Last Week Review + New Outlook

Last week was crazy busy but mostly because a lot of it was spent in the gym or doing fitness related projects. The usual Monday night Body Pump class was another killer.  The class is super effective but each week I realise that my core strength needs some definite work (more on this later!).  I realised that there is not much point in going to the gym to purely work on cardio.  It is not as effective a fat burner as a lot of other things I can do whilst I am there.

I have spoken before about an old shoulder injury which does hold me back from time to time.  This is something I am really focusing on to strengthen in the coming weeks.  I have put together a basic shoulder workout which I did on Saturday morning as well as a basic leg workout which was my hour session on Friday.  I think the structure of that really helps.

PT was a lot of HIIT training again this week.  This time shifting the focus to strengthen my shoulder and to build my general core strength.  I managed 7 whole minutes on the cross trainer - a new achievement for me seeing as I hate the thing.  I also have lost another 3lbs this week which takes me to a whopping 18lbs in total.  I am really pleased with that result and know it is what is motivating me to keep working hard.

So core strength. Or the lack thereof.  We have put together a nightly 5 minute challenge which involves just core workouts.  It starts off with planking for as long as you can (timed), a 30 second rest, plank again for as long as you can, 30 second rest, heel taps for 30 seconds, rest, heel taps for 30 seconds, rest and then a final 30 seconds of heel taps.

Plank record (from last night's first attempt) - 30 seconds.

Hopefully I can beat that for next week.

A new recipe I have tried this week (to try and add excitement to my chicken and rice) is to turn it into a tomato based chicken curry.  Just cook the chicken as normal, chop it into small chunks and let it simmer in curry paste with a 1/4 tin of chopped tomatoes.  It went down a treat!

From this week I am going to be carefully planning out my workouts on a Sunday for the week ahead.

Next post:

Shoulder Workout - basic breakdown
Leg Workout - basic breakdown
Plank challenge update!