One of the health and fitness catch phrases you’ll hear a lot is “listen to your body”.

So, what does that actually mean?

When it comes to good nutrition, you need to listen to your body to find out what suits your appetite; your digestion; your energy levels.  When it comes to workouts, same deal!  The way you train on Monday is not necessarily the same way you train on Friday.

Listening to your body with your training can mean quite a variance in the energy output and level of exercises you’re ready to embrace at any given time.

Early on in the week I feel like a million bucks – chin up burpees with box jumps –come at me!  By Saturday and my tenth workout of the week – it’s a totally different story.  I want to move but I need to take it easy!

I’ve given you two workouts to follow here.  Similar, but designed to adjust to your experience, your fitness, and your energy levels.  Learn to listen to your body each and every workout.  How’s your energy today?  Are you up for lots of impact or are you going to modify that aspect of the workout today?  Are you going with longer intervals or easing it back a little but still getting it done?  Are all your exercises going to be done on the floor or are you modifying to an incline bench?

There’s no shame in taking easier options when you need to – so long as you’re doing the best you can do at that moment in time.

This Intermediate/Advanced workout is one of my favourite bodyweight workouts from the Inner Circle membership program.  You can find it in the Female Fat Loss over 40 Fat Burning Workouts package – this is just one of over 80 days worth of workouts!  This’ll keep you out of mischief till summer is back!

Intermediate/Advanced Workout:

Equipment:  Jump rope, bench/chair (optional)
Duration: 35 minutes including warm-up           

This workout can be done in any order, in any number of sets – you just need to get all the exercises and all the reps completed.  For example, you might choose to do 10 squat thrusts at a time and move on to another less demanding exercise in between until all those reps are complete.  Every Single Limb rep counts as one rep, 50 lunges is be the same as 25 lunges per leg, 40 XBMC are 20 per side etc. With switch lunges – one forward and one reverse lunge equals one rep. 

Finish with a cooldown and stretch worked muscles.

And here’s a similar workout but modified so that all exercises can be done on an incline without getting up and down off the floor.  Still intense but you can ease back the effort depending on any injuries or your exercise experience or energy levels.

Base Level/Lower Energy Workout:

Equipment:  Bodyweight, Bench
Duration: Allow for 25 minutes including warm-up.  If you’re short on time or building up your fitness, try doing just one or two repeats of this circuit to start with.

 

You can find this workout in the brand new 20 Minute Anti-Aging Solution for Her program.  Perfect for beginner exercisers or anyone struggling to workout around injuries and reduced mobility.

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Posted in Workouts by Lisa Bullock Comments Off on Listen to Your Body