Tag Archives: HIIT

I Love My ZWOW’s :)

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By now many of you have seen my workout posts on Facebook. I do a lot of different things to keep fit and one of the top ways is to do HIIT workouts. There are soooo many people posting workouts that one need never step foot into a gym unless they really want to. Me…I love free! lol

One of my favorite trainers is Zuzanna Light formerly of Bodyrock TV. She has her own FB page here and website now with her workouts which she calls ZWOW- Zuzanna’s Workout of the Week. Every Thursday there is a new ZWOW to do and so far she has posted 45 of them. :) We who do these W/O’s like to call ourselves Warriorz ;) . lol Hey if it motivates then call yourself what you will!

just one of many ZWOW’s

Yesterday I was a little reticent to try #45 because it involved wall stands. I am a bit of a control freak <—–gross understatement—–> and if I feel I cannot do something I’d rather not try. I am working on this so I just went for it. Now with the wall stand…I had a fear of falling and hurting myself so this inhibited me from really pushing through with the thrust up to the stand. I would throw my legs up a bit then chicken out and thump to the floor! Yesterday I had a renewed sense of determination! I would succeed!!! and I did! WOOHOO! I was so proud, you have no idea. Amazing what accomplishing something will do for motivation and self-confidence :) .

I suggest you try these ZWOW’s if you are looking for bodyweight or light weight workouts that are short and work multiple muscle groups. Don’t be afraid to give them a try and you can modify any of the moves as with any workout. Here is a link to her YouTube channel: Zuzka ♥.

Let me know if you try these workouts, I’d love to hear how you like them. If you already do them, which is your favorite one?

Have you let fear get in your way? Did you overcome it?

in health

Denise ♥

 

 

 

 

 

Subscribe now for your chance at a GIVEAWAY!

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It’s time to build up my subscriber list! I appreciate those of you who already subscribe and I would love for you to share my blog with like-minded people. Once I reach 75 active subscribers I am going to do a:

http://www.gymboss.com/ Has graciously offered up a Gymboss Interval Timer for me to give away to one of my lucky subscribers!!!

Perfect for your HIIT and Tabata routines!

All you need to do to enter is subscribe to my blog (you must activate the subscription to be eligible).
Then ’like’ Gymboss’ Facebook page, my FB page and then tag both of us with a comment on your FB page :) It’s that simple! Make sure you write on my timeline that you have tagged both FB pages as FB is acting up and I am not notified of your tags! https://www.facebook.com/gymbosstimers
https://www.facebook.com/fitpsychology?ref=tn_tnmn
Once you have completed the above, write a comment here starting with “I want this prize because…” in the comments section. Be inventive! :D

Current subscribers will need to write the comment too ;)  

Once the subscriber count reaches 75 I will activate the draw and let you know who the lucky winner is.

Start sharing my blog with your friends and families. The more subscribers the more giveaways I can do with you all.

in giveaways and health

Denise ♥

 

 

I am a runner…

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I have been doing a lot of HIIT workouts in the recent months and have let my running slide to once a week or less. I figured I had better up my frequency as the thursday night trail running group starts in 3 weeks and I love this group run. I was not surprised that my run did not start out all that great. While the HIIT W/O’s are great for strength and fat burning etc., they are not so great at maintaining cardio endurance if you reduce or eliminate your running routine.

Where I run you cannot avoid hills, period! So, as I set out on my run which starts on an incline I quickly realized the negative effects my reduced mileage was having on me. I reduced my pace and even slowed to a walk in order to re-think this run. Once warmed up a little better I set out on a 7K out and back to the beach. I quickly found my groove and got set in a comfortable pace and tuned in to my music. Once I reached the 3.5K at the beach I stopped to take a picture and then set back out on the return 3.5k. Oh boy, this was not a stellar performance. My legs felt very heavy from yesterdays W/O and the incline seemed to go on forever, well it did as it’s pretty much a steady incline back home with little bits of flat! Then my sciatica started to act up around 5.5K and I had to walk a bit. I ran/walked for about 1K then ran the rest of the way home. Overall, a good run considering I hadn’t run in about 2 weeks and I felt happy and positive for the rest of the day.

