You Can Do Whatever You Like

I like to read interesting books at night before bed. Unfortunately, this sometimes keeps me up so late that I refuse to wake up an hour early in the morning to do my workout. What am I supposed to do? I know the obvious answer: read late because being mentally present the next day is not really important.

Okay, kidding. This is what I did...I planned ahead for next time. After sleeping through a workout one fine morning, later that day I decided to plan out a workout that I would do the next morning. There is no way I could write out plans like this the morning of. The brain is still dreaming of sugarplums when my alarm goes off, so that's why the morning "workout" tends to be just running. 

Aren't my nails just precious looking? That's lavender polish with two (yes, two!) golden-flecked accent nails. 

So here's the gist of the workout: it was hard.

Yes, many of my workouts are hard. But since this one combined lots of intervals with some intense running, it really stacked up the intensity level overall. Not the hardest workout I've ever done, but it was a great one nonetheless.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this workout was the "fast run x 5 min" portion. After doing all the calisthenics, burpees, and jump roping, the leg muscles and bones just want a break. But you cannot give them one! You must run as fast as you can for 5 minutes. Yeah, that sucks, and I'm a workout nazi. But that's what will truly make you stronger, faster, fitter and leaner - pushing through that pain and fatigue just when you feel like it's almost too much to handle.

You can do this workout in a gym and use a treadmill for the running portions if you please, but I created the workout based on the roads and paths around my neighborhood. My warm-up/cool-down route takes me about 8 minutes to jog, and I can complete a different, shorter route in about 5 minutes when I run fast (or about 6 when I'm getting exhausted).

As you can see, at the bottom of the workout, I predicted that if you repeat the "circuit" portion 4 times, then it will take about an hour to get through the whole workout. If you repeat it 3 times, you can complete the workout in about 50 minutes. Basically, I estimated that each section of the workout would take 10 minutes. That was a gross underestimation. Unless you're going to use an interval timer to keep yourself on track, allow about 12-13 minutes for the "circuit" here each time you do it.

So that part where it says "repeat 4x"? Yeah, that ended up being 2 times for me! I really wanted to do the circuit 4 times in an hour, and maybe that can be a goal of mine this summer for this workout. Basically by the time I had finished the circuit twice I was already at about the 45-minute mark for my entire workout. And as much as I would have loved to play hooky from work and just keep on exercising in my garage, I knew I had to cool down and go take a shower eventually. So I finished up that second circuit, did about 7 minutes of core exercises, completed my cool-down jog, and then called it quits.

So basically, you can do whatever you like on this little ol' workout. It will be a lot of work anyway around it. If you're even more of a workout freak than I am, repeat that circuit 5 or 6 times!

Also, you might be looking at what I wrote down for my workout and thinking, she did 8 push-ups and 16 crunches. She is not a workout freak...she's kind of wimpy. Oh no, friends. If you're doing these things slow enough and with the right form, you should feel the burn after about this many reps. That's right...slow down your workout to make it a better one. Except for the running part or any true carido - that's meant to be fast. But if you're truly conditioned and 4 or 5 rounds of squats, push-ups, rows, burpees, and ab exercises makes you feel like you did nothing more than blow out a candle, by all means - add a few reps to each set. You can do whatever you like. You know that.