Tag Archives: Les Mills Combat

Favorite Things

February 27, 2014 Kim 55 Comments

Today’s 44 used one of my favorite pieces of equipment –

I did a bicycle crunch while trying to stay balanced on the BOSU.

Umm….this was hard!! I wobbled, nearly fell off many times, touched my feet to the ground….but I did manage to get 44 crunches to each side.

I did another favorite workout today – Les Mills Combat – Combat 60 Live, Ultimate Warriors Workout. This one is fun and because of the number of reps on some of the moves it is not only cardio but offers a nice toning workout, too. And, the time flies by!!!

BTW – this week for the February challenge with Taylor we are doing 50 push-ups and 50 lunges every day. I’m making my lunges walking lunges because I like them!!!

I say that some things are my favorites a LOT because I think I have tons of favorites. Today I thought I would share a few – this is pretty much an ever changing list!!

Drink: Water is what I drink the most (all day long!) but we all know I love my wine, too!

a favorite!!! Wine from Germany — a favorite!!!
Wine from Germany

Food: This one is hard – it changes and I don’t know that I could pick just one food as a favorite. Maybe pizza – pretty sure I could eat it almost every day (but I don’t!).

Candy: Gobstoppers!!

Song: Hard to pick one so I’m going with 2. Brown Eyed Girl and Toes (actually I like all of the songs by Zac Brown Band & Jimmy Buffet)

Season: SUMMER, duh!!!!

Sport to Watch: College basketball!! Almost time for some March Madness!

College Team: State:

Time of Day: Dinner with my family!!!

Shoes: This is another hard one. I love shoes and boots and sandals!!!

Computer Brand: I love my MacBook Air!!! And, iPad mini and iPhone. I don’t really love the Samsung (something) phone that I bought for our business phone – can’t figure it out!!!

Book: I love to read but I rarely re-read any books. The one book that I have read many times is from my childhood – Little Women.

Person: Well, there is no way I can pick just one!!!

What are some of your favorite things?

Happy Thursday!!!

Kim

Butt, Fitness, Thighs

An End and a Beginning

December 31, 2013 Kim 58 Comments

Today’s 44 was another fun one with my resistance band. I stood on the band and crossed the handles to make the resistance greater. Then I stepped out with my right foot, out with my left and back in with each.

In the video you can see that I switched lead legs while doing this move – I’m not sure my hips could handle 44 each side. (now I sort-of feel like I should go do another set!!)

I pulled out one of my favorite workouts today – Les Mills Combat – Ultimate Cardio Fighter. 60 minutes of sweating while kicking, punching and jumping = awesome!!!

Looking Back at 2013:

I have seen similar posts to this and decided that it would be a fun to end 2013 with a recap of the year.

January:

I finished up a long-term sub job at an elementary school library – super fun!
Packing away Christmas was a bit of a disaster –

Another shopping trip and a little assembly later, the problem was all solved!!!

February:

I decided to do a little personal challenge during the month of February. In addition to my daily 43 and my regular workouts, I did 1 minute wall-sits to correspond to the day of the month – so by the 28th, I did 28, 1-minute wall-sits!

March:

We had a special Hobbit themed meal to go along with the DVD viewing of the movie. This was mostly Jordan’s thing but I enjoyed planning the meal with his help and then fixing the meal with the help of both boys!

April:

The biggie from this month was more of a huge mistake and learning experience on my part. I had vein surgery on April 24th and feel like I’m still paying the price for that decision!!

May:

Chris and I celebrated our 17th anniversary!

June:

The boys and I went to Texas and enjoyed what would end up being our last summer visit with my Poppa!

July:

We took a great family trip to Florida!!! The driving (22 hours each way) wasn’t really my favorite part but lots of great memories were made!!

August:

The boys started another school year – Jordan went to high school and Hunter to middle school.

Jordan kept busy with marching band!

I made a quick trip to TX to pay tribute to my wonderful Poppa.

And, our lives completely changed when we became business owners!!!

September:

More high school football games and plenty of middle school cross country meets.

Hunter walking through the end of the chute

I celebrated another birthday with another birthday run – and started doing daily 44s.

October:

HaHa – I couldn’t think of anything from October and then I remembered – the epic fail!!! I attempted my first ultra – not pretty!

November:

Hunter started his wrestling career.

Sam, Stacy, Isabel and Hays came up from Texas to spend Thanksgiving with us!!December:

We hosted our first (probably annual) Christmas Day open house at the Governor’s Row House.

We have enjoyed a much needed family reset time while we celebrated Christmas and prepare to start a new year!

Tonight we will have our yearly New Year’s Eve party (we started doing this after Jordan was born so that we could have a family oriented way to celebrate the start of the new year) and tomorrow we will wake up ready for a great new year!!!

Do you have big plans to celebrate the start of 2014?

Happy Tuesday – the final day of 2013!!

Kim

Butt, Core, Fitness, Thighs

Use It or Lose It

November 19, 2013 Kim 75 Comments

I decided to use my bands for the 44 today – I did a leg abduction with the resistance of the bands.

I only did one side for this demo – but you can sort-of see that I stepped on the band with my stationary leg to get the resistance. Besides working my thighs and hips, this is a great balance challenge (I wobbled a lot and had to tap my toe/foot a lot!). And, of course, I did 44 with each leg!

Then I pulled out one of my favorite workouts – Les Mills Combat – Combat 60 Live – Ultimate Warrior’s Workout. This workout is awesome because just when you think your legs can’t handle another rep, you switch over to punching again!!! The hour flies by in a sweaty blur!!!

