Unfortuneately though, I injured myself doing aerobics this week. I use a step in the basement and I guess my stepping got a little too vigorous. The next morning I couldn’t put any weight on my right foot. I thought it was broken. I went to the doctor and he said that I pulled a ligament in my right foot, so I need to keep off of it for 7-10 days (yeah right – easier said than done).

In any case, I haven’t done much exercise since Thursday due to my injury and I’m beginning to get antsy, but I don’t want to push it either, because I don’t want to make my foot worse. So, I’ll be patient.

I’ll focus on weights and maybe the bike if it doesn’t aggrevate my foot.

Thanks for reading!

During the past week I’ve been focusing on building muscle. In my legs primarily, but I haven’t neglected the rest of my body either. I think it was Tuesday when I worked my legs and I did a warm-up set first and then 3-4 sets of heavy weights (at least they were heavy for me). I did squats and really focused on my butt and ball-wall squats (put a ball against a wall, lean back against it and squat – you should feel it in your thighs). I also did curtsy lunges without the kick as seen at the following link: http://www.prevention.com/cda/categorypage.do?channel=news.voices&category=videos&videoID=a8a8e3e5af6bb110VgnVCM20000012281eac____

I was sore for about the next two days, so instead I focused on my upper body by doing back, chest, shoulder and arm exercises.

So today, I’m planning to work my legs hard again, but I want to introduce some new exercises because ‘they’ say that exercise variety will give you the quickest results because your body won’t get the chance to adapt. Let’s see what I find…

I went to the Muscle&Fitness Hers site and I found lunges on a bench – that sounds hard. I’ll do that. Plie’ squats, which I haven’t been doing. Romanian deadlifts to work hamstrings. If you go under Training and do a little searching, you’ll find articles on working your legs:

http://www.muscleandfitnesshers.com/training

The next site, Bodybuilding.com, I find more exercises like the split squat

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/5_exercises_for_strong_shapely_legs.htm

Here’s another workout routine for the butt, but there’s nothing all that different – just more squats and lunges:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/planet46.htm

So I guess that’s the secret. A bunch of squats and lunges with variations every week to keep your muscles guessing. After looking at all those articles, I’m totally motivated to workout now, so here I go!

Good luck and thanks for reading.

The following was posted after my workout

Hi Everyone – I’m back! I just had a super killer workout despite being interrupted twice by my daughter. The first time was a 20minute diversion after she woke up from a nightmare. It was right in the middle of the curtsy lunges. So, I calmed her down, got her dressed, gave her a little breakfast…the second time she needed help changing from a DVD to the TV…but I digress…

The point is I had a super killer leg and butt workout and I had TONS of energy. I did narrow stance squats, regular stance squats, ball-wall squats, dead-lifts, curtsy lunges, plie squats. Unfortunately, I don’t write anything down, so I can’t remember exactly what I did. And I lifted heavy, about as heavy of a dumbbell that I can lift. For the narrow stance squats, I was up to 80lbs (40lbs in each hand). After lifting, I got on the bike for about 20minutes (this is where the second interruption happened) I could have gone on longer – like I said I had TONS of energy. I attribute this to re-introducing starchy complex carbs back into my diet during the past week, like oatmeal and brown rice. I did have one cup of coffee before my workout, but no amount of coffee gives you energy like this! Have I learned the secret to carbo-loading? I wonder.

I know I’m going to be hobbling around for the next three days, but I’m excited about the results. Of course, I need to be careful not to undo my efforts by succumbing to my sugar cravings. I’ll need to be extra vigilant about that.

A few posts ago, I wrote that I had lost my motivation. Wasn’t that just last week. Have I gotten my motivation back? Yes! All it took was changing my diet a little bit and my workout approach. I feel ready to go again.

Good luck and thanks for reading

The first time I worked out to the DVD, I couldn’t get through all of the exercises and afterwards I couldn’t walk for three days. See the post where I first wrote about my experience with that workout: http://mycellulitewar.com/2009/03/18/exercises_cellulite_reduction/exercise-for-cellulite-reduction-prevention-fitness-systems-fight-cellulite-fast/

In any case, this time through the workout, I did most of the cardio portion and I was able to keep up through most of the leg exercises. Big difference from the first time that I followed along where I had to stop through the leg exercises.

I’m still not crazy about the cardio portion simply because I’m not that coordinated and its frustrating for me to follow along, but that’s just me.

The leg workout is awesome and I swear that afterward my cellulite and saddlebags actually looked better. Is that possible? Maybe all of the blood flowing to that area helps to smooth things out. Come to think of it, much that I’ve read on cellulite treatment has to do with increasing blood flow to the affected areas, so there’s probably something to it. Also, it seems as though the more I build my leg muscles, the more the cellulite seems to compress itself against my skin from the inside out, thus flattening out. The leg muscles are taking up more space between the available area between skin and bone and kind of squishing the cellulite. Don’t get me wrong, I still have it, but when just looking in the mirror, I swear it looks a little better.

