Check Your Vibe

Working out at home is a M A J O R vibe check.

I think it’s harder than working out at a gym. 

I understand when people tell me as much as they would like to workout at home, they know they won’t be able to be consistent with an at home workout program.

They like the gym vibe, they like the routine of going to the gym, they like getting the energy from the people around them as a means of motivation for their own workout, and mostly, they like that going to the gym gets them into a different environment to workout.

I get that vibe because I’ve needed that vibe as well. I’ve belonged to numerous gyms and I know the energy you can get from just stepping into that environment. 

When I first had my daughter, that gym environment was not conducive to life as a new mom, and I needed to figure out something to make sure I was taking care of myself. We didn’t have the home environment where I would be guaranteed time to go to the gym by myself everyday, and with the constant changing of our routine due to having a newborn, even if we had that flexibility as a family, it wouldn’t have worked.

Then we went through this phase where going to a gym with a daycare was a necessity of life. I needed to have that space and time to myself where I knew I had dedicated time to workout that wouldn’t be interrupted.

Life changed again though, and soon that gym environment didn’t work for my household. The hours of the daycare at the gym didn’t work for our family, and luckily my daughter was a little older and could be more easily distracted during the workout.

But then I have to make sure I’m not getting distracted during the workout by looking at all the distractions around my house.

Because your laundry is literally staring at you from across the room whereas at the gym, you can push it out of your head. You’re not getting interrupted every 5 seconds by someone who all of a sudden needs something, even though they didn’t right before you started working out. Shoot, even seeing the dog fur float around on the floor can be a total mind game.

When you workout at home, you have to figure out how to get that energy without the gym environment, as well as how to push those distractions out of your visual and mental space so you don’t get diverted from your workout.

I know it’s possible, but I know it takes time and ultimately the intrinsic motivation to WANT to workout. I know you’re choosing this option because logistically speaking, it’s going to be easier for your life.

It takes some getting used to. Like anything else, it takes patience and practice to get used to how this new aspect of your routine will work within your life and schedule.

---

Here’s my Top 3 Tips to Adjusting to At Home Workouts:

1. I did a TON of HIIT workouts 🏋️‍♀️ . They’re short and they move fast. Less transitions = less time to get distracted.

2. I put an alarm in my phone 📱 for my workout time. Like I was going to a class without leaving my house 🏠.

3. I used a heart 💜 rate monitor. I know it sounds off the wall, but the monitor gave me accountability to keep moving and not stop my workout short or half ass it.

---

Give Me Your Best Excuse

I’ve come to really enjoy hearing the sheer amount of excuses that keep a person from working out over the years.

Seriously, come at me with your best excuse. I bet I’ve heard it before.

Don’t get me, I’m not referring to excuses as the valid reasons as to why you can’t do something. Those valid reasons are usually medically related and due to injury. Even those valid reasons are things we can work around. 

Back to the excuses…

This is actually a legit internal monologue I have all the time. It’s really hard for me to understand why someone would let their workouts fall on the back burner when they know the benefit they get from working out. Conversely, they also know how poorly they feel when they don’t work out and how frustrated they get when they stop working out and have to do all this work to get back to where they were before.

I understand that the fitness industry puts emphasis on crazy results that happen in a quick amount of time, and that’s what we want. I also understand that most of us, generally speaking, don’t want to or don’t like to workout, so it’s easy for our workouts to fall low on the priority list.

We want to look good naked with the lights on to ourselves, with minimal amount of work, without understanding that the work we put into our bodies now insures our health over time. We just want to look good. I’m here for that, because duh I do too. There’s something to be said about the confidence you get when you’re feeling yourself.

Today’s Workout

Tabata

10 rounds

Kettlebell swings

I was lucky though because when I got hurt, I had a group of people around me advocating for my health and encouraging me to think about the longevity of my health. To be proactive about taking care of myself so I don’t end up back in a place where I needed to lose a ton of weight or get over a debilitating injury.

Because I know being in that place is more frustrating and more demoralizing than figuring out how to schedule in a quick workout.

The focus for me became how I could workout safely to continue seeing results, so I could not only look good naked with the lights on to myself, but also FEEL good

Knowing that about myself, it kills me even more to know that most of the time the workouts aren’t happening because you’re getting stuck wasting your time on BS like refreshing your email or getting stuck in the scroll hole on social media.

If you have 20 minutes to spend on IG or scrolling through TikTok, you have 20 minutes to workout. You have the time, it’s just a matter of how you’re spending it. Trust me, you can scroll TikTok again after the kids go to bed.

I know we use those outlets as a means to let go, decompress and not think, and I’m here for that, it has it’s time and place, but it needs to be after you’ve taken care of your health. After you’ve given to yourself, go for it, lose yourself in the scroll hole. But get the workout done first.

I Thought I Needed a New Job

Grab Your Dumbbells!

$0.00

The first time I tried to work out after I had Grace, I totally thought I would have to find a new line of work. I’m not even kidding. I went into the studio by myself and tried to do one exercise and completely failed. Bye bye being a fitness instructor.

My body felt like crap 💩, I couldn’t move the way I used to before, oh and needless to say, I was tired 😴 af. I never knew that I could feel so freaking uncomfortable in my own skin and it made me sad because I didn’t think I had the power to change it.

I could’ve accepted that reality, but I knew that wouldn’t work for me. It was more daunting for me to remain miserable than for me to figure out how to change it.

So I tried switching up my fitness game. I failed. I tried again. I failed again. I got frustrated AF and discouraged doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt on a daily basis. I kept trying until I finally found what worked the best for my post baby body and post partum schedule.

I kept adapting and overcoming until I figured out what would work the best for my life. But I had an upper hand in comparison to other moms around me because I had the education and experience to help guide me through my process.

Not everyone has that background in fitness and nutrition. 

That background gave me the tools I needed to be able to get back to a place where being in my own skin felt like home. My determination gave me the motivation I needed to get to that place.

But I am doing NOTHING with all of these tools and with my own journey if I don’t share my experience with the people around me. Not just so every single person can feel amazing in their own skin, but so they also have the tools to know how to maintain that transformation once they get it.