I can be your fairy godmother!

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Malin

The person who knows your body the best will always be yourself and therefore I think it is important to communicate with my clients to meet their requests. So this sunny Wednesday morning with me as their fairy godmother their wish was about to come true…

…but not until I had tried the intensity of the workout myself 😉

The first circuit was just for warming up and making the heart pound a few extra beats before getting into the fun part. We did it twice through with 30 sec plank to push up and 30 sec plank followed by 10 push ups.

With that done we did a variation between a wood chop and russian twist apparently called “crazy Ivan”. Sitting down with the feet either on the floor or off the floor depending on the desired intensity lifting a medicine ball from one hip up through to the opposite side. This should be a challenging move and it may not be the core that gives in first as the shoulder has to do a fair bit of work as well.

To finish this series off we did another variation of burpees but instead of a push up we twisted both knee to the opposite elbow before we jumped back up into a squat jump. And I can promise after two sets the warm up was completed.

Giving the abs a small rest we got into the lats. I have a few goals of my own in mind this spring and being able to do pull ups is one of them. For some reason I am really weak or my body is to heavy for my arms, you choose which one you think it is…haha

So first out was cable pulldown, this is not a favorite move of mind but like I always say you will seldom like anything you’re not good at so you just hang in there and keep pushing.

Next up was TRX “lateral trunk twist”, this move will not only work the lats but also the shoulders and biceps. Hold on to one strap, reach for the floor behind you and pull yourself up and reach along the strap.

At this point I had a nice burn going and with one more exercise before the grand finale it had to be single arm rows.

And here they were, the pull ups! I am not ready to do it without assistance and the first couple of reps felt so easy but coming into the last few I had the shiver!

I did said I was the fairy godmother today and I didn’t want to disappoint nobody so we went back to the old TRX to hit the core. The first exercise was really two in one, almost like a bargain, right! Put the feet through the straps in a push up position, pull your knees in to your chest and out again. From there you will pike your hips up into the air as high as your can using your abs…that is one rep. Normally your abs should be burning by 10 but if not by all means keep on going to 15 or 20, it’s your choice and it’s your workout 😉

With the rectus abdominis out of the way next up was to hit the obliques. This move can be done from the floor as a regular “spiderman” or with one foot through the strap and the other one reaching for the shoulder and back into a plank position without the foot touching the floor. Again it is not only the core that is working, it is a lot of tension on the shoulders as well.

Someone recently told me the summer is around the corner although I have a hard time believing them but one thing I know is that few of us likes that “muffin top” sticking out. This is a great move to work on the love handles. Again, you can make it easier by keeping your feet on the floor but using the TRX, creating an unstable environment will make you recruit more muscles to stabilize the entire exercise. You can stay here or you can shoot the hip up in the air pretending you are rolling a ball underneath you to take it to the next level…

…and that is how you make dreams come true for some 😉

It will be what you want it to be!

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Malin

This week has been a little slow and it seems like a lot of people is sick or feeling sluggish and I would guess it’s the weather change. This will only give excuse to the unwell but for the rust of us, we don’t have one!

As you probably have figures out by now I am training for 1/2 a marathon but this doesn’t mean I given up on weight lifting. I like to “feel” that I worked out the day before, yes I sort of thrive on being sore. The thing is, trying to get all the miles in we have planned for every week and being tight and sore is not necessarily a good combination. But to every problem there is a solution, right? And mine is called YOGA!

This hour gives me the opportunity to center myself, release all the tension in my muscles but also focus on the goals I have ahead of me. So yesterday when I was doing my first run of the week, 6 miles. 2 miles warm up then 20 sprints a 30 seconds then running normal pace and legging it the last 1/2 mile and it was tough. The wind was gusting in my face and my heart pounding at 185-190 beats/minute and I’m not lying, it felt like I was running in syrup. That is when I came back to that place I go to when I’m doing yoga. Again it doesn’t mean it stopped hurting but I knew that I could do it and so I did!

Sometimes we need a little magic!

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Malin

I sleep really well last night but I woke up a few times because my lower back was killing me, not in a bad way but from yesterdays sweet workout with Frank. Soreness from a workout will never stop me so with 2 Advil later and some tiger balm rubbed into my back and I was as good as new.

I knew what I had to do today because Megan told and I am sticking to the game plan. So with 5 miles to run today I started as planned but in the middle of the run the treadmill came to a stop and I had to start all over and some personal stuff came up that was completely out of my control and all the sudden it felt like I was running in a storm.

Everything was hurting and I had one mile to go and I was going to crank the speed up from 8.06 minute mile to 7.54 minute mile and with the darkness in my mind it felt…hmmm, not impossible but close.

So when Tarik, a fellow trainer walked through the doors I begged him to stand next to me and help me push and so he did. He made sure I did not give up and when I told him I was puking he just told me to keep running and stop making a mess. I came in on 24.14 at three miles and then I already had over two miles under my belt.

