Burn Baby Burn: 2 Workouts to Turn Up the HEAT

Hey blog buds!  Happy Monday!

Did any of you have a Pineapple Mojito Slush over the weekend? Or a non-alcoholic “Projito“?  Here in Denver it was definitely good weather for it – we’re in a heat wave!  And I’m loving it!  It’s supposed to be 100 degrees tomorrow.  Ahhh heat.  It makes me crave delicious green smoothies and cool veggies.

We are fortunate to have cool mornings, usually in the high 50s, low 60s as well.  So it’s ideal for still squeezing a run in outdoors before the heat kicks up.  I was watching the 9:00 PM news the other evening and they mentioned that at bedtime it was still 101 degrees in Arizona.  (And I always say I want to live there.)  Holy hotbed!  101 at bedtime?  That would be tough. I’ll take 100+ during the daytime, but at night when you are trying to sleep seems just wrong!

Speaking of BURNING UP…  a lot of what I’ve been writing lately has been focused on foodie topics.  Today I wanted to share the last couple of weight training workouts I’ve done.  I did an upper body set on Friday and then lower on Saturday.  In our household this weekend there were a lot of exclamations of “ouch”, “oh”, “yeow”.    I LOVE being sore from a great weight workout and these two were no exception.

For part of my upper body workout, I’ve been following along with the “100 Pushups” plan.  I downloaded the app to my iPhone and start out my upper body days with it (after a good warmup of course).  I decided to do this simply because pushups are one of those things that you just seem to lose strength at if you aren’t doing them regularly.  And I’d noticed that I’ve been a little weak in that area, letting myself do more modified (knee) pushups than I’d like to admit. 

Day 1: Arm Busting Upper Body Workout:

• Pushups – 5 sets of 12, 13, 10, 10, 15 (total: 60)
• Pullup Negatives (hop into pullup position, hold there for a breath, then SLOWLY lower yourself) – 2 to 3 sets of as many as you can do
• Barbell Bent Row – 3 sets of 10, 13, 12
• One-Arm, One Leg Overhead Shoulder Press (works your balance and core while you do your shoulders) – 3 sets of 10, 10, 10
• Rear Delt Laterals – 3 sets of 10 with a PAUSE and HOLD at the top

Day 2: BUM-Busting Lower Body Workout:
Use Tabata timing for the lower body (20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, repeat for 4 minutes straight per exercise) You can get a 99 cent Tabata app for your iPhone

• Static Ball Squats – squat and hold during the 20 second “on” phase, stand during the 10 second “off” phase
• Smith Machine Squats – no holding on this one, perform squat movements up and down during the 20 second “on” phase
• Leg Extension Machine- oh the burning quads!
• Leg Curl Machine – oh the burning hamstrings!
• Plyo Lunges (jump lunges) – Do the lunges during the 20 second “on” phase, rest during the 10 second “off” phase.  NOTE: do not perform this exercise if you have troublesome knees.

Cool down and stretch at the end of each workout.

Give it a try and let me know how you like them!  I promise you’ll feel those plyo lunges for a few days. 

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This week MSP and I are taking some time off of work to have a Colorado “Staycation”.   One of our plans includes hitting up Barr Trail again (that hike near Pikes Peak which is the one that ate me up and spit me out last fall.)  I can’t wait!  This time we get to start EARLY in the morning while the weather is still cool (hopefully).  I’m sure I’ll have a lot of really fun pictures to post afterward.  We’ve talked about maybe going rafting or up to the mountains to try out an alpine slide.  We also talked about seeing the King Tut exhibit, but for the cost of the tickets decided we’d rather do something a little more adventurous!

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Question for FitFeat Readers: Are any of you finding FitFeat to be slower when it is loading in your browser?  It is for me.  So I’m trying to discern if this is a lack of speed on the part of my host server, something in the theme programming causing a slowdown, or maybe I just happen to have a slow internet connection these days?  If you have a second to drop a comment, I’d love to hear from you as to whether you’ve noticed it being slower than usual or not. I know that can be irritating, so I want to fix it if you guys notice it! Thanks so much!

Have a great week friends!

– Shari B. =)