Also, more good news is that after the workout, I could walk the next day – imagine that! I only had minor muscle soreness. That makes me feel good that I’ve improved that much.

So, if you’re looking for a good leg workout for cellulite, I’d definitely recommend this DVD Prevention Fitness Systems – Fight Cellulite Fast!.

It’s not for the faint at heart so be prepared!

I wake up between 4:30-5am every weekday. This allows me some alone time sans husband and child to work on my blog, read personal emails and drink my java.  To read my comment on an interesting post about drinking coffee before a workout see: http://www.self.com/fooddiet/blogs/healthybites/2009/03/do-you-drink-java-before-a-run.html#postcommenthead

I workout about 20 minutes most mornings and do a long workout of 1 hour on either Saturday or Sunday. I’ve been doing mostly aerobic exercise and I  must admit that since my treadmill broke a few weeks ago, I’ve been a little lost. It’s $800 to fix it, so I might as well buy a new one, but since money is tight these days due to some job turmoil, I’ve been putting it off. I’m scared to walk outside because there’s bears in my neighborhood, but even worse,  someone spotted a mountain lion in my neighborhood, so if I was only a little freaked out by the bears, I’m now totally freaked out by the mountain lion.

I’ve been using my stationary bike and little plastic step, but it’s really not the same for me. Walking clears my head in a way that stepping and cycling don’t. For me, stepping requires too much coordination (hence, too much thinking) and the bike is too uncomfortable. But, I digress…

So, I’ve been doing aerobic exercise consistently and sprinkling in weight training when I feel like it, so I’m feeling like I definitely need more of a plan when it comes to the weight training.

According to the latest book I’m reading,  Beyond Cellulite: Nicole Ronsard’s Ultimate Strategy to Slim, Firm and Reshape Your Lower Body, one should perform weight training 4-5 days per week and aerobic exercise 3-5 days per week for cellulite treatment.

I’m wondering how I’m going to fit this all in and I guess my thinking is, “If I can do 20 minutes every morning, then I can do 30 minutes every morning.” I’ll just need to get down to the basement (where my workout equipment is) 10 minutes earlier. So instead of beginning my workout at 5:40am, I’ll begin at 5:30am. Boy, that sounds early. I’ll devote 10 minutes to weight training – and 20 minutes to an interval aerobics workout. I’ll still do 1 hour of aerobics on the weekend. Sounds like a plan.

For weight training on the legs and butt, I’ll do lunges, squats, hip thrusts, pliés, wall squats, deadlifts and leg lifts. Sounds pretty aggressive in 10 minutes. On non-leg days, I’ll do abs, back and chest. (I don’t do arms – I figure I’ll get enough of an arm workout from the back and chest exercises.)

Given the sheer volume of leg exercises that I want to do, I’ll need to split them up. Maybe standing exercises on day one and floor exercises on day two.  Sounds reasonable. So it looks like this assuming 10 minutes for weight training and 20 minutes for aerobics:

• Monday: Standing leg exercises & interval aerobics
• Tuesday: Abs, chest & back & interval aerobics 
• Wednesday or Thursday: Rest
• Wednesday or Thursday: Floor leg exercises & interval aerobics
• Friday: Abs, chest & back & interval aerobics
• Saturday or Sunday: 1 hour of aerobics
• Saturday or Sunday: Standing leg exercise & interval aerobics

Wow, this seems like a lot more than what I’m doing now. I’ll give it a try this coming week and see how it goes.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions. I would love to hear some feedback.

Thanks for reading!

Determined to still get a good workout in, I decided to pop in a DVD that I had picked up at the library. I figured I might as well, since I already owed $5 in late fees and hadn’t watched it yet. The DVD was Prevention Fitness Systems – Fight Cellulite Fast!.

I started the cardio portion, which I quickly skipped for three reasons: 1. I didn’t want this to be a long workout,  2. I was not interested in coordinating my body into aerobic grapevines, kicks and dosie-doe’s and 3. I was already warmed-up from the seven minute treadmill walk.

So, I went directly to the weight bearing routine which consisted of a variety of squats and lunges. It wasn’t long, maybe about fifteen minutes , and I thought it was very effective.

At one point, I actually had to stop because my legs were burning so much. That surprised me because I’ve been doing inclines on the treadmill, some squats and lunges,  and thought my legs were pretty strong. (The women in the video didn’t look like they were struggling at all. I’m convinced that the leader in the video, Chris Freytag, is a bionic woman.) Well, I was in for a big surprise because that burning in my legs was nothing compared to the agony that was to come.

The next day my legs were so sore, I could barely make it down the stairs. Sitting down was torture. The next day wasn’t much better. The third day, I was finally feeling some relief.

So, I would have to say, that if the routine on this DVD is followed for a while, one would definitely see some results. If building muscle and burning fat are vital pieces for fighting cellulite, then the exercises in this DVD will definitely help to accomplish this.

My treadmill is still broken. It’s been about two weeks. The pieces to fix it are back-ordered, so I think I’ll go back to the library to get this DVD out again. And this time, I’ll use it before racking up late fees.