Gettin' Organized & Gettin' Fit

Hey Y'all!  Today's been pretty productive, which is surprising considering how darn lazy I feel!

But I got on a kick fairly early this morning.  I was ready for church just a wee bit early and perusing the articles on the Yahoo homepage.  One of the articles listed a handful of wonderful exercises you can do to tone up at home with limited equipment.  I was inspired!  

One of the exercises was pull ups.  Specifically, assisted pull ups!  If you know me, you'll know that upper-body strength is not something I possess.  Before I got pregnant was Bunkey, Hubs and I were working out together at the gym fairly regularly.  I'd run on my own, but Hubs was coaching me in some weight training to build up some muscle tone.  I was really progressing well and could see the results of my hard work!  One of my favorite machines at the gym in Virginia was the assisted pull-up machine.  I was able to do a few sets and was working toward doing pull ups on my own.

And then I got pregnant and my doctor advised I limit my weight training.  Pull ups were out.

And then we moved out here (California) and with a newborn and horrendous childcare fees, if simply became impossible for me to work out when I wanted where I wanted.  Early morning gym sessions were not going to happen.  I don't enjoy working out in the evenings either.  So I was pretty limited.  

With a treadmill in the garage my cardio was covered.  Purchasing the Brazilian Butt Lift videos gave me a bit of variety.  I could do both while Bunkey napped.  Neither took up a ton of space in our living area and neither required much special equipment.

I lost all my baby weight, but my muscle tone was lacking and my strength left much to be desired.  I knew I needed to make some changes.

Which beings me back to this morning and the Yahoo article about pull ups!  Since Bunkey has been born, I've wanted to jump back on the strength-training bandwagon and get back to my pull ups.  But being limited to my "home gym" I knew I couldn't do that.  We simply can't buy expensive gym equipment while living the military lifestyle...  The fact of the matter is that I can't do a pull up on my own.  I need assistance.  Yes, there are doorway pull up bars that don't require drilling or putting holes in walls.  That's great, but they don't offer the boost I need until I build up enough strength to do pull ups on my own.

Enter Super Bands!  The article on Yahoo mentioned these bands and I began to get exited! I told Hubs all about them, how you can loop them over the pull up bar and then hook the resulting loop around your knees/ankles to offer resistance and assistance.  When Hubs told me he knew what I was talking about and had actually seen these in practice at CrossFit gyms, I got really excited!

So after Mass this morning we made a pit-stop at Target and picked up the pull up bar.  I also got an exercise ball and a set of 5-pound dumbbells (I already have 10-pounders, but needed something a bit lighter for a few of my exercises).  We looked for the Super Bands to no avail and then walked across the parking lot to Sports Authority with the same result.

But I came home and found them online with no problems!  I placed an order and then got inspired for my next bit of this post: getting organized!

I have a subscription to Fitness magazine.  I also used to have a subscription to Cosmo that I cancelled months ago.  But even though they cancelled my subscription and sent me a refund for my unread issues, they continue to send me the magazine.  Needless to say, I had a small mountain of unread mags under my bed.  I also had a pile of ripped out magazine pages in the drawer of my bedside table.  All were for various exercises or recipes from the two magazines.

So this afternoon I organized all the ripped out pages.  The recipes were clipped together and brought to the kitchen to work into the meal planning.  The exercises were grouped by muscle group (abs, butt, legs/thighs, arms/chest/shoulders, total-body).  Then they were placed in page protectors and into a three-ring binder.

And that, my friends, is my new work-out bible!  I went through the mountain of mags, ripped out what I needed, read the articles that interested me, and tossed the rest in the recycle bin! So now, after my cardio, I can pick out some strength-training exercises from my binder to throw in a routine to coax back that muscle tone I used to have!

So there you have it....getting organized and fit all at once!  Wish me luck!