Week of Workouts

Happy Sunday! I’m planning on posting a weekend recap tomorrow, which is new for me, but something I personally love reading on other blogs.

How’s your week been? The reality that it’s time for me to head to college in about two weeks is settling in right about now, and I have pretty mixed feelings about it. I’m excited for sophomore year, all the new classes, clubs, and friends. But I’m also a little scared and reluctant to leave my amazing friends and my favorite city in the world.

In any case, I intend to really dive headfirst into college planning this coming week, so that will hopefully raise the excitement levels over the fear levels.

This past week I babysat every day for a 9-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. Let me tell you… I LOVE THESE KIDS.

I’m normally not great with kids. I just get really awkward and don’t really know what to do with them. But with these kids? We just vibe amazingly well together, and I honestly love every second. It’s pretty exhausting, I’m not gonna lie, but it’s also so rewarding.

I shared on Instagram stories (if you don’t follow me yet, I’d love it if you would!) how what I think makes a huge difference when babysitting is when you connect with your inner child and treat the kids like you’re on the same level as them.

You still have authority and demand respect, but you also know how to have fun and make them laugh. And I think that requires a certain level of childish giddiness and not being afraid to be a little weird. Trust me, kids love it. And you’ll be happier, too.

This week of workouts was a great mix of sweaty and intense with lower-key and restorative. With the job, I was a little more tired sometimes, and I made sure to be very very conscious of what my body needed.

 

Monday- hiit + arms

I did this long hiit workout (by long I mean 32 minutes including warm up and cool down) and this killer arm workout by Rebecca Louise.

This made a workout under 50 mins, including warm-up and cool-down, which is basically my sweet spot.

I’ve been leaning away from using heavier weights on my arms and experimenting with bringing it back to primarily bodyweight and low weights with higher reps. So for this workout I alternated between 5 and 8 pound weights, depending on the exercise in question.

 

Tuesday- foam rolling + stretching session

I was going to work out, just a 45 minute long dance workout, but my legs were toast after yesterday’s workout, and I honestly just felt really tired. Might have had to do with my less-than-stellar quantity of sleep plus the fact that I was babysitting two active children the entire morning.

 

Wednesday- hiit + abs

This was a nice and short, but quite intense and sweaty, hiit and abs routine. While I normally would tack on a bit of extra core work, I was pretty beat today. Babysitting is no easy task, I tell ya, and I had a pretty jam-packed day this day.

 

Thursday- kickboxing + arms bodyweight + abs

A nice quick workout. I combined a bodyweight arm sesh with built-in kickboxing intervals from Fitness Blender, and supplemented that with a tough ab routine from Rebecca Louise. I don’t normally do core two days in a row, but yesterday was more hiit than abs. I did a few random pushups interspersed throughout my cooldown routine at the end just to burn out my arms.

 

Friday- long toning yoga workout

My body was really craving yoga today, but I felt pretty high-energy, so I wanted something more power yoga than restorative flow. This one from Adrienne hit the spot.

 

Saturday- hiit + lower body + abs

This workout from Fitness Blender is no joke. It’s not long, less than 30 minutes excluding the cool down, but it completely burns out your lower body. This was the first time I picked up heavier weights because my body was honestly craving them after the hiatus, and it felt incredible. I think I’ll reintroduce heavier weights for the lower body, but keep focusing on lower weight and bodyweight for upper body.

This ab workout was a perfect finisher.

 

Sunday- power yoga + stretching

Sundays are usually my very low-key active day. I either just take a rest day and end up walking around or running errands, or I do a comprehensive stretching routine so that I’m invigorated and energized for the following week of workouts come Monday. I find that doing intense exercise on Sunday makes me much more likely to burn out quicker the following week.

I did this short yoga sequence first and followed it up with the longer power yoga which was absolutely amazing and made me want to try the Y7 yoga studio in NYC. For a little extra stretch, I followed these up with this calming routine.

 

And that was my week in workouts.

 

What was your favorite workout from this week?