Hello! I’ve missed you guys. Hope you all had a nice Memorial Day weekend. Tim and I are finally feeling settled in our new apartment, and it’s like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I’m excited to be back today to talk about my workouts lately. I seriously don’t think I’ve written a full fitness update since I talked about how I maintained my fitness routine through the holidays. And just like that, it’s almost June. Whoops.

At the beginning of the year, my workouts felt a little scattered. I wasn’t following any specific training program and found that I missed the structure of one, so I decided to repeat level four of the Modern Woman’s Guide to Strength Training. I’ve been doing that for the last couple of months and really am starting to see some gains in the lifts I’m working on. I’m way more comfortable with depth and grip for barbell front squats, and I’m finally starting to add some weight to the bar. I’ve hit 150 pounds on my trap bar deadlift, 25 pound dumbbells for my neutral grip chest press, and 20 pound dumbbells for my half kneeling overhead presses. Rope slams are coming more easily to me, and I’m trying out some of the advanced exercise variations in the level 4 programming such as tempo changes in my single arm rows and putting weight plates on my back for my pushups. As for my chinups, I’ve progressed to pulling myself up to 90 degrees from a dead hang and not swinging my legs to help me. I’m excited about that progress.

I’m still teaching my Tuesday and Thursday 6am total body conditioning classes, but I’ve pretty much stopped working out with the class and am teaching only so that I can stay and lift at 7am after I teach. I find that this helps me ensure I get at least two solid days of strength training in, and if I can do a third in the week then even better. As for my other workouts, I try to get to one spin class a week (I mentioned I recently became Schwinn certified and will be looking to pick up some regular spin classes after our wedding), and I’m splitting up the rest of my time between running based workouts outside (steady cardio runs, Harvard stadium, or track workouts), NBGNO events (May recap coming this week), and trying new classes on ClassPass.

Yes, I finally caved in and joined ClassPass. You might remember that last year I was offered a free trial of ClassPass when it first launched in Boston, but I didn’t get to try it out to its fullest extent. Now that the studios on ClassPass aren’t only located in downtown Boston, it’s much easier for me to get to some of the classes and see what’s out there. It’s also really helped me get back into yoga, which has seriously been missing from my life, and it’s an excuse to have active dates with my friends. I have a post in the works to give you guys full reviews of the classes I’ve tried so far, so stay tuned! Until then, for anyone interested in signing up, ClassPass is running a special where if you sign up by the end of the day through this link, you can save $50 off your first month. That link will take you to my unique referral code, so if you sign up using that link, I will also get $50 off my next month of membership. If you have any questions about ClassPass, happy to answer them!

Those are the main updates to share with you guys for now. As for what’s next, I am coming up on the last two weeks of repeating phase 4 of MWGTST. Since there’s no level five (really hoping for another program to come out since I’ve loved this one so much!), I plan to switch gears a little bit over the next few months. My wedding and honeymoon are now less than four months away, and I want to prioritize fat loss more than I have been. Prioritizing fat loss doesn’t necessarily mean I have a large amount of body fat to lose, but while focusing on strength I haven’t been doing as many metabolic resistance workouts as I used to, and my body does feel a little bit different. I don’t necessarily want to switch my workouts to ONLY metabolic ones though because I don’t want to lose the strength I’ve worked so hard to build. So I’m going to focus on both. I have so many of Jen Sinkler’s Lift Weights Faster workouts to still try, and I also recently purchased John Romaniello’s Omega Body Blueprint program because it was on sale for only $27. Tim and I might give that one a whirl together! I’ll keep you guys posted on how these go.

That’s it for today. Hope everyone is easing back into their work weeks this week after the non official start of summer kicked off yesterday. This weekend is a three day work week for me, one of which will be from home… so I’ll take it! I’m really looking forward to next weekend – Tim’s cousin is getting married in Newport, and we’re making a three day weekend out of it. We really need some time away!

Readers, let’s chat! What’s going on in your fitness worlds lately? What goals are you working on? How do you balance strength training and fat loss? What did everyone do over the weekend?

P.S. A big happy birthday to my brother today!