Body Remix

Lately my posts have been inconsistent and sparse. For this, I do apologize, but as for my excuse, I am in the process of moving. The move started in October, and between hotels and temporary housing, my husband and I are still not in our permanent home. Hopefully I'll be back up and running with some decent blog posts consistently by the new year!

In the meantime, I have not forgotten about exercise. Actually, I've been pretty consistent about that. One of the first things I did when we got to our new city was scope out the gym. Although the layout was a bit unusual (cardio machines facing each other…what's up with that?) it looked like it had a decent amount of equipment, so I shed my sweatshirt and decided to hop on a StairMaster for a little while. Well, not even 30 seconds into firing up my iPod, I was approached by a staff member telling me that I could not work out wearing the tank top I had on. What? Am I really being excused from the gym because of my workout top which I wear all of the time and have never even thought someone would deem it inappropriate attire for the gym? Yes. It happened. Apparently I'd missed the sign at the door indicating that no one may wear anything sleeveless in the building.

The top I was wearing looked similar to this one, from Target:

So with my tail between my legs, I scurried out of the building while nervously pulling my sweatshirt back on. That was so unusual! I mean, could they not have just let me wear my sleeveless, racer-back style workout top that completely covers my midsection just that one time, because it was my first time? I guess not.

Anyway, I decided to go do my own workout instead, in a place where sleeveless tops are permitted: the great outdoors.

Outdoor track, all ready for an athlete!

I did a Nike Training Club workout. If you missed the post where I raved about this app, here's the rundown: it is awesome; you can virtually customize your workout; you will get a great workout every time; the app is free.

I did the one titled "Body Remix," however, I did not have any equipment (not even a mat!), so I really had to improvise with some of the moves. I'll give the rundown of what I actually did here.

Open the app.
   > Click "Get Toned"
      > Click "Advanced"
         > Click "Body Remix" (the first workout on the list)
And get started! Now if you have equipment and want to do the workout as it is all laid out, be my guest. You will get a fantastic workout. If not, follow along here:

Feeling excited to work out. Let's do it!

• 1 minute: Back pedal and jog forward
• 2 minutes: Slide and glide (left and right)
• 2 minutes: Light jog
• 1 minute: Recover
• 1 minute: Burpees
• 1 minute: Push-ups
• 1 minute: Plank
• 1 minute: Ski jumps (sometimes I call these "speed skater jumps")
• 2 minutes: Walking lunges
• 2 minutes: Bunny hops (get low into a squat position, take tiny jumps forward on the balls of your feet)
• 1 minute: Bicycle crunches
• 1 minute: Toe touches
• 1 minute: Kick-downs (laying on your back with legs straight up, lower legs to the ground without actually touching the ground, then sweet them back up to the starting position)
• 1 minute: Push-up to frogger (do a push up, hop feet forward and to outside of hands like you're doing a burped with a wide jump, hop them back so you land in push-up position, repeat)
• 2 minutes: Squats
• 1 minute: Triceps push-ups
• 1 minute: Walking lunges
• 30 seconds: Mountain climbers
• 30 seconds: Knee tucks (start in a push-up position, hop feet in and bring knees towards chest, then hop back to starting position, repeat)
• 2 minutes: Standing hamstring stretch
• 1 minute: Pretzel stretch (glute stretch)
• 2 minutes: Standing quad stretch

And you're done!

This is how I felt when I finished that workout:

But I lived to tell you about it!

I included a few instructions above, but if you get the app you can see full instructions as well as short video clips of how to do each exercise. Any modifications that I made were not so complicated that you can't figure out what they are. And if you think so anyway, just leave a little ol' comment here!