Tag Archives: Workouts

What to Do If You Missed a Week of Working Out

Woman bent over at the waist and touching her toes. She's stretching before a run. This post is going to be short and sweet. Not everything I write requires 1000+ words to explain.

I’ve been getting so many ideas for posts from my search term analytics lately, and this week’s topic is one of them.

As always, be sure to follow your family doctor’s advice and your own common sense when beginning or returning to an exercise routine.

What works for me might not be the best choice for everyone.

With those caveats out of the way, let’s talk about what happens when life gets in the way and you take a week off from your usual fitness routine. I know I have trouble getting all of my workouts in when I’m travelling or haven’t been getting as much sleep as usual.

The biggest problem with missing a week of workouts that I’ve noticed is that it disrupts your habits. After I’ve missed seven days of exercise, it begins to feel normal to keep my weights in their usual spot instead of jumping into another strength training session or to skip that walk I used take.

That is, it’s far more a psychological issue than it is a physical one. Your muscles, bones, and heart aren’t going to magically revert to the conditions they were in before you began working out regularly just because you missed a few sessions. But this is the point when it starts to feel easier to keep this new pattern going for weeks two, three, four, and beyond.

So the most important thing to do after skipping a week of workouts in my opinion is to get back into your regular habits.

Person walking down a road. There is a guard rail in the background, but we can't see what's behind it. I’m the sort of person who generally responds best to easing back into a fitness routine after a break. That is, I may start off with a shorter weightlifting session or slower walking pace than I’d normally do for the first few days.

Somehow my brain adapts to my former routines better if I don’t expect A+ work on the first day.

If jumping right into your normal workouts at the same intensity you’d built up to before your break is better motivation for you, great!

The important thing is to start moving again until it once again feels normal to stick to the things you were doing before taking this break.

What other advice would you give to someone who has missed a week of workouts?

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My Review of Bipasha Basu’s Unleash 30 Minute Fat Burning Cardio Workout

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and this post is in no way intended to provide medical advice. Please seek the advice of a qualified medical professional before beginning this or any other type of workout routine. 

I’m reviewing this workout simply because I enjoyed it and think some of you might, too. I’m not being compensated for this post in any way and have no affiliation with Bipasha Basu or Shemaroo Good Health 24/7. As always, this is an advertisement-free site. 

A surprising number of people find my site every week by searching for Bipasha Basu. If you’re one of them, I hope you enjoy this workout as much as you have her previous ones. If you’re new to her videos, you’re in for a real treat today!

About the 30 Minute Fat Burning Cardio Workout

This is a 30 minute workout that includes approximately five minutes each of warmup and cool down exercises. I liked the fact that those things were accounted for. As I’ve said here in the past, I find it easy to skip out on cool downs especially when videos don’t include them because of how eager I am to flop over and relax after exercising.

One of the biggest reasons why I decided to do this particular workout was because Bipasha Basu was in it! She has an aerobic dance workout I’ll link to at the bottom of today’s post that I love, so I was curious to see what else she’s been up to lately.

There is no special equipment required for this routine. I appreciated having a yoga mat to jump around on, but this extra layer of padding on the ground is optional.

The cardiovascular exercises in this video included jumping jacks, pushups, mountain climbers, squats, kicks, squats, bunny hops, and marching in place between the most strenuous moves. Bipasha Basu’s 30 Minute Fat Burning Cardio Workout 

My Review

Let’s begin this review with a lighthearted comment about bunny hops. This wasn’t something I’d ever heard of before, but anyone who knows how much I adore rabbits can probably guess how much I enjoyed that particular part of the workout. It was the last thing I was expecting to find in such a serious video, but it sure was a cute thing to try.

Most of the cardiovascular exercise I do is in the form of walking. While it’s brisk, I was still more challenged by this workout than I was expecting to be. There’s a difference between taking a walk and doing jumping jacks, and I think I need to be doing more of the latter to build up my endurance!

This definitely isn’t something I’d recommend to a beginner. I consider myself to be a reasonably fit person, and I wasn’t able to go through this entire video without pausing when I was testing it out for this post. If you’ve been exercising regularly for a while, this may be right up your alley.

I never know how to properly gauge the intensity of a workout, but I would recommend it to people who have been exercising regularly for a while and are interested in trying something new. Bipasha’s Basu’s aerobic dance workout I previously reviewed on my site was an easier, lower-impact workout that included all sorts of positive messages about loving yourself and doing your best.

This one included a minimum amount of narration and more energetic moves. That minimalistic approach is something I appreciate. I suspect I’ll continue to be challenged by it for quite a while.

With that being said, I did notice a few exercises that carried over from her aerobic dance workout. It was amusing to be surprised by them just when I thought that Ms. Basu was expecting her audience to learn an entirely new set of moves.

The only non-complimentary thing I’ll say about this workout has to do with the background music. I’m not a fan of exercising to music unless I’m dancing, so I did find myself wishing for a version of this workout that included Ms. Basu’s instructions but no other noises. This is a minor criticism of something I otherwise found quite useful and challenging, though, and I am glad that the background music didn’t include lyrics.

