you don't know squat

Oh boy am I sore. The WOD on Tuesday night was a deceiving little treat.

‘Cindy’....20mins AMRAP:
5 pull ups
10 push ups
15 squats

Now silly me, I figured they’d be weighted squats. But after doing 20 mins and pushing out 11+18, I suuuuure was glad I didn’t have any weight on my shoulders for those squats! Yesterday was supposed to be chest, shoulders and traps but since I couldn't even manage to wash my hair properly I decided to give my body a healing day. Clearly that’s what it was telling me I needed!

Tonight is Crossfit again. I’m still sore, but going to suck it up.

For Load:
5-5-5 Dead Lift

For Distance:
1-1-1 Handstand Walk

For Height:
1-1-1 Box Jump

For Time:
400m Row

My PR for dead lift right now is 65kgs and row 400m is 1:36.2 so I’m hoping to set new PR’s on those two. I have yet to experience box jumps and last time I tried a handstand walk, I fell over. I’ll be happy with any result for that. At least when you start at the bottom the only way is up!

Pretty sure I could eat smoked salmon for every meal. Moar!

round 2...ding ding ding!!

I’ve decided to compete again! May 26th is just under 20 weeks away so I’m giving myself a LOT more time than I did last year. For the most part I’ve kept to eating clean during the week at work and then having a few cheats on the weekend. The holidays were a different story though :S Ryan and I took a trip to the Whitsundays (amazing BTW!) and pretty much ate crap the whole trip....it was glorious :D but definitely had some Christmas fluff afterwards! So for eats, I’m making a few tweaks to really clean it up, like limit to one cheat a week (most likely this will be sushi, is that even a cheat meal!?) and switch to green tea during the week. I can’t give up our ritual Saturday morning tea and coffee on the patio just yet :). Here is what this week consists of:

Breakfast: one egg, ¼ cup egg whites, 1/3 cup whole grain oats with dried fruit, cinnamon and water.
Mid morning snack: raw cucumber and carrots, almonds, green tea.
Lunch: ½ a baked chicken breast, ¼ baked sweet potato, ½ cup steamed carrots and green beans.
Afternoon snack: one hardboiled egg, 10-12 cherry tomatoes, one apple
Pre-workout: Banana
Post-workout: 1 scoop of protein powder with water
Supper: stir-fry – fresh spinach, mushrooms, bean sprouts, cabbage, chicken breast, red curry paste.

And lots of water!!!

For the fun part, working out of course, I’m doing it a little different this time. I started Crossfit at the beginning of December so I’ll be incorporating three days a week into my plan. Here’s what it will look like:

Monday: legs (quads, hams, calves, glutes)
Tuesday: Crossfit
Wednesday: chest, shoulders and traps
Thursday: Crossfit
Friday: back, lats, bis and tris
Saturday: Crossfit/Run
Sunday: Rest

Let the fun begin!!

guess what?

 

justourhappyplace.blogspot.com.au

A new place for personal stuff!

puppy luv

Still hobbling around. I thought I would not be hurting after a week. I have been taking it easy this week but I’m getting a little antsy to pump some iron or something. Luckily I had a little side project I could work on. My friend Laura got hitched this past summer and asked me to design a thank you card for her so I put on my Photoshop hat and went to work. It had been a while since I did anything with Photoshop and realized how much I missed it. I love designing things and putting my ideas into something visual. I can’t wait to one day design my own stationery! I’m going to have a hay day!

Last weekend I decided to cook for my little furball princess Lily. I found a simple recipe online for some dog biscuits and I had all the ingredients at home so I whipped up a bunch on a sunny Sunday afternoon. She goes nuts for them...cheese, whole wheat flour, olive oil and chicken stock! Even puppies can eat clean too!

 

hang ten

I know...I know....it’s been a while since I’ve written anything. The weather has been beautiful here and I spend as much time as I can outside in the sunshine. A couple of weekends ago, Ryan and I took a surfing lesson at the Gold Coast and it was so great! We ended up picking up a used surf board a couple of days later and I can’t wait to take it out and get some practice. It definitely gives you a good core workout, no doubt about that!

