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Free Workout Roundup

pin it party Pin It Party 3

Lindsay over at the Lean Green Bean offered a challenge today to share five of our feature blog posts. We’re challenged to meet new bloggers, give our favorite bloggers more exposure and increase the feeling of community through this challenge. Hey, I can get on-board with that! And it’s quick enough to whip together on one’s lunch break. In that vein, here are five free workouts from Boun-See that you don’t want to miss:

1. 30-20-10 Printable Running Plan: Scientifically proven to improve race times, this interval running plan is great to mix in your race training plan.

2. FlashFit Workout #1: To challenge my lunch workout buddy and I, I started putting these strength and cardio circuits together to get the most out of our short time at the gym. They feature combo moves that hit all the major muscle groups and cardio bursts to keep the fat-burning furnace on high. I’ve got many more of these put together in a notebook for a class I hope to teach that will eventually migrate here to Boun-See.

3. Broomstick Stretch Workout: A simple broomstick can sometimes give you a better stretch than your body alone.

stick stretches workout

4. Broomstick Full-Body Workout #1: Likewise, this common household item can also give you great full-body fitness benefits. Throw in 1 minute of cardio between each move and you’ve got yourself a pretty comprehensive training circuit.

5. Broomstick Full-Body Workout #2: Part two of the above. Work every major muscle group from different angles using something as simple as a stick!

Thanks for the challenge, Lindsay! I hope to see some new faces around here and meet some new fitnessistas myself. The blogging community is so inspiring, isn’t it?

My goal this week has been to get some video set up of some of my workouts that I may post on YouTube. I got the wrong cord for my camcorder from Radio Shack, so I’m trying to source the right one on Amazon. After I figure out all the logistics of all this video stuff, I might just start putting together an exercise library. How cool would that be? Sign up for updates from Boun-see in my sidebar so you won’t miss any!

I’ve made all of the images above easily Pin-able, so feel free to share the love. I appreciate it!

Free Workout Roundup

pin it party Pin It Party 3

Lindsay over at the Lean Green Bean offered a challenge today to share five of our feature blog posts. We’re challenged to meet new bloggers, give our favorite bloggers more exposure and increase the feeling of community through this challenge. Hey, I can get on-board with that! And it’s quick enough to whip together on one’s lunch break. In that vein, here are five free workouts from Boun-See that you don’t want to miss:

1. 30-20-10 Printable Running Plan: Scientifically proven to improve race times, this interval running plan is great to mix in your race training plan.

2. FlashFit Workout #1: To challenge my lunch workout buddy and I, I started putting these strength and cardio circuits together to get the most out of our short time at the gym. They feature combo moves that hit all the major muscle groups and cardio bursts to keep the fat-burning furnace on high. I’ve got many more of these put together in a notebook for a class I hope to teach that will eventually migrate here to Boun-See.

3. Broomstick Stretch Workout: A simple broomstick can sometimes give you a better stretch than your body alone.

stick stretches workout

4. Broomstick Full-Body Workout #1: Likewise, this common household item can also give you great full-body fitness benefits. Throw in 1 minute of cardio between each move and you’ve got yourself a pretty comprehensive training circuit.

5. Broomstick Full-Body Workout #2: Part two of the above. Work every major muscle group from different angles using something as simple as a stick!

Thanks for the challenge, Lindsay! I hope to see some new faces around here and meet some new fitnessistas myself. The blogging community is so inspiring, isn’t it?

My goal this week has been to get some video set up of some of my workouts that I may post on YouTube. I got the wrong cord for my camcorder from Radio Shack, so I’m trying to source the right one on Amazon. After I figure out all the logistics of all this video stuff, I might just start putting together an exercise library. How cool would that be? Sign up for updates from Boun-see in my sidebar so you won’t miss any!

I’ve made all of the images above easily Pin-able, so feel free to share the love. I appreciate it!

It’s a Pleasure to be Your Momma

Our daily indoor trampoline date: I swore we wouldn’t keep it in the house

He calls out “momma!” at least 16 times per minute. Look at this. Try this. I’m thirsty. Follow me. Let’s be ghosts. Hide! I want one.

Yesterday it bothered me, to the point that I started to mimic him. Oh heavens, please forgive me. But today, I decided to be a little bit more contemplative and deliberate about embracing it. After all, I know that before I know it, there will come a time when he’ll be more inclined to talk to a garbage can than his own mother. That little tiny high-pitched voice will turn into a manly grumble. And I know I’ll miss these days and all that “momma”-ing.

So today, I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to wrap my arms around him and listen to everything he has to say, complete with eye contact and legitimate interest in his words. I’m not too jaded to hear what’s all been said before, because it hasn’t been said by this particular little human. Because there’s something truly thrilling about watching my boy learn all these new things for the first time himself.

There’s this magical glue that we mommas have that keeps our little ones at our sides and fuses our souls. There will be times when our children will be so far away, even if in the next room, but that momma bond is one tough cookie. It can survive the utmost tragedies and coldness (a la Gone With the Wind). And if anything is truly worth celebrating, it is this mother/child connection.

