Fitness Goals

Now that we are home from our summer of hiking, I'm ready to start setting a few new fitness goals.  The thing about hiking for 4 months is that it leaves you with amazing endurance and seriously strong legs, but it leaves your upper body strength and flexibility in a sad, sad state. 

Not that this is a surprise or anything.  There are people who take time to do pull-ups, push-ups and yoga on the trail so that they can avoid this very situation, but folks, I was just not one of them.  In the beginning I did my fair share of yoga, but we were only hiking 10-12 miles then and I had extra time in my day.  That only lasted a month though...and so did my yoga. 

But that's OK.  I was hiking and had different goals for a temporary period of time.  Flash forward to the now and I'm ready to adjust my goals again.  I've given it some thought (while scrolling through Pinterest and staring at the pictures of buff arms) and I've got two sets of goals. 

My first goal is simply to restore balance to my overall health in this first month.

• I will be starting each day with my morning yoga routine and adding more challenging poses as I go along. My focus will be on my core strength, lower back stretches and arm balances.
  
• My arms are in a weak and undefined state so I've decided to give myself a push-up challenge.  Everyday I will do 2 sets of 10 standard push-ups and 2 sets of 10 tricep push-ups.  Each week I will add another set of 10 to each and an additional set of 10 for one other kind of push-up that will change each week.  So week one will be 40 push-ups per day, week two will be 70, week three 100 and week four will be 130.
• Since my endurance is in a good place right now I just want to maintain it.  I'm going to run outside a few times a week and aim for 20-25 miles a week to start.  I'll see how it feels for both me and Rooney (the best running buddy ever) and adjust mileage accordingly.
• I also want to keep my calorie burning at it's peak so I'm going to lift free weights at home and just do some basic moves to start.  I've been using only my own body weight and nature to stay fit for the past few months so I'm going to start simple with the weights.

My goals for the long-term are to work more on definition, but I don't have specific things that I am working towards just yet.  Once I make a little more progress on my first set of goals, I'll start planning for the next. 

Rooney and I on the AT. Somewhere in VA.

Before I go, I want to give you guys a quick update on how it's going so far. 

• It's only been about 3 days so I'm still in that "yay!  new goals!" stage, but I can tell you that starting my with yoga and weights is pretty amazing.  My lower back is feeling much stronger and my flexibility is already starting to return. 
  
• I've gone on 2 runs so far, each were about 5 miles long.  I felt great and didn't have any trouble with it, even though it's been in the 90's here.  It's nice to know that I haven't lost it!  
• The weights have been so-so, but that's only because I don't see the change immediately and I just have to trust that I'm making a difference. 
• The push-ups are pretty awesome.  Nothing makes me feel stronger than finishing a set and even though I'm shaking a bit at the end, it's kind of great.  Excited to keep this little challenge up.
  

That's it for today.  Enjoy the weekend!

~Jill