Sometime we just need to use some magic to turn the negative into something positive and the storm that might have been ahead is all of a sudden less threatening!

Thank you Tarik for pushing me to the end!

Practise what you preach

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Malin

Today we had a guest appearance from the City. It was Laura’s friend and I’ve been told she is just like me “a gym junky” so the pressure was totally on. I knew the girls was going to be sore from the drop sets we did on Monday so arms was more or less off-limits. So coming in I had to try the workout to see if it was descent or not. As I did Frank, on of the trainers at Lifestyle Fitness decided to join in. It is so much more fun when you have a workout pal because if I every thought about giving up when working alone, having a partner it never even crosses my mind.

So there we were, Frank and I slightly rushed for time when we started to crank out the first set of wood chops, body weighted side bridge, burpee with push up and last but not least shoulder extensions from a medicine ball. Although this was a core circuit the shoulders had to stabilize a fair bit so coming into the last move me and my shoulders had a very private conversation 😉

As we are having a bit of a drop-set week this week what would be more appropriate than carry it over to the legs as well. So with a barbell squats, dropping the weight twice followed by 20 walking lunges with at least 20 lbs weight did the trick…

…but to every frontside there is also a backside. This time around we did the drop set last and started with 15 Barbell “good mornings” followed by Romanian deadlifts. I was coming into my third set and I was glad I was seeing the silver lining of the workout. We topped the day off combining the weight training into 6 minutes cardio blast. I could with an ease to my mind let the girls do the same because I knew I pushed myself and how could I ever give them a workout that would not be challenging enough?!!

Thanks for coming Michelle!

A new week with new possibilities

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Malin

Finally I think spring is coming our way and what more do you need to get inspired to push that little bit extra and I know for sure that the ladies used it at their advantage.

It was meant to be a total body workout but sometimes it feels like we always working against the clock trying to squeeze in as much as possible in 60 minutes. So first out today was walking lunges with shoulder a press and tubing while “driving” with a medicine ball also working the shoulders. The girls really cracked me up because they were so unsynchronized that Anna was almost squashed between Elli and Lynne. This two moves are very good for the obvious reasons, working the legs (and shoulders) but the tubing is so good for toning the outer thigh.

These two moves was accompanied by single leg squats and bridge keeping the feet on the medicine ball for a more challenge and I will confess as soon as i went outside today I knew they had to run for the first time this year in the cul-de-sac!

As much as I wanted to stay outside we are not really there yet so we went back inside and worked the upper part of the body. We focused on biceps, triceps, lats and the pecs doing drop sets to build some muscles. Starting at the heaviest weight they did 10 reps, dropped the weight and did another 10 and then dropped the weight one last time and finished off another 10 reps.

I hear this all the time that “I don’t want to get bulky” but girls don’t have to worry about it because we don’t produce that much testosterone that is required to start looking like the incredible hulk. I believe that the stronger you are the better you will feel so start lifting and get strong girls!

What are you bringing to the beach this summer?

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Malin

Sometimes I ask my clients if they have any request before the workout and lately I’ve been asked to focus on the core. I am a strong believer that you can never have to much of it and I always incorporate some into every workout. So as a good listener I did what I was told and started the day with some vicious work to the abs, focusing on the strength instead of endurance.

So the ladies started with 10×3 crunches (front and oblique both sides 10 each) followed by 15 back extensions with a 10 lb. weight. As most of us we all have our weakness and strengths so the weight added was ranging from 10-45 lb and with no rest we moved on to 15 cable crunches. Sometimes it can be tricky to engage the abs and you end up hinging from the hip instead of drawing the navel in. This was followed by the Romanian chair with 15 high knees with added weight to the wrists and by now I think most of them stated to have a nice burn going for them.

But we didn’t stop because we all have a decision to make on what kind of six-pack you’ll bringing to the beach this summer…

is it this…

…or this??

So we kept going doing situps with 15 Russian twists on an incline bench and just for fun we finished it off with 30 sliding mountain climbers.

I don’t think any of the ladies thought it was a breeze but weight training is not supposed to be comfortable because if it is, you should work harder! The girls kept on kicking ass and finished the day off with some heavy lifting to the legs.

Let’s do some arms to match the crazy leg workout

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Malin

Ok, I’ll admit…I’ve been lazy with the updates but it seems like the days only begins before they come to an end and here am I thinking I would have more time during the summer vacation…yeah, right!

So last week Wednesday we did this crazy leg workout that left me sore for days so by the time Friday came around Jonathan thought we should do the same workout but for the upper body and it was absolutely awesome!

We started out with doing to sets of 25 scarecrow…

… and 10 shoulder raiser from the side moving the dumbbells to the front and down. Every time we came back to the side we counted one so even though it was only two exercises in this little warm up it took a little bit of time.