I know firsthand how much mommas mean, because I know what mine means to me. It’s enough to make a grown person cry. That sublime connection alone makes it such a pleasure to be this little man’s momma.

P.S. Speaking of little Peanuts: my husband told me today that our son knows the words to the Walker Texas Ranger theme song. Oh brother! Not sure I can embrace that one. Haha!

Reinventing the Wheel

Why is it OK to use others’ ideas in order to prevent “reinventing the wheel”, but we have to constantly reinvent ourselves to every person we meet to earn ourselves any value?

So, you leave college, change jobs, and suddenly that perfect attendance, A+ average and raving reviews from your college professors mean absolutely nothing. You have to perform above average on the corporate tasks set before you over and over again to once again gain that superior reputation.

Then, you change doctors three times in the last five years due to your medical coverage, and along the way all those years in a row of normal results mean nothing, and you have to start out at year one again and again (even though you’ve been in the same monogamous married relationship for the past three years and tested normal for the past 10 and had every detail of your past medical history faxed over each time). The new eye doctor also doesn’t get it until you’re there three years in a row. Then he says, well, something must be wrong.

You graduate college, get married, have a baby and after that, fall off the face of the Earth. It is difficult to renew that sense of excitement or level of care people have for you during those times. If you’re not shopping for a gown or picking up a layette, you’re nobody. Unless maybe you’ve somehow found the key ingredient to erasing laugh lines. Even then, you’d have to pitch your product with a huge marketing budget in order for anyone to hear about it.

Then, you’re in a nursing home with no visitors and your most exciting feat for the day is planting a fricken’ tomato seed. Most situations, relationships, types of people, and news events aren’t “fresh” to you anymore. You can’t bungee jump from a New York building anymore. And even if you were a world-renowned artist a few decades back, no one would stop long enough to learn about it because you’re not “fresh” anymore.

This is why it is so important to not write people off because the first time you saw them, they had a toothpaste smudge on their sleeve. Every one of my best friends will tell you that they didn’t think much of me when they first saw me. It took a long time and a lot of exploration to find out who I really was and that I might be worth being around. I myself have been surprised to find out certain things about people that I never would’ve imagined and found love in an unlikely place. I despised my own husband when I first met him. That’s the trouble. Most of us are all too dismissive. Try not to miss out next time, okay?

By the way, Miss Bride-of-the-Year, while we’re overjoyed about your union, please remember that once this is all over, the hype will disappear very rapidly. Try not to ruin friendships, pine over icing colors for too long, or float your head too high, because we all need you back on Earth, and we don’t want to have to cringe at the thought of you when you come back.

P.S. What is happening to cinnamon-flavored gum? This cure for my boredom-of-the-mouth (more on that in a later post) is disappearing from every well-stocked candy shelf imaginable. Wrigley’s cinnamon? Are you out there somewhere?

Extenuating Circumstances Make Great Friends

Sometimes it takes a tragedy, an emergency situation or an unlikely pairing on an eternal bus ride to deepen a connection between two rare souls. Sometimes it seems a tragedy in itself that it takes such extenuating circumstances to forge said connection.

I remember a woman I used to work with that reamed someone out for asking her how she was one day. Instead of just letting it go as a socially responsible thing to ask, she lectured him about the unfriendliness of the “how are you” question when he really had no regard for the answer. But would it have been more friendly to just ignore her and walk into the building without having said a word to her?

In a way, she was right though. These less-than-meaningful social graces we subscribe to don’t fulfill that deep desire for human connection. But it would be difficult to forge that connection with every single person we pass, and so these social graces keep us moving along in harmony.

However, wouldn’t it be nice, once in awhile, if we could form some deep bonds with the people we meet in passing? Without being couped up next to them in a bathroom during an hour-long tornado warning? Without lying next to them on an airport bench during severe winter weather that left you both stranded?

I have a neighbor that I’ve said “hello” to in passing. She’s right around my age with a little daughter. We seem to be in a similar sort of life situation in many respects, yet I didn’t even know her name for the first three years of living in my home. I mean, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone within breathing distance to laught about tantrums with, to exchange babysitting, to rave about the new sidewalks, and to whisper about our mates?

I have good friends, to be sure. But sometimes the logistics of separate cities, multiple children and different working hours leave little time for get-togethers, let alone grabbing a quick coffee. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone so close by that you don’t need to think about packing your baby in the car, running for gas, and being home in time for dinner? And why not be close friends with a neighbor anyway?

So, we invited the neighbor, her daughter and boyfriend for a cookout during the summer. From my profile, you can see that I have a craving for connection. I tend to fall more on the reserved side though, so I let my husband do the talking. I mean, why not? Why not take those small opportunities and turn them into something remarkable? A tight group of close friends keeps us all happy, healthy, well-adjusted human beings. And they have nice warm homes to hide out in when you accidentally lock yourself out of the house.