Fitness you say?!

I’ve posted about style and food, but no fitness yet! That is just unacceptable since fitness is such a large part of my life now.  How did I get into fitness, you ask? It all started when my first high school girlfriend got engaged and asked me to be a bridesmaid.  Of course I was thrilled and I wanted to look my best as I stood there to support my friend on her big day.  My boss had been seeing a personal trainer for a little while and I figured that if I was really going to do this, I needed someone to keep me accountable.  Doing 20 minutes of walk-jogging was not going to get me into my best shape.  So in February of 2010, I started going to a personal trainer. Enter Danielle Korb of Sweat Training!

Conveniently Sweat was a ½ mile from my house, which I liked.  However the intense butt kicking I didn’t like!  Danielle was passionate and I was on board.  I saw her about 2-3 times a month, and also went to a Saturday morning boot camp she held.  I wasn’t doing much additional fitness with my travel schedule, but I was doing something! After about a year, I decided that I wanted to fully commit. I joined a small gym close to my house to amp up my workouts when I wasn’t with my trainer.

Fast forward 2+ years and here I am. I try to workout 4 days a week (ok, ok…with a busy schedule, sometimes its 3, but there are weeks where I have overflowing motivation and squeeze in a 5^th day). I still train with Danielle 3-4 times a month, even though she moved to a new downtown location.  The new place is further from my house, but a total improvement from the old location. 

My daily routine is HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), which mixes intense cardio with weight exercises.  I usually get 4-5 sets squeezed into 55 minutes.  Each set is 3 rounds of 15-20 reps (depending on the exercise) and each round has 2 different exercises. For example, I will do 15 bench presses then 15 squat/overhead presses then sprint on the treadmill for 30 seconds.  That’s one round (see why they call it high intensity?!).

I am proud to say that I have lowered my body fat percentage as well as my measurements.  My goal was never to lose weight, but to be tone and look good in my clothes.  I can bench press 60lb., do real push ups, and clear a 36” box jump.  And I got a HUGE compliment today from one of Danielle’s other long time clients that I haven’t seen in a while.  She told me I looked toned, how awesome is that?!