Exercise Update - May 2013 Edition

For the most part my fitness routine hasn't changed much from last month. I did decide to move all of my bodyweight leg work to the cardio days. I was often feeling tired and sore and my joints felt like they could use some extra rest. When I do Insanity on Tuesday and Saturday I do 3 sets of pistol squats during the stretching. Despite Shaun T insisting that the stretch is the most important part of the workout besides the warm up I disagree. I've started doing some dynamic stretching before going into the sets of the pistol squats.   I often found that the static stretching sequence was leaving me tired and not ready to jump back into the intense cardio. I also now spend more time stretching at the end of the workout.

I have been able to push much harder during the Insanity workouts since moving the body weight leg work to those days. I've been able to get my sustained heart rate very high, in the low 160's, which is about as hard as I can go. Overall this change has made me feel better about both my cardio and body weight resistance training.

I was doing yoga on some Thursdays but have changed that to active recovery days consisting of stretching and walking. I changed this because I felt like my body could really use the extra day off during the week. I've also become tired of the same yoga dvd routines that I own. Once a workout becomes uninteresting it is generally a good time to change it up. I do plan on continuing with yoga but I'll need to join a class or buy some new dvds!

Coming up in June I have some exciting stuff going on such as my birthday and a trip to Florence. I'm hoping that the added year and delicious carby Italian food don't doom my waistline. I'm sure I'll be doing lots of walking so I think I'll be fine (tell that to the pizza and pastries though). There is also a new beer store with great selection (by German standards) in Hamburg called Craft Beer Store so I'll also be battling temptation while at home to only sample a reasonable amount of tasty beers. I also started a new beer blog called, Average Guy's Guide to Beer, which you should check out. Don't worry though I will still update this blog with monthly beer reviews!