The secret about choices

On a typical Saturday night you would find me out with friends, at a bar or restaurant indulging in unhealthy food that I “deserve” after eating relatively healthy that week and drinking several hundreds (or thousands) of added calories in the form of beer or wine on top of my regular calorie intake for that day. I had a hard and stressful week and justify “treating myself” in the form of unhealthy calories as a reward.

Unfortunately, unhealthy foods and habits are not, and should not be justified as a “reward.” I used to use that justification to allow myself to make poor choices – sabotaging my own progress.

In situations when it comes to how you spend your time and money – you are making a choice. Let’s be serious, those are the two components which we let effect all of our decision-making and choices every day. Every decision is based on either one of those, or both of those collectively. But, when you really step back and look at it, one you have zero control over and the other you have complete control over.

Money comes and goes. The harder you work, the more you’ll have. Time, however is one component to life that you can never, and will never, get it back. Yet, our world runs on money. How is it that those with more money seem to have it all? Reality check – they don’t.

Reality check:

• Money can’t buy you happiness. You choose to be happy.
• Money can’t buy you more time when you feel like you’ve wasted it. You can never get time back.
• Money can give you instant gratification, but time and hard work makes you appreciate what you have and what you’ve achieved.

A friend recently shared a quote with me followed by a video that he insisted I must watch. The quote stated:

“There’s nothing I can’t do, just things I haven’t done yet.” – Richie Parker

These words were quite profound to me because it’s how I live my life everyday. I try to live meaningfully and with gratitude – making sure I remember how fortunate I am and never taking what comes so easily to me, for granted.

I thought I did that, until I saw Richie’s story. Take a few minutes and watch:

Richie’s story inspires me to really consider the choices I make – because I’m fortunate enought to have choices. Not everyone is as lucky as you are.

I make choices, not because I hate my body, but because I love my body. I want to keep it working and functioning optimally. I want it to keep working for me until it literally cannot anymore, and to ensure that, I need to make sure I’m making the right choices when it comes to my health – both physically and mentally.

If you choose to constantly think about what you want – you will never appreciate what you have and how far you’ve come. If you want something, go get it. Don’t ever make yourself believe you can’t have or do something – because what ever you tell yourself, it is what will come to be. The choice is yours.

90-day Challenge: workout plan

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the type of workouts I do so I thought I’d share my full workout plan and explain the workout I did tonight in detail.

For the 90-day challenge I’m planning to do the following:

Weeks 1-4: 6 workouks a week

• 3-4 metabolic strength and conditioning classes with my friends over at Element Athletic
• 2-3 strength/body building workouts

So far this week has looked like:

• Sunday: Upper body workout
• Monday: off
• Tuesday: EA class
• Wednesday: EA class
• Thursday: EA class
• Friday: Lower body workout
• Saturday: EA class

After a month of this routine, I will assess how my body is reacting and decide if I want to mix up my routine more (I may add a few swims a week) or just keep my workouts varible.

To give you an idea of the type of kickass workouts we do at Element, they look something like this.

Crazy, right? I know – and I freaking love it!

Last night however I went to the gym and cracked out a lower body workout. When focusing on the lower body, I make sure to do exersices that target the five main lower body muscle groups: glutes, calves, hamstrings, adductors and quads. I also throw in abs during or at the end!

Ttonight’s workout looked a little something like this:

• Leg presses (glutes, quads) – 4 sets
  • 2 x 12 at 180 lbs
  • 2 x 12 at 230 lbs
• Superset: Stiff-legged deadlift (hamstrings) + double handed swings (all lower body muscle groups) – 4 sets
  • Instead of a barbell I used two 20kg KBs
  • Supersets are when do one exercise, followed immediately by a second exercies
• Superset: Calf raises (calves) + lying leg raises (abs) – 3 sets
  • I used 2 x 20 kg KBs instead of a bar
• Double kettlebell front squats (glutes, quads) – 4 sets
  • 2 x 20 kg KBs
  • 5-7 reps per set
• Backward and forward alternating lunges (quads) – 4 sets
  • 12 backward reps with one 20 kg KB racked on my right side – then the same on the left
  • 12 forward reps with KB bottoms up x 2

I finished off with 2 rounds of:

• glute bridges (30 reps) + glute kick backs (30 each leg) + 2 minute plank

It felt good and since I haven’t done a weight training lower body workout in awhile, and as predicted, I’m a little sore this morning. Which is wicked :)

I plan to share more workouts as this challenge progresses, please let me know if you have any questions about the above workout!