Exercising in the Summer

It is so hard to work out in the summertime! For one thing, it is way too hot! For another, there are many more activities I'd rather do in the extended daylight hours that include, but are not limited to:

• Floating on a raft in the pool
• Sitting on my couch in the air-conditioned living room with the blinds closed
• Eating ice cream

Oops.

I have been doing some sporadic swimming here and there. But to be perfectly frank here, I've been mostly a lazy bum. It should be no surprise then that my laziness is noticable on, well, my bum!

I returned to the gym yesterday.

Go me!

Still Working Out and Abs Stuff...

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to be motivated to work out and start living a healthy life for more than the two or three months leading up to our annual trek to Mexico.

Last year was a total bust in that regard.

I'm pleased to report that we've gone to the gym twice this week! That's two times more than I went in the two MONTHS post-Mexico last year!!

A commenter on my main blog asked what I do as far as working my abs out. I have to say that the main thing I did was to turn my hips and suck in for photos. ;-)

Seriously, though, my workouts consist of three main components when I go to the gym:
Cardio for 30 minutes (and I mean running or going hard on the elliptical)
Arms and shoulders (3 or 4 set circuit of low-weights and high reps)
Ab machines (3 sets of obliques, crunch machine, upright leg lifts)

When I'm at home, I use the Turbo Jam DVDs. The intro set comes with a killer 20-minute ab routine, but the entire workout is geared toward building your core, so even the cardio parts are ab-intensive.

I also have a DVD that came free with my first Turbo Jam called Ab Ripper 200. It is part of the Tony Horton Power 90 set, but I don't know how to get just that little 6-minute video. You might try ebay.

I'm all about the shortcut and getting the maximum results with the least amount of effort, but because your ab muscles don't really start to show until you burn the fat on top, there is no easy way out.