#WorkoutWeek: Fit

My new favourite gym, my garden.

So you may recall last year I shared my love of fitness. You'll be pleased to hear I have stayed (mostly) on the wagon. Let's ignore that week in Sicily when I intended to workout but instead ate Aranchini and Gelato all WEEK. Mid-workout last week I had a lightbulb moment.. The Mibber does Fitness.

So this week is a little more lifestyle and fitness with a bit of Mibbing thrown in for good measure. Normally, these kinds of posts are saved for NY, but to be honest: there is no better time to start getting fit that right now, YES, now. And with the Commonwealth Games, World Cup and well it's Summer you have plenty of reason to get-up and go. It's coming up to a year since I started taking it seriously, so it's like a mini anniversary. Expect fashion, food and motivation this week.

But first fitness.

I still haven't joined a gym. After I completed my programme, I felt compelled to discover new routines. After a week in Centre Parcs cycling, playing tennis every morning, swimming mid-afternoon and badminton every evening, I felt I needed to take my exercise outside more. So thats what I did, long distance runs and interval training and long, long walks. And this was the middle of winter, so getting out now, in the dry weather is an excellent time to start. Fitness is all about movement, whether your walking or sprinting, movement is the most important step. Every move and step counts. So get out there, fresh air in your lungs and enjoying the summer.

I also discovered more dynamic weight training and invested in Kettlebells. Their uneven distribution of weight surprised me when I woke after their first use aching in strange places. Initially I started with this routine from Women's Health. But have since progressed and incorporated them into slightly less static routines.

But January came the biggest change in my routine since I started exercising, I got really into HIIT training and more specifically, Fitness Blender. An amazing resource of free fitness routines on Youtube. Hundreds and hundreds of videos. They're fun, motivational, and quite frankly addictive, switching up my routines based on my equipment available to me transformed my work out and pushed me to complete videos I'd initially struggled to complete all the way through. They are now firmly in my routine.

Here is one of my favourites, incorporating a warm up, HIIT routine and yoga cool down:

My aim is to work out 3-4 times a week, never being too repetitive, I'll go on a long run followed the next time by HIIT or interval training and then some light weight or body weight work but sometimes you just want a nice satisfying stretch and I love some time spent practising yoga. And whenever the opportunity arrises to workout with a buddy, I take it. Exercise, as I've learnt more recently, is to be enjoyed, it doesn't have to take up hours, it can be a quick or lengthy and me-time. It's more important to feel fit than to look it.

What's your favourites ways to keep fit?

Follow me on Twitter @TheMibber to keep up with my series of #workoutweek

Andrea x