Turn around point on my 7K...so pretty

 During my run I recalled a conversation I had earlier in the week about what defines a runner. I say if you’re not walking you’re running, this other person says if you are slow, you are a jogger, and a runner is someone with speed and endurance. (now you see why I italisized the words with RUN).

So as I am running today I thought well, am I a jogger then? I am slow so maybe I am a jogger. I’m having to do walk/run intervals for a bit, so what does that mean?  Why was I offended at the term jogger, and so adamant that I am a runner? One person on a Runner’s World forum said it best in one word – Pride. Yup, we want to be called runner’s because it conjours up positive images of fit, lean people. Jogging sounds, I don’t know, frumpy or something. Then I thought, you never hear of a group called ‘learn to jog’ do you? No, it’s always ‘learn to run’. No ‘jogging’ clinics, just ‘running’ clinics. You don’t hear “I just jogged a 10K”, you hear “I just ran a 10K”. Yup, pride I guess.

Just for fun I scrolled throught the Forums to see what people there had to say on the subject and whoa baby, this is a hot topic! A lot of angry, sometimes judgemental people over there that want to keep the verb running to themselves. There is the odd person who writes the neutral response of: call it what you want.

One one response was – “Under 6 min/mile = running Over 6 min/mile = jogging”

Another - ”I am comfortable running at about 9:30 min/mile.  I run in the 8:00s when I’m working on speed, I suppose.  Yesterday I ran in the hard, crunchy, ice snow averaging 10:30 mm.  I was running every single one of those paces…and everything in between.  Nobody will ever tell me any different.  I AM a runner”

I kinda agree with the second post. There really doesn’t seem to be a true answer anyway so I say call yourself what you want according to your definition, and I will call myself what I want to be known as, a runner. It’s a state of mind, and if that makes me get out there and run then that’s what I’ll call it :)

 Websters Dictionary defines running as : to go faster than a walk; specifically: to go steadily by springing steps so that both feet leave the ground for an instant in each step and it defines jogging as: a movement, pace, or instance of jogging (as for exercise)… guess we are both right ;)

in running and health

Denise

 

Keep your POWER!

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How is it even possible to be March right now? Boy time passes by fast so I hope you are all taking time each day to reflect on what works for you and what doesn’t, when it comes to food and fitness choices.

Don’t let your own self get in your way ;) . This is very easy to let happen as we are all busy working, raising families, seeking out that promotion at work or just trying to survive the current economy and hold onto the work we have. All of these realities can cause us to battle the inner thoughts that say “you’re too tired to work out”, “go ahead and have that (insert bad food choice here)”, “just one more glass of wine.” Yes, while we are wallowing our time away in front of the TV or downing the second round of potato chips/glass of wine we have a momentary sense of ‘happiness’ but how long does that feeling last? Usually after a short while we start getting thoughts of how weak we are, how we should be ashamed for our poor choices and that there must be something wrong with us. HOLD UP! This sort of self talk is so not productive! First of all, don’t ever let someone tell you these things especially not yourselves!!! Do not give up your power of control, power to change your thoughts and feelings about why you do these things in the first place. We all posses the power to turn it all around…sometimes we have to sift through a lot of mental garbage to find it that’s all. I’m not pretending it is easy to do, I have had my struggles with self control and sabotaging thoughts and will probably continue to have to dig deep occasionally to make the right choices. I use my inner power to get into my workout clothes and do my W/O. Once I start, even if I dreaded starting, I often hear a voice booming in my head “Oh I am so happy I made this choice” or “this feels awesome”. I can tell you from my experience that these feelings of happiness last much longer and make me feel much better than when I give in to my inner voice telling me “nah, don’t bother”. The boost in confidence I feel when I accomplish an exercise I have been struggling with carries me along for sometimes days!

Once you decide that you are worth every push up, every healthy meal, every positive thought, you will quickly realize that you do posses the power to make good, positive decisions that will change your life for the better.  What we all really need to work on is when we stumble and make a poor choice that doesn’t mean we have to give up, throw in the towel, it just means we have to get up, dust off our butts and continue on this incredible journey called life. We have to practice patience with ourselves, to realize that these changes we want to happen, whatever that may be, will take time…a lot of time. Sometimes we will encounter internal walls, and sometimes we will encounter external walls. It’s how we decide to deal with them that counts.

