Good morning, friends.

I had a glorious Monday because I was home at 8pm and not 11pm.  You have NO idea how thrilling those couple extra hours of extra time were to have last night!

Day in the Life

My day looked like this:

• 6:45am — Alarm goes off.  **Groan**
• 7:25 — Out the door.
• 8:00 — At my desk.
• 8:00-4:15— The whole 8 hour thing.
• 4:15-5:00 — Commute to the Y.
• 5:00-5:30 — Chit chat with my boss, Jess (another trainer back from Italy), Ashley (instructor friend back from Antigua), get changed, scarf a snack.
• 5:30-6:30 — Own workout.
• 6:30-7:30 — Personal training client (hi Jen!)
• 7:30-8:00 — Impromptu meeting with another fitness instructor
• 8:00-8:30 — Drive home, chat with Slesh, throw together quick dinner
• 8:30-9:00 — Wrote this blog post while eating
• 9:00-9:15 — Wrote tonight’s blog post
• 9:15-9:30 — Shower
• 9:30-10:30 — Get ready for bed, send off some Y emails, finalize playlists for tomorrow’s classes, chat with Tim (who is away AGAIN — on business this week), 5 minutes of breathing with no electronics before bed.
• 10:30 — Bedtime!  Early for me!!

Thank goodness I don’t have a “day in the life” blog.  HOW boring would that be?!

Cardio Workout

Anyways, last night’s personal workout was an elliptical sesh.

The bootcamp program I’m following called for “5/5 Cardio Intervals.”  It was definitely a sweaty 50 minute workout!  Here’s what it looked like:

This concept can be adapted to any cardio machine, where you start by warming up lightly, then alternate between five minutes at a normal pace and five minutes at an increased intensity pace, until you you’ve done that four times and it’s time to cooldown.  If you try this one on your own, please make sure to adapt your resistance to your own level of fitness.  You don’t want to just be starting out with a cardio program and be on a 9 resistance!

By the end:

Calories burned = happy Athena.  Not that these machine calculations are ALL that accurate anyways, but still.  Yay!

If you are in the mood for a long cardio workout where you can zone out but still work really hard, this is a keeper.

If you choose a cardio machine workout, what is usually your machine of choice?  And how long do you stay on it for?

Mine is the elliptical or the spin bike, for sure!  I definitely need something low impact to offset all the H.I.I.T work I do in all my Circuit classes and all the jumping I do in Kickboxing and Cutz!

Enjoy the day.  🙂