Three Things Thursday – Working Out With Jillian!

So, I found out last week that…..

1. I get to work out with JILLIAN MICHAELS!!!

Jillian is this years CanFitPro Conference Keynote Speaker and as a Group Ex Instructor for GoodLife Fitness I get the chance to participate in a BODYShred class led by THE Jillian Michaels!!!

I’m a little nervous of this…

…but I’m super pumped to be coached by Jillian Michaels! I’m thinking this just might be the most intense workout I’ve ever done!

2. If you’ve never seen or heard of BodyShred, it’s a group exercise class offered at GoodLife Fitness here in Canada and Crunch Fitness in the US. Basically, it’s a 30 minute, high intensity, endurance based workout. There are 4 rounds of 3 minutes strength training, 2 minutes cardio and 1 minute of abs. There is no rest between exercises or rounds. Pretty much every exercise works multiple muscles and its an amazing workout that burns fat, builds muscle, and improves your health!

3. This will be my first ever celebrity led workout and I cant wait!! The countdown is on – only 22 days until I workout with Jillian! WooHoo!

Well, that’s my exciting news for today!

Have an awesome weekend everyone!

Have you ever done a workout led by a celebrity trainer? If so, want to hear all about it!

If you haven’t, but could, who would you want to workout with and why?

13 in 2013 – February/March Recap

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a fantastic Easter weekend! We were pretty busy but managed to sneak in a little down time, and even a family nap on Sunday – it was awesome!

 

It’s time for a 13 in 2013 Recap. I totally missed February’s so here’s a February/March combo post letting you know how I’m making out with my 13 goals for 2013.

 

1. Spend less, save more – I am happy to report, we are spending less and saving more!

How are we spending less? Well, we are planning meals, grocery shopping only once a week, buying many items in bulk from Costco, and have not eaten dinner out in what seems like forever!

How are we saving more? Back in January, I came across this idea to help save money. We started right away and since it seemed so reasonable and allows for some flexibility, we decided to double the weekly amount. So, 14 weeks in we have just over $230 saved and didn’t notice it from our budget at all. By the end of the year, we will have set aside $2756! So easy!

 

2. Run a 1:58 half marathon – I plan on running two maybe one half marathons this year. My original plan was to run one in the spring and one in the fall, however, I’m thinking the spring one is not going to happen. I’m a little bummed about it, but really, I’m not loving running right now, and finding/making time to do it has been difficult with my husbands crazy busy work schedule. I’m disappointed because for the first time in forever, I actually ran over the winter. I joined the Winter 100 Challenge and it totally motivated me to run all winter. It was awesome, and I loved running. However, once the training schedule came out and running needed to follow a structured schedule, it totally took the fun out of it for me. Running hills on my lunch, taking time away from my family every Sunday, and having to miss out on other workouts I love, made me start to not love running anymore 😦 

So, with that being said, I’m going to get back into running for fun. I hope to run 5,6, maybe 7k on my lunch a couple of times a week, and hope my mojo comes back!

And if I’m loving running again, maybe I will sign up to do a half this fall and aim to do it in 1:58!

3. Try one new clean eating recipe a week – As far as Clean Eating goes, February and March were pretty good. I made Dark Chocolate Chip No Bake Cookies, Blueberry Crumble Muffins (Clean Eating, Aug/Sept 2012), Potato, Leek and Cheddar Soup (Clean Eating Classic Comfort Foods), Oven Baked Chicken Parmesan (Clean Eating, March 2013), and Kale Chips.

You can find some of these recipes on the NEW Clean Eating Recipes Page above.

 

4. Become a certified RPM instructor – I am was totally planning to on attend(ing) the March 23/24 training weekend HOWEVER, with my husbands crazy work schedule, and the launch of Gillian Michael’s BodyShred at GoodLife, I decided to hold off. As much as I love RPM, I would really, really love to get certified in BodyShred! Unfortunately for me, so would like a million other instructors and since numbers are limited, I’m not actually sure when this will happen for me 😦

In the meantime, I’m super excited to let you all know I am officially on the schedule teaching BodyAttack starting next week! WooHoo!

 

5. Do 10 chin-ups – This is yet another thing that totally took a hit when my half marathon training started 😦 I got into a funk and working out was of little interest to me – which is totally crazy, cause I love it! I will make this happen though! I’ve incorporated a chin-up challenge into both of my fitness classes this semester and will be re-starting the program mid-May.

 

6. Build Strength – I am getting stronger! Mixing up my workouts, adding in some CrossFit, Tabata and a bunch of other stuff is working! How do I know? I actually did the ENTIRE push-up track in Attack yesterday morning WITHOUT modifications, well, on my knees of course, but that’s how I roll! Amazing!

 

7. Go to bed earlier – I’m totally rocking this one! I have no idea when the last time I saw 10pm was!

 

8. Blog more – My goal was to blog 5 days a week – which would mean about 40 posts since my last update. How’d I do? Well, in February I posted 17 times and in March I only posted 11. So, my plan is to get back on track, make better use of my time and hopefully I will get back to 4 or 5 posts a week.

