Life with a Fork

I have to thank my parents for raising our family in a very active household.  All five (yes, five) of us kids have been playing sports since we were extremely young.  I have played soccer for most of my life, dabbled in a few half marathons, been a gym rat, worn workout clothes during the day to feel like I was doing something active, and found a love for high intensity interval training.  I have been essentially every level of “athletic” that there is.

I used to love going to the gym when I was about 19.  I would literally spend about two hours 4-5 days a week at the gym when I was “my healthiest”.  I’d trek away on the treadmill for an hour (a whole effing hour!) and then do about an hour worth of weight training.  I was dedicated and I looked pretty good!!!

"look at me, I'm so fit (and effing exhausted from running myself into the ground)"

Dedicated for about 3 months that is.  There is only so many hours one person can spend on a treadmill before they get bored and for most people that is about one…in a lifetime.  Let’s be honest here.  The treadmill is boring! No one actually likes it.   After my stint of being in really great shape but miserable for two hours a day, I took a lot of time off from working out and health in general for that matter.  Needless to say, I chunked up quite nicely.

Fast forward to today where I completely understand and implement the concept of diet being #1 for health.  For more information on my diet, click here.  Once I had my diet in order, I needed to incorporate an exercise regimen and I was not about to walk my ass into that gym again.  I began researching body weight exercises and found loads of information on high intensity interval training (HIIT).  HIIT are short training sessions usually from 10-20 minutes that incorporate sprint work, intense cardiovascular drills, and bodyweight strength training.  This is really the best of both worlds for me:  I get my cardio and strength training in each day but it only takes me about 30 minutes to complete an entire workout instead of two hours.  Of course, when you research this, the most popular thing you will find is Crossfit.  (Oh how I wish I could be one of those fancy shmancy bloggers who writes about her clean eating lifestyle and goes to Crossfit 4-5 days a week.  If only I were made of money….or had a sugar daddy that valued health enough to pay for that.) Basically, if you can afford Crossfit then I highly recommend it.  The lowly peasants will stick to our own bodies as gyms for now.

A typical HIIT session for me would look like this:

6 rounds of :30 second work and :10 second rest

High Knees
Pushups
Jump Squats
Mountain Climbers
Burpees
Jump Rope

I use the Gymboss timer for almost ALL of my HIIT exercises.  I highly recommend ordering one of these because they are super cheap and really beneficial to your workouts.  It helps me stay focused on my exercises instead of worrying about keeping track of time.  For the record, I only wish I were sponsored by this company.  Buy one here.