Jen's Blog - Circuit Stations

Hi! Jenny the non crafty sister guest blogger again! 

Todays guest post is on exercise.  No I’m not an expert.  What I’m great at is multi tasking.  With 4 kids the excuse would always be I’m too busy to exercise.  When I see the tips in magazines showing people exercising lifting their baby up and down (mine would have thrown up) or doing some sort of other activity hoisting a loved one I laugh.  First of all my kids range from 12 to 25.  No one wants to be lifted even if I were able and I would have to go find my 12 year old and pry her away from Netflix to go even try.  So that said, how do I fit in exercise so I can burn off the excessive amounts of junk food I want to eat?  I’ll tell you here. 

What I like to do is set up circuits.  I do 2 minutes in each station and keep moving.  Again I’m not an expert but this has successfully kept me in the same size since I started having babies in 1991.  Here is a picture of what I look like:

Ok that’s a lie.  That’s a picture of a boby builder I found on Google.  Here is really what I look like.  Not quite as impressive but its me:

First of all not everyone has fancy gym equipment.  To get a good workout in minimum time this is all you really need (and even that would be optional).  

First the 1980’s stepper.  Who doesn’t have one of these kicking around?  I use that as a strength interval.  I step up and back down crunching as I go.  Sometimes if my knee’s are feeling good I will jump over and land in a squat but mostly I step up and down pulling out the Jane Fonda moves. For the other strength intervals I do crunches on the old school exercise ball, pull ups with the cheap stretchy band, and arm lifts with the medicine ball. 

Alternating 2 minute intervals cardio, strength, cardio strength and continuing to move for the entire 30 minutes has worked for me.  I work all body parts in the shortest amount of time.  Again my disclaimer is that I am not a trainer in any way at all and if you happen to try this and pull a hammy don’t sue my sister or her blog.  I am just a regular mom squeezing it all in.  and this works for me.