Anything in particular you’d like to read about? Let me know, I’m always looking for ideas!

 

9. Run 3x a week – As I said in goal #2, my plan is just to get running again. I hope to be running 3 times a week before the end of April. I want to keep if fun and love it again!

 

10. Drink more water – As always, room for improvement here! Bring on the warm weather so I can stop drinking WARM tea and starting drinking COLD water!

11. Read 52 books – Week 14 and I’m on my 9th book. Not bad. Maybe I need to chose some shorter books! Hehehe! Check out the Books I’ve Read page to see what I’ve been reading. Have you read a good book or two lately? I’d love some recommendations!

12. Take at least 2 family trips – Work in progress… Our trips will most likely occur during the summer, so we have a bit of time to choose where we will go and what we will do.

13. Date night once a month – Our February date night was dinner out at one of our favourite Mexican restaurants. We hit up Made in Mexico where the food was delicious and the Corona was cold!

I don’t think we actually made it out for date night in March 😦 Will have to try for two in April!

 

So that’s where I’m at. Not great, but not too bad either! I’m hoping April is the month where I get back in track, have time to enjoy the things I love, and continue to grow as a Happier, Healthier, More Fit Me!

How are you making out with your 2013 goals?

5 Days of Fun and Fitness

For the last little while I have been writing about how busy my life was getting as I prepared for a presentation I was giving at the OFSAA Women’s Sports School Conference and also my BodyAttack Training weekend.

Well, they have both come and gone, and I am proud to say, I survived both!

The conference ran last Thursday and Friday, but because I was on the organizing committee, I had to be there to get things set up a day early. This year was the 5th time I have organized the annual OFSAA Conference, which alternates between The Women’s Sports School and The Coaching Symposium – which is a very similar conference except the focus is geared more towards coaching high school sports than teaching them, and it is co-ed, as opposed to women’s only.

Here is a picture of this years committee:

We also had a few student helpers and one of the girls brought her mother-in-law to help as well. They were awesome!

On Friday afternoon I taught two TRX Suspension Training sessions. Overall, I think they went pretty well, I received lots of positive feedback, and everyone had fun and got a great workout. Here are some pictures from my sessions.

Another successful OFSAA Conference in the books! Super fun as usual!!

So, with the conference out of the way, I finally had a bit of time to get organized for my BodyAttack Training. I had a bit of practicing to do after the kids were in bed on Friday night, but, unfortunately I was running a little low on energy after a busy two days and two TRX workouts, so there wasn’t a whole lot off practicing going on!

Saturday morning I was up early and headed to Brampton for my training. I was super excited and nervous at the same time.

The training started off with Fred – our instructor – leading us through the current release, BodyAttack 76. Being the first workout of the weekend, and wanting to impress the instructor, we all pushed ourselves to the max and had a great first workout!

Can you say S.W.E.A.T.Y.!!!

After a little lunch and some theory, we were back at it…this time we went through the release track by track and broke down all the moves. It was time to start perfecting out technique! Although not quite as intense as the first workout, there is really no way that BodyAttack isn’t intense!

Here is a picture after round 2…still smiling!

After some more theory, it was time for fitness testing. We did the Beep Test, a push-up test, abdominal crunch test, and a flexibility test. Overall I didn’t do too bad…

That was it for Saturday! Yay! Time to get home and spend a bit of time with the fam before collapsing from exhaustion!

Sunday morning started out the same as Saturday, but with the trainees teaching and Fred videotaping and evaluating our performance. I was assigned track 7 (the agility track) to shadow, and track 9 (the power track) to teach on my own. Unfortunately, track 9 is the last cardio track in the workout, so by the time I had to go, I was already pretty tired. To my surprise, things went pretty well. Aside from forgetting to give the low options, I remembered all of the choreography and was only given a couple of things to work on for next time – next time being later that same day! YIKES!

Can you say T.I.R.E.D and S.W.E.A.T.Y.!!!

After our morning workout, we had a chance to rest as we watched ourselves on video and did a bit more theory. Following that, it was time to do the fitness circuit – I had heard bad things about this circuit, and it totally lived up to them! 5 stations, 3 BodyAttack specific movements per station, one minute per movement – all done twice. This workout was killer! And to top it all off, Fred led us through two cardio tracks immediately after the last station. I honestly felt like I was going to puke. So much so, that I couldn’t even eat my lunch 😦

Poor Erin!

At least we had a chance to rest before teaching to our peers for a second time.

This time was definitely easier…could have been the fact that I totally slacked off during everyone else’s tracks and chose the low options ALL the time, or maybe it was the fact that I was a little less nervous, or possibly because I remembered to give the low options this time…anyways…I improved on the the things I needed to work on, and delivered a pretty good workout to my fellow trainees 🙂

Yay! I survived BodyAttack Training, and had fun while doing it! Not only that, but I met a great group of people too!

Here is one last picture…its of me and Fred – he is awesome! The best instructor ever! Thanks for everything! You rock!

So, that’s it! 5 days of fun and fitness! I’m definitely looking forward to a little down time!