Workout Wednesday

I know that today is Friday, but I did this workout on Wednesday and my calves and quads are still reminding me of that. 

Last weekend was one of much celebration when my husband and I traveled to Atlanta to witness the marriage of my good friend Jenelle and her tall, handsome man friend, Sahile.  

Aren't they just lovely in love?

We're pretty good looking too, actually.

So for me, that meant 3 days off from exercise, fresh bagels with cream cheese each morning, a few too many cocktails from the open bar, and delightful meals from other nooks and crannies of the city of Atlanta including a fried egg BLT (with a side of extra bacon...what!?) from Kaleidoscope, a burger and fries from The Brick Store Pub, and of course, tacos and guac from Tin Lizzy's. I don't regret eating any of that stuff because it was delicious, but oh boy, I think it wreaked havoc on my system! As one of my former nutrition professors once said, "A bad meal can do more bad than a good meal can do good." Read that again until it makes sense. This was so true for me over the weekend. 

So while perusing through the highly entertaining world of Pinterest and trying to recover from feeling so bloated and useless from the weekend, I stumbled across this "Killer Kardio" workout and decided it would be the perfect thing to jump start myself back into some high-intensity exercise. 

And how did it go? Oh wow. Yeah. I did do some damage over the weekend. It's a hard workout anyway and I was doing it in 85+ degree weather with high humidity (I'm a southern gal, I can handle some humidity). But oh, wow. By the last set I thought my arms were going to fall off. Read over it for a minute, commit yourself to it, then I'll give my own re-cap. 

(source)

So here are a few things I did differently. 

Frist, instead of doing each of the "1 minute" exercises for a full minute, I did them for about 50 seconds, rested for 10 seconds, then started the next one at the top of the new minute. Does that make me a slacker? I didn't think so. 

Second, burpees. I did sets of 15 instead of 20. Why this adjustment? Well, even though I'm strong and fit, I've never done that many all in one set. Usually I max out at about 12 or 15 on burpees anyway, so with all of the other exercises in there  and considering that many of the ones listed that utilize upper body are very shoulder-heavy, I had to cut back on these just a bit. 

Third, push-ups. I did 20. Ya know, I'm just hardcore like that. (It's only one set, you can do it too!)

Fourth, I altered the running part. Before I even started with set 1, I did a 7-minute jog to warm up. Then after sets 1 and 2 I ran a little bit faster than usual but decreased the time to 5 minutes. Then at the end of set 3 for the run, I did a 10-minute cool-down jog instead of the 5 minutes fast like before. Even then, I felt like I was going to collapse. But I slept so well that night and felt quite accomplished from completing the workout that I did. 

The thing that makes this interval-style workout different from many of the other ones I do is that this one is all cardio. Well, I guess push-ups and tricep dips are not, but for the rest of the workout your heart rate is going to be soaring and there is very little opportunity for "active rest." When I design workouts for myself I tend to put active rest intervals in there a lot. That is, after I've worked one muscle group really hard, the next exercise will not involve that muscle group. I won't necessarily get a break in the workout, but it does give me a chance to recover just a teeny bit. 

This workout, however, I did not design for myself. The hardest part? I would say the high knees. Oh yes, getting those knees up repeatedly is no easy task. If you're going to do this, really try and push yourself through the parts that are toughest for you. During high knees, really try to pull your knees up to hip level (like in the illustration) - or even higher. At least if you tell yourself that's what you're going to be doing it will keep you maintaining that high intensity level rather than gradually slowing down. If you need to modify some parts of it like I did, you know your body best so do what it tells you to do.

Set some reasonable goals and try to stick them out for the entirety of the workout. You can do this; even at the end of the workout image you see that you are not going to die. How exciting is that? But also like the image states, when you're done you need to drink some water...lots and lots of it!!