Strength Training Makes A Comeback

Hello friends!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend. If you’re just catching up, be sure to check out my recap posts from the Dole Food and Wellness Blogger Summit I attended last week in Los Angeles:

• The Dole Summit: Part 1 — includes a healthy breakfast demo, Q&A with Dole, and an insider’s look into Dole’s healthy staff cafeteria!
• The Dole Summit: Part 2 — includes new product tastings, an awesome recipe, and a blogger iron chef cooking challenge!

Also, be sure to check out my post from yesterday as you plan your Thanksgiving menus:

• My Favorite Quick, Easy, and Healthy Thanksgiving Recipes

Anyway! Remember when I was partnering with LA Boxing over the summer and showed you guys pictures of myself getting my butt kicked in hour long workouts with a trainer once a week? (Check out my strength & ab exercises page for links to all of those workouts — lots of great moves for you to try yourself!) I’ve heard from some of you that you miss those posts — well, this post is for you 🙂

On Thursday at the Dole Summit, I was lucky enough to be set up with a 1 hour “fitness consultation” with Michael Brazeal, the Director of Fitness at the California Health and Longevity Institute’s fitness center, which is located inside the Four Seasons.

The session started by chatting about my current fitness routine (a combination of cardio (running, hiking, walking, elliptical), yoga, swimming, strength training, etc. — some sort of movement at least 6 days a week), my current height/weight and whether I was happy with it (yes), and what I was looking to get out of the session today. I told Michael: “I’m just looking to get an awesome workout. You better not go easy on me!” Michael grinned and said, “You may be sorry you said that.”

We started with a short 5 minute warm up on the elliptical to get the blood flowing. Always best to warm up first!

I told Michael about my recent LA Boxing partnership; he was excited and suggested we start our workout with a little boxing 🙂

We did three 2-minute all-out boxing rounds. Michael held the ball and I worked on pummeling it via punches, kicks, body slams, you name it. It was HARD work! Two minutes per round doesn’t sound like long but I was breathing heavily and sweating in no time.

It was so fun to have gloves on again 🙂 We both worked up a sweat and were smiling throughout the session.

Here I am getting a lesson on form — must remember to throw my whole body into the punch, not just my arm!

Speaking of my arm — it was moving at the speed of light, obvi. 

Victorious!

Next — it was on to some core strengthening moves! These were SO hard and I’m really excited to keep doing them in my little apartment gym.

First — balancing my forearms on a ball while in a plank position and alternating lifting one foot off the ground and holding it. Holy crap was this a good core workout. A plank is hard enough as is — but add in trying to keep your self stable and your lower back/butt from dipping down too low and you’ve got something seriously hard.

Next up — the reverse! Another plank, but this time balancing my forearms on the ground and my feet on the ball.

Michael had me move my feet so only my toes were on the ball — gah! SO hard to balance, definitely fell off a couple times 😉

Next up — balancing on two foam rollers! Another insane core workout. I started with my knees and hands on the rollers, then slowly lifted my left leg and my right arm at the same time, held it, and then lifted the opposite arm/leg. It was REALLY hard to balance — again, fell off a few times!

After the balance moves, we moved on to a bunch of strength/stability moves using these fitness ropes/bands.

Michael had me do all sorts of different arm movements with the bands. These are great because you’re using your own body weight and working to stabilize yourself, so it’s more of a full body workout than just using weight machines.

Working my lats:

Triceps:

Chest/pecs:

(Wearing my “Will Run for Bacon” shirt, obviously — the gym staff were amused.)

Shoulders (by lifting the band straight up):

Combined with squats:

Biceps/forearms/pecs:

And then — the grand finale. This was SO HARD because my arms and abs were already so exhausted by this point!

With my feet in the bands, I got into a plank position (with my feet lifted in the bands), then pulled my knees toward me into a crunch:

Then, when back in the plank position, I did a push-up.

Whew! Michael had me repeat that same move by moving my legs forward/sideways towards one arm, then the other — working the obliques! At that point I pretty much collapsed 🙂 Thanks for a great workout, Michael! Glad I could make your day by not only asking to get a butt-kicking workout, but being able to back it up, too 🙂

This workout was so awesome because I’ve been in a total rut in my little apartment gym and really needed some new strength training ideas! I’ve been great about running, yoga, swimming, walking, and hiking workouts, but I’ve totally been slacking on strength training, just using the one machine in my little gym half-heartedly. I’m really excited to have some new moves that I can do in a small amount of space! I hope you guys will give them a try, too 🙂

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Speaking of fitness — I put two of my favorite fANNEtastic workout videos up on Well, Then! If you haven’t seen them already (I made them in the spring — you can find them on my strength/ab exercises page!) — check them out:

• Weighted Triceps Lunge
• Lateral Leg Exercises

Have a great day! I have my fun Food Science lab tonight so stay tuned tomorrow for another recap 🙂