Finding Time to Exercise

It’s week 2 of Spring Break and hump day!  I have found it incredibly difficult to get to the gym and get my regular work out done.  So my stress level has been a little high while dealing with 2 very energetic boys.  The gym I go to has child minding but their usual customers are babies, toddlers and preschoolers.  My boys are 5 and 7 and definitely not challenged by the toys offered so the next best thing to do would be to fight with each other.  Right?  Yeah…a little hesitant to take them to the gym!

So after threatening their lives, toys and then bribing them with a trip to the movies this afternoon, I was able to leave them in the room looking angelic and sweet while saying “bye Momma, have a good workout”.  It was quickly followed by a short rendition by my 5 year old belting out “I’m sexy and I know it…I workout!” while shaking his butt!  #embarrassed!

With my mind full of scenes containing rambunctious boys in a small room, I decided that I would forgo my usual Wednesday workout (back & chest with a short run) and opt for an all over body workout in high intensity sets.  It would guarantee to get me out of the gym within 45 minutes.

When I started strength training, I wanted an easy, all over body workout that would start to condition my muscles and get them ready for my final plan which was to condition and tone my body using free weights while focusing on certain muscle groups each day of the week.  My gym has a great layout for circuit training and I started there until I stumbled upon a great free weight workout in Oxygen Magazine (oxygenmag.com) in February.  The workout includes some cardio movements between each set of weight exercises but I decided not to do those and always followed up with a 5km run or 25 minutes of speed intervals.

Here’s what I did:

Weight Exercise	Reps/set
Goblet Squat	15/3
Alternating Chest Press	15/3
Single Arm Shoulder Press	15/3
Alternating Bent-Over Row	15/3
Alternating Lying Dumbbell Extention	15/3
Dumbbell Stiff Legged Deadlift	15/3
Standing Zlottman Curl	15/3
Weighted Russian Twist	15/3

I only allow 10 seconds rest in between each rep with 11/2 minutes rest in between sets.  Done with the right weight, you will break a great sweat with this exercise and feel really good coming out of the gym.  You will know you have the right weight when you are struggling to move it in the last few reps of the last set.  Also, be prepared to use more than one weight set.  I use 10’s, 15’s and 20’s and line them up at the bottom of the bench.

Good news is that even though I didn’t get my full workout done, I did get something in today and walked into my boys sitting and playing with cars on the floor being absolute angels.  Win, win!  Oh and we saw the Lorax today too!