Monday, April 16, 2012

Getting Back Into Shape: Creating a Workout Plan

As I mentioned in last week's post, before I had my first child, I had just finished meeting with a personal trainer.  It was one of the best investments, and I encourage anyone who is thinking about using a personal trainer to do so.  When I met with the trainer, we primarily worked with weights to do some strength training and toning.  While I lost weight as a result of working out with the trainer, I lost even more of the all important inches. 

After the birth of our first child nearly two years ago, I continued working out at the Y, but I did not meet with a personal trainer again.  I considered doing so, but our little one sometimes had a hard time being in the Kidzone, so I hated to have a commitment just in case I needed to go and pick her up and go home.  By the time she fully adjusted to playing in the Kidzone, I was pregnant with baby number two, so I just continued to do work out on the machines to try and keep from getting completely out of shape.

Just before baby number two arrived, we dropped our Y membership.  We figured up the cost of driving to and from the Y multiple times a week, and the cost was too much for our current budget, so we decided to drop our membership and workout at home.

It took me a while to develop a workout routine here at home, and I am still in the process of working out all the details.  Now that the weather has warmed up, I have begun walking with our dog early in the morning.  As we walk, I am trying to incorporate more and more jogging so that I will hopefully be able to return to running for at least two miles at a time in the near future.  We go out early in the morning before the kids wake up and my husband has to go to work.  Right now it is still dark when we go out, which I don't care for since I cannot see if there are any stray animals of which I need to be aware.

I try to go for run/walks at least three times a week.  On the other three days, I have started using some strength training videos.  We have both a couple of Jillian Michaels' videos and a Jackie Warner video.  After just a couple of weeks of working out with the videos, I would say that they are a sufficient substitute for a personal trainer, especially since I already had some experience with some of the exercises, so using the correct form does not seem to be a problem. 

The last day of the week I don't do anything.  I figured it would be a good idea to have a day of rest from working out all together.

Now, I just need to convince baby number two to sleep through the night on a more regular basis so that waking up early in the morning to work out will not be as difficult.

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