As soon as we were nicely warmed up we moved straight to the barbell for some presses and they were done exactly the same way as we did the squats. We started out by doing 8 presses (I can’t remember the exact weight) again because we were doing less rep counts we did four rounds. At the end of the last round we dropped two plates and took it to exhaustion then we dropped all the weight only working with the barbell and once again worked to exhaustion. I guess it’s good not working this alone as it is great to have someone to spot you just in case 😉

We weren’t given much rest till the next circuit that was built up between two movements chest flies on an incline using between 12-15 pounds and push up from a bench.

When Jonathan told me that we were using the bench I thought it was going to be easy but I was so wrong because the arms, shoulders and pecks was really tired at this point!

As we moved on we gave the muscles a bit of a break because we moved on to the pulldowns focusing on the lats. This was built up by building up the weight and at the last set we dropped back the weight and took it to exhaustion every time.

We moved straight from the lats working the triceps and shoulders doing triceps extension from a bench using one dumbbell and with the lats already being tired I could feel I was helping out using my core…

This was combined with rows using the TRX…

When we moved into our last and final circuit I started to feel real pumped, I get the feeling that my skin doesn’t fit and I then know I worked to max! Like I said we finished out the day with priestess curls, dips and hammer curls…

2013-08-02 11.11.44

You think you’ll die but somehow you always survive!

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Malin

Today we decided that my sister Helena would come with me for my workout and I know when I write this that I won’t offend her when I say she is slightly out of shape but she would like to come back to the routine of working out again. I didn’t want to do a long run as I already completed 16k in two days but I knew I needed to focus on the legs so I thought we would start with a quick warmup around the block. It was Helena who was showing the way as well as the space. She took us through fields and forests and in the middle of the thickest woods Helena started to slow down as she was getting a side stitch but at that point I told her to keep on running as we were being completely eaten by every mosquito there was! She did great and we finished the warmup run of just under 2k although she thought she was about to die but amazingly she didn’t…lol.

When we got back we pulled out the old lashing straps and started doing 15 single legs squats each leg, 15 hip abductions and 30 bicycle pull in.

In between every finished rep we did 6 sprint intervals and Helena did really well and kept up and finishing off what we started.

After my 18th sprint my legs started to feel a little wobbly and I decided to finish the day with some core exercises.

pike

This workout took us 1.45 minutes to complete and even though it was not that many circuits I have a feeling I’ll feel it tomorrow 🙂

DIY with TRX

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Malin

We spent the day at the park today as Helena had a meeting she needed to attend to at work but as soon as we got back home I went for a run. I did the same track as I did yesterday and with all the hills it was crazy hard so the last kilometer I did 20 seconds intervals sprints all the way back to the house.

I had already asked Jan for a set of lashing straps before I left and he had them ready for me and I attached them to an old apple tree that Helena and Jan has in their garden and I was ready for a simple TRX workout.

First out I focused on the hips and core doing hip abduction with pulling in the legs.

When I had completed 15 reps I went straight into 50 bicycle crunches and a 30 sec plank and both my shoulders and abs was screaming at the end of it.

My second circuit I decided to focus on my arms and as I started doing my rows a horse was passing by…I’m pretty sure this can only happened on the countryside… lol

I finished my workout with biceps curls and triceps extensions and when I was done I was very tired…I think I still suffering a bit from the jet lag…

What’s your excuse…I didn’t have one this morning :)

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Malin

I get that it can be hard going to the gym during the summer with kids out of school, camps and everything else that goes on but I am trying my best to keep my schedule going to the gym on “my gym days” and hitting the woods on “my running days”. Today I had absolutely no excuses bringing my kids with as MrsL was brining her (this is Miras as Knuts very good friends) so it was an hour playdate just hanging out with their friends and doing a little bit of exercise 😉

As it turned out it was just me and MrsL today and both of us wanted to do legs and Jonathan as always put together a great program for us. First out was 20 weighted barbell step up really focusing on the glut this was followed by 20 single leg pelvic raises from a pilates ball. I think I mentioned this in an earlier post, the pelvic raises are a really hard move and after completed a total of 60 reps your hammies and ass has a real nice burn to them 😉

All the movements we did today was very simple it also gives you the opportunity to do each and every rep properly and put a 100% focus into the movement. We carried on working the backside of the legs completing 15 leg presses and 15 Romanian deadlifts and so far we were still hanging in there but with the heavy weights and crazy humidity I was soaked after 15 minutes.

There was not any real time to recover the legs as it was I who finished off the romanian deadlifts I was the first one to flick the barbell back on my shoulders into 20 spilt stand squats. The goal is really to take it has deep as possible and contract the glut every time you get up and once again you should get a nice burn in the quad, glut and hamstring. To make it even more challenging we finished with 20 jumping lunges, pausing after every jump in the squat and making sure that the feet leave and land at the same time.

At this point both me and mrsL was starting to get spaghetti legs but we still had one last circuit to do before we called it a day. It was the terrible leg extensions and hamstrings curls and after every completed rep we were stumbling more and more looking quite funny. The last 5 minutes stretch was such a relief and a necessity or I had not been functioning for the rest of the day.