I’m sure that everyone has heard the phrase “Use it or Lose it” many times before. I think it’s true in lots areas of our lives – fitness, knowledge, some insurance plans, vacation days…

We all know how hard it is to achieve the level of conditioning/strength that we want to be at and many of us have seen how quickly those gains can deteriorate when we can’t work out because of injury, illness or whatever other reason.

I think another area that we can quickly “lose it” is our brain power!!!

Yesterday Jordan was talking about the Trojan War and the guy who suggested that they get in the horse (I can’t remember his name!). He said, “Didn’t you learn all of this in school?” Ummm…Yes – like 30 years ago!!! And, I’ve never used it since!

There was a time (in grad school and for a few years after) that I could do a thorough observation of the entire human body, palpating and naming each bone, tendon and ligament as I went. Now, I can name and identify only a very few of those because it has been 20 years since I really studied and applied all of that knowledge.

Sometimes I look back at all the years I spent in school and wonder how hard it would be to re-learn all that I’ve forgotten.

Maybe I should work on actually using some of the information that I’ve learned over the years so that by the time I’m 70 I have at least a little knowledge of something left!!!

What have you lost because you haven’t used it? (please tell me I’m not the only one!!!)

Happy Tuesday!!! I’m going to try to learn and apply at least one thing today!!!

Kim

Core, Fitness, Plank, Shoulders

A Few Fun Facts

October 23, 2013 Kim 81 Comments

Today I took the basic plank and turned it into a great 44. This move include core strength, hip flexor action and shoulder work.

Put your right hand down while stepping your right leg back (to plank position), put left hand down while stepping left leg back – step in with right leg and take right hand off the ground, step in with left leg while taking left hand off the ground. (Just watch the video!!!)

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMNBjmPP178′]

The only bad part of using this for my 44 was that after I finished all 44, I had to start over and lead with my left side!!!

Today I went back to one of my favorite workouts – Les Mills Combat – Combat 60, Extreme Cardio Fighter. This workout is almost an hour but doesn’t feel like it – the way it is broken into segments and the high energy of the Les Mills team make the time fly by. I can already feel it in my shoulders and upper back (been awhile since I did that many punches!!).

I thought that it would be fun to share some random things you might not already know about me.

1. I lived in the dorm all 4 years of college.

2. From kindergarten to my senior year of high school, I attended 9 different schools. (In 8th grade alone, I went to 3 different schools).

3. I have a twin brother and my dad had a twin sister.

4. I have Raynaud’s –

After I finish working out my hands are always freezing and turn white (almost transparent). I wear gloves with shorts a lot – I’m super cool like that!!!

5. I didn’t lift weights or cross train until I was in my mid-30s. Now I can’t imagine my life without a huge variety of workouts!

6. I like Mac & Cheese for lunch (even when there are no kids around!!).

7. I might have a slight shoe addiction!!! One day someone asked me how many pairs of shoes/boots/sandals…I had – Ummm…..we try not to actually count them!!!!

Not my closet - I wish, though!!! — Not my closet – I wish, though!!!

8. I rarely wear make-up – just some mascara and lip stick (maybe).

9. I used to be the Queen of the Snooze button!

I would literally hit the snooze button for over an hour – everyday!!! Not sure why I always thought that the next morning would be the day I would actually got up early but….

When I went back to work after both boys were in school, it was the first time in my entire life that I didn’t hit the snooze button. Now I never use the snooze button.

10. I think I was around 27 before I ever really drank water (other than just a sip or 2). I used to drink Diet Coke ALL DAY long!!!

Your turn to share a fun random fact!!!

Happy Wednesday!!

Kim

Cardio, Fitness, Push-Ups

Sketchy Internet & Huge Hugs!!!

August 23, 2013 Kim 24 Comments

Today I did a challenging 43 for sure – single leg burpees!! And since I have 2 legs, I actually had to do 2 sets of 43 for a total of 86 burpees! This was probably one of the most challenging 43s that I have done this year!!

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thv3mJioVSA’]

Chris actually filmed this yesterday after my run (that’s why I’m a sweaty mess!!) but I did all 43 x 2 this morning!!!

I realized while I was doing the single leg burpees that my left leg is my weaker leg!!! The move was “easier” with the right side (that easier is relative!!!) but I struggled a lot on the left!!!

I also did Les Mills Combat – Combat 45 which is one of my favorites!!! Lots of great plyo moves. This is a great way to get an awesome workout in under an hour!! And, all the punching and kicking help work my core, too.

The internet/WiFi in my hotel is awful – very slow!! I guess it is a sign that I need to take a small break. Last night after I got checked in I was going to try to catch up on my BlogLovin reads (I think there were about 140 new posts) but the internet was so slow that after trying for 10 minutes to pull up a site I decided it wasn’t meant to be!

THANK YOU to so many of you for the sweet words you left on yesterday’s post. I haven’t been able to reply (see above paragraph) but I read every comment and appreciated all of the kind words, thoughts and “hugs”!!!

Today and tomorrow will be spent with family remembering Poppa. Saturday after the services and everything else I will reverse my 8 hour drive to get back home to my boys. (They didn’t make the trip because it is hard enough for me to do all this driving in 3 days but add in the boys and OY!!! Plus, since they have just been in school a week I hated to have them miss 2 days – that is a lot of makeup work!!!)

Happy Friday!

Kim

PS – Carly @ Fine Fit Day featured me as a “fit mama” today.

Day With KT