Hotel Room Mini Workouts

I was in Berlin recently for a week to present at a conference. I've been really lucky while doing my PhD to have had the opportunity to go to three conferences in different countries; the first was in Copenhagen, the second in Tampere (Finland) and the third was in Berlin. I really enjoyed the conference and I got a few days to see the city as well which was fantastic! There was one aspect of going away for work that I was a little worried about and that was absolutely undoing any improvements I had made in terms of diet and fitness while I was away. When I went to Berlin, I had only been trying to get into a routine of exercising and eating right for about 3 or 4 weeks so I knew that if I was going to spend the week eating what I wanted and doing no exercise it would be really difficult to get back into the swing of things when I came home! After all, this wasn't a holiday, it was for work.

I can imagine that it must be difficult to maintain a healthy diet and regular exercise when you have to travel for work so I have decided to post about the workouts I would do in my hotel room whenever I got a spare 20-30 minutes to make sure I stayed focused. I found it very hard to find time to exercise while I was away so my aim was to pack as much into as little time as possible so that any exercise I did do was short but effective. I have included them here as images; if you plan to travel soon and you don't want to put your workouts on hold, I hope that you find this post helpful!! They are also a fantastic addition to finish a workout session, even if you aren't travelling. For any arm workouts that require weights just buy two 2l bottles of water; you can use them as weights and to stay hydrated!

I have given an approximate time for each workout. I used to do to 50-40-30-20-10 workout before I had a shower and I think that's a routine I'm going to try to keep!

Tabata is a very short high-intensity workout so it is ideal when you are stuck for time. Depending on how much time you have you can either pick two or four exercises and repeat each set of a pair of exercises four times.

AMRAP - As many rounds as possible is like a Crossfit workout. Try beat your score every day you are away! You can increase or decrease the time limit depending on how much time you have to exercise.

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In this mini workout you have to complete each exercise as fast as possible...it's in the name really! Another great one for the competitive people!!

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I absolutely hate this one! It is so tough, but you really do feel the benefit from it. I have included legs, arms and abs versions in the image.

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The circuit training workout is fantastic if you have about 30 minutes to spare. It is quite tough but a very effective 30 minute full-body workout.

Set your timer and every time it passes the minute mark perform 10 reps of each exercise.

I hope you find these mini workouts effective! I'd love to hear if you try them!

Niamh xxx

My exercise goals

So this week is going to be my first official week on my journey to a healthier and happier me (hopefully this new and improved me will also have a nice ass :D). In this post, I want to talk a little bit about the type of fitness routine that I've finally decided to take up now, that I've gotten rid of the misconceptions I had when I first started into an exercise regime. I will be posting details of the actual workouts I do, but this post is about my reasoning behind the types of exercises (cardio, weights and yoga) I will be doing.

Having the time and motivation for an effective fitness routine has always been a problem for me. This time around, I have the advantage of knowing where I fell down each time I gave up before. Working out for me was mostly based on running for as long and as far as I could; this always seemed to me to be the most important exercise as I wanted to lose weight. I couldn't have been more wrong! This was never going to work for me. I was getting bored while running and there was nothing to distract from how out of breath I was, so I would eventually end up walking. A steady state run is great for building endurance but will use a relatively small amount of energy only while you are running. I would have needed to be running for at least an hour to burn a significant amount of energy. It is important to include cardiovascular exercises in your exercise plan (whether that be running, cycling, rowing machine, dancing etc.), as cardio improves lung and heart function, does wonders for your mood and, of course, aids in weight loss. However, if you are interested in weight loss, high intensity intervals have been shown to be an effective workout for fat loss. This was seriously appealing to me as switching from high to low intensity during my run would mean better results and less time running! My idea is to try to be efficient and balanced with my run, so I will be mixing up my runs by adding intervals of lower and higher intensities. I'm hoping it will help to get more out of my workout and also stop me from getting bored!

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My Journey

This is my first blog post! I have to say it’s extremely daunting to actually put this online but it’s something I have thought about doing for a while and I’m going to give it a try! Honestly, I don’t expect anyone to read my blog but if someone does then great! I really hope you enjoy it!

There are two reasons why I decided to start a blog, the first being that I love to write and the second is that I really want to start looking after myself. At the moment I’m working as a research engineer and part of that involves writing papers to publish your findings. I complain a lot about this part of my work, but secretly I love it! I find that it helps me to understand my work so much more, you can’t write something down and then present it as fact without being 100% confident in it. So you end up spending an awful lot of time just reading around the topic to make certain that you know exactly what it is you’re talking about! This brings me on to the second reason for starting a blog – I really want to start looking after myself, but I haven’t a clue what I’m doing!! I want to lose some weight, get fit, eat right and take care of my skin and hair (who doesn’t?). A year ago, I had gotten very unfit and my clothes were either really tight or didn’t fit, my skin was starting to look dull, my hair…we won’t even go there… and I ended up being quite unhappy with myself. As well as that, I was often tired, had no energy and found it hard to concentrate. So, to try and make a change for a better me, I hopped right onto the health and fitness bandwagon and promptly fell right back off! I tried this a few times but it never seemed to stick and I couldn’t understand why. I blamed myself for having no will-power but this isn’t me; when I put my mind to something there’s usually no stopping me! So why couldn’t I get the results I wanted even though I was so determined? 

Photo cred: Sparkpeople