Janae Says...

For today’s Workout Wednesday post, I thought I’d write about rest days. I generally think this is something you have to figure out for yourself. I’ll tell you what I’ve found and what my general rules are for rest days. This is what works for me and may not work for you. Typically, I reserve rest days for especially busy days. For example, on Tuesdays, I will often to go “donate” plasma (for monies, of course). After that I head home and either cook or wait for Patrick so we can go out. We eat, and we head to institute at 7. We’re there till 8:30. Tuesdays are just busy. So sometimes I skip Tuesdays for working out. I may do the same on Thursdays if I donate a second day. I may also skip a workout when I get invited to do other plans that won’t enable me to exercise and shower and get ready before the activity starts—Friday nights, for example. I might take rest days on the days I know I just need a break from everything. Some evenings I just want to eat and sit on ...

I've never understood the girls who show up at the gym with makeup and hair done. When I go to the gym, it is not to impress anyone or to look attractive. In fact, I think my goal is to make myself look like an absolute train wreck. I want some physical indication that I worked hard. So it used to be that when I went to work out, I just worked out in my grubby lounge clothes. Anything extra I had that was comfortable, and that I didn't mind getting soaked in sweat. Because, why look cute, right? Why spend money on clothes that I was going to get all sweaty? I've had a change in heart in the past year or so of exercising. I have realized that what I wear when I exercise makes a huge difference in how I feel and how I perform. With this, I'm talking both about function and aesthetics. First, function. Before I exercise, I decide what I'm going to do, and choose my clothes based on those activities. Let me give you an example. If I decide that I'm doing yoga,...

It's funny how much pride I used to take in my annual number of gym check-ins. I now take pride more in how hard I can work without having to go to the gym to do it. Don't get me wrong. I still love the place. I just would like to be able to get a good workout in at either my apartment complex gym or in my actual apartment. Remember, it needs to be easy (in a sense) if I'm going to make myself do it. I've mentioned before that I often use a blog for my workouts, and I modify according to what is available to me. Sometimes I even make it harder. But I thought I'd share just a few of my favorite "at-home" workouts that require minimal or no equipment. I've even done these at hotels and things when gym equipment was either taken or nonexistent. 1. The 15 Minute Workout I love this one because of its flexibility. If I felt like running 2 miles, I could come back and do a single 15-minute round of this afterward and call it good for the day. I l...

I posted a long time ago about how odd it was to me to have a doctor call me “athletic.” Having never been enrolled in sports, never particularly enjoyed P.E., fallen in the higher categories for BMI, and performed well in school, this was a revelation to me. When he called me that, it was like serious validation for all the physical activity I had been doing for quite some time. I had a friend invite me to do a half marathon with her, which I ended up doing alone. Still, she invited me. During training, I would hear from all kinds of people, “Hey, I saw you running the other day.” Then a friend and fellow blogger referred to me as one of her “fit” friends. What? Really? People see me that way? And another friend asked me to do a Spartan beast training with her. And she asked me to go to a partner challenge class at her kickboxing place, which I did. And she asked me to consider doing Ragnar, which I passed on. A high school acquaintance invited me to do a workout ...

This is a topic I feel merits some attention. When it comes to exercise, form is everything. If you want to keep doing something and stay in good condition, you have to watch your form. This goes for everything, from running to weight lifting. I found myself in a conundrum in my “total body conditioning” (step interval) class last Wednesday. A lady next to me was doing deadlifts incorrectly. Her back was curved, meaning she wasn’t working the right body parts, and she could injure herself. I wanted to say something to her because I didn’t want her to get hurt, but I’m not the teacher. Tuesday in BodyCombat (kickboxing) class, a girl was lifting her head up, bending her neck, while doing crunches. This is not the right way to do a crunch, as you should focus on lifting your chin to the ceiling. Keep your chin off your chest, and let your abs do the work—not your neck. Again, they weren’t fully working the core, and could have potentially done damage to their neck. I said noth...