I have been on a little exercise hiatus lately, so it’s been hard to write about my previous workout plan knowing I haven’t been following it lately. I must admit, I’m in a rut. I had some minor surgery a couple weeks ago to remove some abnormal cells on my cervix (which all came back non-cancerous, thankfully), but it has set me back quite a bit on my fitness goals. But I wanted to share what I was doing BEFORE this hiatus, because I liked the routine so much that I can’t wait to get back to it as soon as I get the all clear from my doctor!
As I mentioned in my This is 40 post, I started a new workout plan a few months ago. This “Transformation Workout” I more than loosely followed (not loosely followed, but not strictly followed either) for a good couple months before summer started. There were definitely missed days and small changes I made to the plan, but for the most part, this workout gave me great guidelines on what muscle groups to work out together. Here is how it came about:
Hubby: What did you work out at the gym today?
Me: Arms.
Hubby: (slight pause with a stare) Just arms?
Me: Yup, that’s all I really had time for.
Hubby: *shaking his head*
Me: What?!
Hubby: How long have you been working out? You know better than to just do arms.
Then he goes on to explain to me how I should be working out larger muscles primarily and then compliment with the smaller muscles. Blah, blah, blah. I guess I did know this, but chose not to follow because I didn’t want to spend more time in the gym? I needed more time for things like Pinterest, of course. Which obviously paid off when I came across a pin for The Transformation Workout. It was all part of the plan, see?
So in a nutshell, this workout is a monthly plan of cardio and weight training, 5 days a week. Every day of the workout you do cardio. Not 2 times a week, not 3 times a week, FIVE times a week. This should be some indication on how important cardio is to a fitness plan, right? The cardio alternates between interval training on the treadmill and interval training on a stationary bike. Here was one of my tweaks….I think i may have cycled once or twice over the past few months. Almost all my cardio was treadmill work. 5 minute intervals of a 2 minute fast-walk incline and a 3 minute flat jog. I just don’t like the stationary bike, period. If I’m doing a spin class, fine, but it is not my freestyle cardio of choice.
The weight training followed a pretty standard pattern which made it easy to tweak as necessary (maybe there were exercises I didn’t like doing or a piece of equipment wasn’t available at the gym. I could easily swap out another exercise from one of the other days). It consists of various exercises for large muscle groups with a compliment of smaller muscle groups. It went something like this:
Quads
Shoulders & Triceps
Back & Biceps
Plyometrics/Hamstrings
Butt & Chest or Back
After a couple months I noticed the number on the scale going UP?! What?! I was getting really discouraged, but was happy with what I was seeing in the mirror so I stopped stepping on the scale. Then recently I’ve had to weigh myself a few times and noticed the number was going DOWN, but I hadn’t been exercising and my eating habits were mediocre at best. That’s when it dawned on me that the Transformation Workout was increasing my MUSCLE MASS. Cha-Ching!! That’s what I wanted all along.
So…as soon as I am able, I am going to start back on this workout plan. Summer will be spotty since the kids are home and refuse to go to the Kids Club at the gym anymore, so my plan is to start some morning runs once my doctor says it is okay. But come fall, this will be my go-to plan. Maybe NEXT summer I’ll have the lean, muscular body I was trying for this year. In the meantime, no bikinis for me this year. But that’s quite alright with me.
