I took my kids to Huntington Beach for a last hurrah getaway before my son goes to high school and my daughter heads off to work in an orphanage in Uganda in September.

(I have to say that my kids are pretty cool.)

The first thing we did once we checked into our hotel was check out the gym scene. Lucky for us, there was a gym a few minutes walk away. I did well on that part of picking the hotel. Otherwise my hotel pick: not so good….

Note: do NOT make holiday plans on the day AFTER your dog dies. I clearly wasn’t in my right mind. In the end, the hotel was clean and safe. We’ve been spending all our time elsewhere, so a less than perfect hotel was fine.

We didn’t have any hard and fast plans for the 6 day mini holiday. I just wanted to spend time hanging out. Life is so fast once the fall hits. My teenagers are busy with their own lives, as I am with mine it seems, so a little down time was definitely in order. We’ve been doing these mini get-aways for a few years now and it helps keep us connected.

We got into the habit of training in the morning and then hitting the beach in the afternoon. I love it that my kids like to hit the gym with me. It was quiet and well equipped. It was actually a MMA (mixed martial arts) gym. I threatened to take the kids into the ‘octagon’ with me if they didn’t behave. Apparently I’m an expert at embarrassing them at a number of locations so they seemed to fall in line after that idle threat 😉

One day I did a workout with 15 year old Sam and here’s the workout I did with 18 year old Hannah.

We did 50 seconds of work with a 10 second rest/transition. We each started on a different exercise and did a giant set rotation. We repeated this giant set with no rest for 5 rounds:

• skip
• pushup
• bench step up
• stiff legged deadlift
• ab move (ab wheel, shoe touch)
• DB bent over row

It’s a bunch of fun training with your kids. I’m pretty impressed that I can still kick them around the weight room. One of my proudest accomplishments as a mom is the fact that they want to work out and fitness is important to them. I’m also impressed that they make healthy eating choices without my prompting. I guess walking the walk with them has paid off. It’s easy to talk and tell them what they ‘should’ be doing, but it’s way more powerful.

On Saturday, Hannah and I did power yoga in downtown Huntington Beach. It’s no secret that I hate yoga. Sorry to all you yoga lovers out there. I’m not saying that yoga isn’t good for you, I’m just saying that it’s not a personal favorite of mine.

We had a lot of fun doing it for the hour in the street though. The class was outdoors and the organizer had interlocking mats set up, about 75 people and the instructor was mic’d with two helpers to go around and improve postures. It wasn’t as stuffy as my other yoga experiences have been. Again, I don’t mean to offend, I’m sure that not all yoga experiences are similar to mine. While I’m not a yoga convert, I really enjoyed this with Hannah.

I was disappointed that we couldn’t convince Sam to join us. He opted to hit the gym instead (I actually got up early and did that too). I’m sure Sam would have gotten a kick out of some of the things the instructor was saying, like we shouldn’t hold ‘emotional stress’ in our hips. I’m not exactly sure how that’s possible, but after the class my hips were happy 😉

If you need some direction of workouts you can do at home or even while traveling, I have you covered. My workouts can be printed and taken with you. I have a number of clients that train with their teenaged daughters at my fitness boot camp and even though my program is called ‘Female Fat Loss Over 40’, the workouts are totally suitable for any age, including your teenager. If you have a daughter, see if you can challenge her to train with ‘mom’. It’s a great mother/daughter thing to do.

Incoming fat loss search terms:

• mother daughter beach

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Posted in Workouts by Shawna 5 Comments