I’ve been doing some home workouts lately, trying out the BodyRock.tv routines that go up online every day. It’s 12 mins of intense moves plus they usually have a bonus abs or targeting exercise to do afterwards. I like them but they aren’t enough for me. I miss doing weights in the gym for sure and a little bit of a more lengthy training session. I think it was a good way to find out what I really prefer.

Clumsy me though, had a little accident during my last BodyRock workout. I was in the backyard doing single leg hops and jump squats and on one of the single leg hops I missed the tiles and rolled my ankle onto the grass. I heard a loud snap and was rolling around in pain for a few minutes. Right away my first thought was that I broke it. I’ve sprained my ankles plenty of times in my old soccer days but nothing even close to this has happened. I was able to hobble inside and put it up. The next day I woke up to a golf ball on my ankle bone, went to work and decided at lunch I better get it checked out. Off to the hospital I went, ready to pay the big bucks (health care is not free in Australia). I ended up having it x-rayed and all checked out ok but I badly sprained it of course. Golf balls don’t show up for nothing. That was last Thursday, it’s still swollen and bruised and hurting L Oh and I am fully covered for benefits here because of my work visa so I don’t have to pay a cent J So I’m feeling a little stuck since I can’t really do any exercise involving my feet, I will just suck it up and go to the gym for some upper body...which always make me think of this...

for a little glimpse :)

                                                 

 

     

loafin'

I finally got around to flipping through my Eat Clean cookbooks to try and find something yummy to whip up. I decided on a delicious looking banana loaf which I thought was perfect because it's been a loooooong time since I ate any bread. Here's what goes in:

2 cups of whole wheat flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking soda
4 egg whites, beaten until fluffy
1 cup mashed naners (aka nanas or bananas)
1/2 cup skim milk soured with 1 tbsp lemon juice
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp vanilla

Oven at 350F (I have to put F because ovens in Australia are in celsius). Coat a loaf pan with olive oil and dust with flour. Combine dry ingredients in one bowl and wet in another. Add the dry to the wet and mix until blended. Pour into a loaf pan and into the ov' for 55 mins! I found this recipe in The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook with a few of my own modifications and omissions.

Can you smell it?!

simple words

You know when you see a great quote and it just makes complete sense and is so simple, I saw one the other day. The second I read it, it just clicked in my mind. Did it do that for you?

awesomeness.

When you get off the leg press machine and a guy gets on right after you and does the same weight. Extra awesomeness if he looks like he's struggling :)

back to life, back to re-al-ity

It's been a great week off from the gym but I'm ready to get back at it. Even though the next competition I plan on doing isn't for another 8 months, summer is just around the corner here in Australia. That means bathing suits and shorts since for me it'll be the hottest summer I'll ever have experienced thus far in my lifetime. Like I said in my previous post, I'm going to be incorporating plyometrics and HIIT (high intensity interval training) into my weekly plan. I slotted in two gym days for now since I still want to build a little muscle or at least maintain what I have now. My main goal is to burn that fat baby!

As for my supplements, the only thing I'm going to be dropping is the fat burner. I really didn't see it make much of a difference. I think once I get closer to the next competition in May I will introduce them back in however I will try a different brand. I'm interested in the Fusion Bodybuilding line of products at the moment; I follow a few of the girls that are reps for the brand on Facebook. I'll stick with the BCAA supplement I was taking. I felt like I recovered fast after workouts and was able to maintain my strength throughout the entire gym sesh. My least favorite part of my contest prep was the acrylic nails I had done. The girl left them way too long for my liking (my fault I guess since I felt bad for asking her to go shorter for the 7th time) and they drove me nuts from the moment I walked out of the salon. I ended up cutting them down a few days ago and filing them back to my normal nail size. Won't be doing that again!

So aside from gym and good eating and all that jazz, a lot of people have been asking for house pics and I finally took 10 mins today and snapped some. The house is finally (and by finally I mean almost) organized. I'd like to get some paint on the walls now, so our next trip to Bunning's I'm grabbing some swatches and see where we go from there! As you can see below, the whole house is a pretty plain off-white.