What I like the most about Bipasha Basu’s workouts is the repetition built into them. Every move was repeated once before she had her audience go onto a different set of exercises. While this is a common thing to find in all sorts of fitness routines, I’ve only grown to appreciate it more over time. It’s nice to be able to practice certain moves more than once, especially if they’d be something I might skip if I were making up my own list of exercises to get through on cardio days.

Previous Reviews of Free Youtube Workout Routines:

The Challenging Chair Workout 

Bipasha Basu’s 30-Minute Aerobic Dance Workout

Fitness Blender’s Brutal Butt & Thigh Workout

Fitness Blender’s Ab Blasting Interval Workout

Fitness Blender’s Toned, Lean Arms Workout

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Getting in Shape Is About Small Decisions, Not Big Ones

One of the things I found most surprising about improving my fitness was how much the small decisions I make every day can accumulate over time.

The first fitness goal I set for myself a few years ago when I decided I wanted to get back into shape was to finish a 30-minute cardio and weightlifting video I found on Youtube. I didn’t even have a pair of hand weights in the house back then, so I improvised with canned food to get myself used to those moves at first.

There were times in the beginning when I could only get about 10 or 15 minutes through it before I needed to take a break to catch my breath because I wasn’t used to moving my body in certain ways. Nevertheless, I persisted. 😉

This was also the only change I made in my daily habits for those first few weeks. My diet remained the same, and other than taking some walks I wasn’t active during the rest of my time.

Getting In Shape Is About Small Decisions

The interesting thing about small decisions is how they build on each other when you’re least expecting it. Once I started making it all the way through that video, I decided to start using an actual set of hand weights during the weightlifting portions of it. I’d previously loaned a 4-pound pair of weights to someone I knew, so once I got them back I began using them instead of lifting tonight’s dinner over my head. Ha!

Suddenly, my routine became challenging again, and I reveled in the idea that those little weights would someday feel too light for me. This was about the same time that I made the commitment to take a walk every day no matter what else I did. Sometimes those walks were a light, 5-minute stroll around the block, and sometimes they lasted an hour or longer and left me sweaty and out of breath by the end of them.

The act of taking the walk was much more important to me than how strenuous it was or how long it lasted.

Once that habit had been formed, I started to take a closer look at my diet and other lifestyle habits that needed to be tweaked in order for me to become healthier. There was never a point when I quit eating anything cold turkey or when I suddenly jumped from not really working out at all to doing something active every day of the week.

It was gradual. One good habit encouraged me to build another. Now I walk or do other cardio exercises for about an hour each day, lift weights for about a hour each week, and have averaged 15,000 steps per day over the last year.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

I’m writing this portion of today’s post with the knowledge that some people want to quit certain habits cold turkey and leap into long, challenging workouts right away. If that’s what works best for you, great!

It’s been my experience, though, that breaking unhealthy habits and building better ones takes far more time and effort than you might imagine at first.

Most of the people I’ve known who were successful at reaching their fitness goals over the long term were folks who focused on one habit at a time and committed to eliminating (or adding) it to their daily routine before choosing their next goal.

Change is difficult. I won’t sugar-coat that for you. There were – and sometimes still are – days when I don’t want to move a muscle for reasons that are completely unrelated to needing time off to heal from an injury or illness. If I had tried to change everything I wanted to do differently in the beginning, I think I would have had a very hard time sticking to my resolutions.

By focusing on one small goal at a time, I was able to build the habits I needed to take on more challenging stuff in the future.

The Difference Between Simple and Easy

Getting into shape is simple in the sense that you will become healthier once you’ve committed to a workout or diet tweak and stuck with it over the long haul.

This doesn’t mean it’s easy, though. To give you an example of what I mean, I’ll tell you the story of what happened when I first decided to switch from drinking rice milk to almond milk. The rice milk I used to drink was sweetened. The almond milk I decided to switch to in order to cut some unnecessary sugar out of my diet was not. It was a simple decision in the sense that both of these milk alternatives are sold in nearly all of the grocery stores close to my home.

I was not a big fan of the almond milk at first because my taste buds were so used to sweet beverages. It took a while to adjust to the more subtle flavours of almond milk, and I definitely had my fair share of gripes about the process in the beginning. I didn’t realize just how much my taste buds had adjusted until my local grocery store temporarily sold out of unflavoured almond milk a few months ago and I had to buy a jug of the stuff I used to drink.

Wow, was it sweet! It tasted like a dessert to me instead of something I’d put into my morning oatmeal or add to a savoury recipe. I honestly didn’t like it at all, and was very happy when my almond milk was back in stock again.

Simple choices aren’t always easy ones to stick with, but if you keep going you’ll be surprised by how much your body can adapt to new routines, foods, workouts, and so much more.I hope this post has encouraged you to find one small change to make in your daily routine. If I can do it, then so can you!

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