approach, so I’m pretty excited. While I’m pretty comfortable in my body and like the way I look now, I am excited to lean out a bit more and as the slogan says, “have the most fun proving myself!” Love that.

Goals: 

I want to be 100% compliant. What does this mean for me?

-I will attend bootcamp 2-3 times per week

-I will stick to my diet 6 days per week with one day to splurge (within reason of course)

-I will get enough rest and WATER

-I will continue running, rock climbing, weight lifting, and all of the other activities that I do in between boot camp days.

For the first time since I competed in 2009, I feel ready for this. I’ve actually felt ready for a while, but I needed something like this to come along to spark my fire and get me going again. In good fashion, I dragged my boyfriend into the competition as well. On a weekly basis, he tells me he needs to lose 10 lbs, so I’ve enlisted him in the challenge with me! While he won’t do all of the workouts that I do, he will be following the diet with me.

I would love for you all to follow me along on this journey! I will be posting pictures, videos, thoughts, challenges, and more!

Have you ever done a challenge?

What motivates you the most?

Winter Workout

It feels like a whirlwind, but somehow the holidays came and went and we’re all getting ready for New Years! You want to know what I’m doing for New Years? Grilling venison and plopping on the couch with a movie. Yeah, we like to party hard. At least I have a hot date.

So where the hell have I been?! I last left you with the Legend of the $5 Coffee Table. Well you will be glad to know that it’s still in my living room and is now accruing more stuff on top of it. Operation Jungle Gym is in full effect.

Anyways, I headed out to Kansas with the boyfriend to visit his family for the holidays. I’m an Arizona girl converted to a Southern California girl. Kansas=cold. As a kid, I spent many winters in Chicago with my extended family, but it’s been a good 10 years. The only snow/cold I’ve been in recently has been for snowboarding, which is an entirely different situation altogether. Needless to say, I don’t do well in cold. Hell, the Santa Monica arctic temperatures right now are killing me!

At this point, you’re probably wondering why you’re reading my complaints, but I promise I have good intentions. You see, even in the blistering cold, I managed to run outside twice and do two indoor workouts. Point being=there is no excuse for not being able to fit in a workout! I did these workouts before, between, or after family events and although it was NOT comfortable, I felt SO much better afterwards.

I do realize that I’m a little bit psychotic and not everyone is ready to venture into 16 degree cold to get a workout in, but the workouts I did inside were absolutely killer and required no equipment and minimal time. I made my manfriend join in too and even though it only further solidified his theory that I’m trying to kill him, I think he secretly enjoyed the challenge.

Try these out and let me know how it goes 😉

(This workout takes about 20 minutes give or take.)

Warm Up: 25 burpees

then

10 Rounds for Time

10 Air Squats

10 Push Ups

10 Sit Ups (or mix it up and throw in different ab exercises)

Then finish off with one more round of 25 burpees

Feel free to modify the reps, sets, etc, but this was a butt kicker! Let me know how it went when you try it!

Stay tuned for Workout #2….

Happy New Year from Us!

The Worst Present I Ever Received

With the holidays right around the corner, everyone seems to be talking/posting about food, decorations, and of course, gifts. I was reading Tina’s blog and she mentioned the practical gifts her mother had given her for Christmas over the years. It instantly made me think of one particular gift that takes the cake in the most practical gift ever. It wasn’t necessarily that it was a bad gift, but it was by far the most hilarious gift I’ve ever received.

The Back Story….

Most holidays are spent at my Grandma’s or my Aunt’s house. They are central locations (well used to be, before I moved to LA) for most of our family and there is plenty of space for everyone. My grandparents were still very good friends with some relatives of ours that were around the same age as them (late 80’s, early 90’s). For the purposes of this blog, we’ll call them Martha and Bob. Bob was always the funny man. While pushing 90, he wasn’t all there, but when he was we always had a laugh. (He has since passed away.) One of my favorite jokes of his was when my aunt would inevitably ask Bob how he liked his coffee. His response was always “Black, just like my women.” This was hilarious for two reasons: HE WAS 90 and his wife was as white as they come. Need I say more?

On this particular occasion, we had all stuffed our faces with delicious food, visited with each other, and finally it was time to open some presents. I can’t remember if this was a holiday or a birthday, but at some point it was time to open my gift from Bob and Martha.

It was soft and wrapped a little funky, which made me think it had to be clothes. I carefully unwrapped the gift, and as I took out the contents, I was a little bit shocked. It wasn’t long before I looked at my little brother (who was sharing a chair with me) and began laughing uncontrollably. We didn’t want anyone to know we were laughing (although I’m sure we did a poor job of hiding it) so I help up the gift as if to show it off. Truthfully, it was to hide the laughter.

So what was it? Well, it was a piece of clothing. In fact, it was a T-shirt. And it wasn’t just any T-shirt. It was a white, Hanes, under shirts. Much like this:

 

Come to think of it, it might be the best gift I ever received because it sure does make a good story.

What is the worst present/funniest present you ever recieved?