Go For Your Personal Gold!

Good evening Beautiful,What a long friggen day. I slept horribly last night which didn’t help. The pain that I’m having in my leg was hurting in the middle of the night and it was keeping me awake. I drank 2 coffees today, usually I only drink 1. Random tidbit of information about coffee… did you know that the caffeine in coffee causes cortisol levels in the body to rise which causes stomach fat? But if you use a heavy cream (preferably whipping cream) in your coffee, it somehow creates a layer on the inside of your stomach that allows a slow release of cortisol so it doesn’t cause as much stomach fat. Cool huh? Today’s blog post will probably be one of the shorter ones. I did a smaller workout today because I doubled up yesterday (including volleyball) and I also worked out with a friend of mine today, who pushes me harder than usual so even though I didn’t do as many different exercises, I can already feel it!We started with seated row on the cable machine. I did 3 sets of 12 of 45lbs. I know this isn’t a heavy weight, and I usually do more, but my friend had positioned my arms and had me focus on one specific area of my back and my normal weight was too heavy to do this movement with. It’s crazy how different an exercise can be just by repositioning your arms, or consciously thinking about contracting certain muscles. The next exercise was one that I had never done before. I positioned myself in the middle of the dual cable machine so my hands were on the chin-up bars (yes, I can just reach up and grab the chin-up bars… that’s what girls who are 6 feet tall can do). I brought my feet up so that they were resting on the back ledge of the cable machine and my body was parallel to the floor. At that point, I did some pull-ups. I was positioned like this so that I was basically doing a rowing action, just with my body weight. Unfortunately for me, I’m not THAT strong yet, so I needed some assistance from my friend, but completed 3 sets of 10 of my bodyweight. My forearms are exhausted from holding on for dear life, but it was definitely an exercise I will be doing again!We moved onto a prone row type of exercise. My chest and stomach were against a bench that was at about a 40 degree angle and I was facing the floor. I used a 15lbs weight to start and pulled them up until they hit my shoulders and my elbows were out at my sides, I lowered them and then pulled them back up to my shoulders again, this time with my elbows tucked into my sides. I did about 6 reps of this until the weight was too heavy. My arms (mostly my forearms) were so tired from the previous exercise that I couldn’t even lift 15lbs, so I lowered it to 10. I felt stupid, but it is what it is I suppose right?Then we decided to do biceps. We did a standard bicep curl with 10lbs on each side (I could have done more… not to self) with an external rotation at the top of the curl. I did 3 sets of 10 of these bad boys just fine, so then I was cocky and challenged my friend to the next bicep exercise, see if he could tire my HUGE (not) arms. We went to the dual cable cross machine again (except a different one in a different location in the gym) and put the lever right at the bottom. I sat adjusted the weight to the appropriate bicep curl weight (23lbs or something….) and sat down on the ground. I grabbed the bicep curl bar, and lay down on my back. The point of lying on your back is so that you don’t swing your body when performing the bicep curl. Neat huh? I did 3 sets of 10 of these again (ha! Challenge... won!) but the last few were a struggle. That was the end of my workout today. Since my goal this week was to literally work out every day this week, I have to figure out what I want to do tomorrow. Maybe another interval training session? I worked out at 3pm today and the gym was SO DEAD it was great. That will most likely be my workout time going forward, especially if I plan on doing intervals. I need to somehow incorporate kettlebells into my sets tomorrow, I love them so much. They make me feel intense, like every woman in the gym is like “holy, I wish I could do that…”. I know they aren’t actually like that, but it’s a bit of a confidence booster, and thinking that makes me also really think about my posture and technique so it’s perfect at all times.My friend and I have decided to workout with each other every Wednesday afternoon. Next week we’re going to do some intense boot camp style training, and I cannot wait! I’ve done this type of workout with him before and wanted to cry, this is going to burn some serious calories!How is your week going? Tomorrow is Thursday – I love short weeks! Today I registered for the Toronto canfitpro Conference that happens in August (website here - I highly recommend it, if you are a fitness professional OR just a fitness fanatic!). The theme this year is "Go For Your Personal Gold" and I love that so much, so motivating... see above for the logo this year! I actually used to work for canfitpro before I moved to Toronto, and I helped plan the Toronto conference curriculum. This is the first year in 7 years that I've had to pay to go to this conference, and it felt a little weird. I definitely had mixed feelings. It was about $300 for me to go after my staff discount I get, and as I was picking my sessions, I realized that 1. There wasn't a TON of sessions I was dying to go to but 2. there were a ton of presenters I want to see because I had built relationships with them during my 4 years at canfitpro. So basically I'm paying $300 to mostly see friends from the past, and hopefully get a couple workouts in over the weekend and learn something new in a few lectures. Hopefully I'll get my $300 worth, Simon Whitfield is the keynote speaker this year which will be cool. I'm also hopefully going to meet Tosca Reno (you can check out her website here). She's on a panel presentation with 2 friends of mine who have told me they could arrange an introduction! My goal is to 1. Meet the queen of clean eating and 2. somehow get her to follow me on Twitter. She's following like 6600 people right now, so what's another, right? :) Hey Tosca! If you read this - I can't wait to meet you! And please follow me on Twitter - I'd be so grateful!If she follows me, I will update this immediately. :) Stay sweet.
xoxo
Post Script Update - TOSCA IS FOLLOWING ME ON TWITTER! How cool is that! She started following me at about 8am this morning... :) so happy...