Home workout: Janathon day 21

Had a really rubbish day at work today so I could've done with a long run to cure all, but unfortunately that wasn't to be. I did a 20 minute Sworkit called "Feel the Pain", which made me sweat and my son (who was watching me throughout) announce "that looks well easy mum I could do that". So on Friday he will be joining me in a home workout.

This workout featured a lot of push ups and cardio, I need to spend time making my own custom workout because too many push ups isn't good for my back.

Detention saviour: Janathon day 16

Friday is always a rest day, but yesterday I said I would do something "core-focused" today, so I did 5.5 minutes of a Sworkit core strength workout while waiting for my husband to come home with a greasy kebab for tea.

Abtastic.

I also walked to my son's school to deliver some football socks for his cross-country club (he gets detention if he doesn't have his socks).

Stretch it out: Janathon day 9

Friday is always a rest day and I really felt I needed a rest today. My legs (and glutes in particular) are feeling stiff.

I used the Sworkit app as usual, and first did a 20 minute core strength workout (which I terminated after 16 minutes because it was getting repetitive), then finished with a 10 minute full body stretch. The app covered all the stretches I knew plus a few new ones (the hurdler stretch was lovely). I had to skip a couple of stretches because I didn't think I needed to stretch my hamstrings three times.

Sworkit baby! Janathon day 7

Today looked set for me failing to do any exercise and counting the walk to school as my effort. I've been busy with work and family jobs (mum taxi), a bit of cub stuff, and food shopping. I even briefly considered counting tomorrow's Pilates class as today's Janathon effort, since I'm going to be running in the evening.

Fortunately I have Sworkit on my phone and it sent a timely reminder at 7 pm that I needed to work out. I chose 3 workouts: 5 min light warm up cardio, 15 min full intensity cardio, and 10 min core strength.

This is the workout screen

Finished!

I find working out at home is tricky because it's hard to get a sweat up and I typically feel dissatisfied. This evening I am sweating and tired!

Proof of my sweatiness

Janathon day 2: Misfit and Sworkit

Christmas (and the preceding few months) was a rather excessive time, and I'm ashamed that I've gained about a stone in weight (from carelessness and indolence). I reinstalled MyFitnessPal on my phone after Christmas, and I'm trying to lose that weight and get more active in the run up to starting marathon training later this month. I received a great gift of body analysis scales for Christmas, which measure not only my weight but also my body fat %, body water %, and BMI. I'm already a bit hooked on my body fat %.

When I installed MyFitnessPal, I noticed there were a few apps that you could link to your account, to help keep track of exercise and activity during the day. One was Strava (which I already use to track my running), one was Misfit, and another was Sworkit.

Misfit rang a bell: I bought my mother-in-law and sister-in-law a Misfit Flash each for Christmas. I inevitably had to set them both up; I quite liked the simplicity of the device and was rather jealous! So, I treated myself to a Misfit Flash for Janathon ;) I have a pedometer on my phone but I was curious to find out how active or inactive I am during a "normal" day; hopefully this device will motivate me to walk home the long way. Plus, it was about half the price of similar devices (here's a good blog post comparing activity monitors).

To Janathon, and today I decided to try out Sworkit (swortkit.com). This app is just brilliant. It builds random circuit training sessions that can be customised according to which body area you want to work on or type of exercise you want to do (eg, legs, cardio, Pilates, or stretching) and how much time you have (you can work out for an hour or just 5 minutes). I opted for a 20 minute full body workout, which included a lot of push ups, sit ups, and high knees. Each exercise lasted 30 seconds, with a photo of the exercise as a reminder (and a video to watch if that didn't help) and voiceovers to tell you what the next exercise is and give you a 5 second countdown. I was relieved to discover there were 30 second breaks every so often (you can switch these off for a "pro" workout, and increase the duration of each exercise). I'm definitely going to try out a few more of these workouts during Janathon.

I finished off my workout with a 21 minute walk on the treadmill (1 mile), while listening to The Saturdays Greatest Hits. Seriously, I derive much motivation to exercise from looking at a picture of Frankie Bridge.

So... body stats. Do I really want to publish these? I guess it would be good to track changes, give me motivation to actually work on them, and I'm fairly sure only me and my friend Ralph read this blog. So, Ralph, here you go:

Weight: 150.6 lb (10 stone 10 lb, 68 kg; I averaged around 140 lb in 2014)
BMI: 25.7 (over 25 pushes me into "overweight" category)
Body fat: 32.2% (any % greater than 30% is regarded as high)
Body water: 48.7% ("ideal" range for women is 45-60%)

Lots of room for improvement!