There will always be work to do…are you up to it? I sure hope so!

in power and health

Denise

 

 

 

Overcoming my fear of doing a HIIT routine at the gym…

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Ok, I really love HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts, they are fast and furious just the way I like it. I also love running and I wanted to combine the two to make up a great routine as I was getting tired of the typical high knees interval.  So I thought I could go to the gym and use the treadmill and jump on and off to do the routine I wrote up. No problem you say??? Well, there is a problem when you are as self conscious as I am that someone may look at me funny and think “what the hell is she doing?” I know most of you are probably saying who cares what people think but I also know there are loads of people just like me. We “think” too much…way too much. I am a rule follower by nature so I think, “well the cardio room is for running /cycling/elliptical/rowing and the weight room is for strength training and the multi-purpose room is for exercising, right?” Now this is me making up this “rule”, not the gym. I have this crazy idea that I can’t mix it up a little or I will look foolish. I will tell you that I have wanted to mix it up for some time now but even the thought made my stomach queezy! (seriously, you’d never know I was 46 with thoughts like this still happening!) anyhow, all day I was thinking I should break out of my comfort zone and just go do it and see what happens. Ok, this is how my thoughts went:

1) I’ll just do an interval W/O at home then go to the gym and run. No, because once I finished at home I’d talk myself out of going to the gym.

2) I will go to the gym and just do an Deekron Interval run (podcast)

3) or I could just put aside my fears and do my HIIT routine and not care what anyone else thinks!

So before I could change my mind I quickly changed and drove down to the gym. This happens to be a Canadian Forces gym and what is the CF famous for? FOLLOWING RULES!

The ride down takes me all of 5 mins and in that 5 mins I talked myself back and forth between “I will do this” and “OMG, I just can’t” a thousand times. Even parking the car I was thinking about what if everyone looks at me with disgust and laughs! As I am writing this I do realize how silly this sounds but this was very, very real to me. I go in, swipe my members card and started toward the Cardio room and almost had a panic attack! I don’t have a Gymboss Interval timer…and you cannot have your cell phones out in the gym for privacy reasons(camera)!!! Another road block as I use the timer on my phone to time my 50/10 intervals. I ran back to the lady at the desk and explained that I wanted to use my timer only and she ok’d it. Phew! See I could have just said forget it and ran instead.  Next was setting out my book on the floor behind me and my timer then jumping on the treadmill for a warm up. In the 4 minute warm up my stomach was doing flip flops because even though there were only 5 other people in the cardio room, they would see me “breaking the rules” I started my routine with a 1 minute run then without another thought I jumped off and started doing push ups. When I jumped back up to return to the treadmill I was afraid to look around…ummm, NO ONE WAS LOOKING! Are you kidding me? I had spent hours today agonizing about how foolish I was going to look, how embarrassed I was going to be, how awkward I was going to feel! Only to realize that no ones cares what I am doing, they are there for their own personal reasons, minding their own business, reading a magazine on the treadmill, plugged into their MP3 players and just enjoying the good feelings that come along with working out. Once I came to this realization I got so into my W/O that I added 4 more intervals to the routine. I started to sweat, grunt (yes grunt…what? it happens) and push my way through one of my best W/O’s in a very long time! I felt a freedom come over me like I have never felt, freedom from my own mind, my own self sabatoging thoughts and fears. I feel like I made a break through tonight and that is not an over statement. I faced a fear of being embarrassed head on and I won! I am so glad I tried…

This was my routine-I left the treadmill running and hopped on and off...is this bad for the treadmill? See, afraid to break a rule

Oh and by the way, someone did end up saying something to me after I jumped up from my push ups(I do reg PU’s)…she said “that was impressive!”  :)

I hope you will step out of your comfort zone and not let your thoughts negatively dictate your actions.  I have learned a valuable lesson tonight, and I now have the confidence to return for another great W/O without fear and anxiety. Good for me!

in fitness and health

Denise ;)