A Beautiful RAWR

Houston Style, Fitness, and Mom Blogger

Fall Fitness 30-Day Challenge (Day 7) + Upper Body Exercises With Home Bench

Hey lovelies! Yesterday, I spent 30 minutes trying to record a video for you, but it didn’t quite pan out the way I thought it would. Gosh – have you ever recorded yourself working out?  Well, I tried and I quickly found out I look kind of ridiculous and I can’t really explain some of the facial expressions I was making. HAHA  I’ll keep working at it, but in the mean time, I will just post pictures for you.

Yesterday marked Day 7 and the start of Week 2 of my Fall Fitness 30-Day Challenge.  I have to be honest – I wanted to quit after Day 3.  Everything hurt BAD and with an ever changing schedule, all I could think about was “when am I going to fit in a workout?” which made me a little stressed. But excuses are still excuses so I pushed through the soreness and self pity and here we are! 🙂

To give you a quick recap, maintaining a HEALTHY eating schedule has helped me INCREDIBLY!  3 meals + 2-3 snacks each day of Lean meats, whole grains, good carbs, and veggies/fruits were on the menu and I think I only had 1 cheat snack last week (woowhoo!). 

As far as the working out part, I only did tabata twice last week (Day 1 & 5) because my body was hurting so badly from it. Here’s a rundown of what I did:
Day 1: 20 minute tabata
Day 2: 20 minute pole-to-pole* HIIT training with Marli, 3 sets of this superset with 1 minute rest in between: 20 walking lunges with a 10-lb weight (10 lunges per leg), 20 jump squats, and 30 second plank
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Repeat Day 2
Day 5: Repeat Day 1
Day 6: 6 rounds of 50 squats + 1/8 mile run/jog (my legs were shot by the end)
Day 7: Rest
*Pole-to-pole is when you run./sprint from 1 light pole to the next, then walk 1, then run, and so forth. You can also run from street-to-street, but essentially, this is a form of HIIT.

After just ONE week of eating better (and eating often) and several days of working out, I can already tell a (small) difference in muscle definition and I’m getting a little stronger with each workout. 🙂 Here are a few more pics from Day 1 vs Day 7.

This week, I plan on continuing with more HIIT exercises and spending more time focusing on my upper body.  To do this, I will be using our dining room bench to perform some of my exercises.  I forgot how useful home furniture can be!  You can probably also use a chair or stability ball if you have one laying around the house as well 🙂  Here are some of my favorite moves using a bench working the upper body:
(NOTE: I didn’t list any exercises for the biceps since I like performing those standing up.)
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Comments

  4. Julie H. says

    Great exercises and the pics are so helpful. I don’t have a gym membership so I try to do my exercises at home or outdoors. You look amazing woman! -Julie

    Reply

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