Catherine Delannoy

Day Seven – Legs Workout

A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander

Roman Payne

Today, I agreed with my husband that we’d do a legs workout together. However, that completely slipped my mind until about 9.30 pm. Even worse, the workout required jump squats, so there was no way I could do it inside – we live in an apartment building, and I’d be risking the wrath of our downstair’s neighbours. Reluctantly, I got back out of my pyjamas, put on my workout gear, and headed out into our shared garden.

However, once we got out there, we had a lot of fun. This workout comes courtesy of 8fit, and is another workout requiring you to do everything non-stop. You do each exercise for 30 seconds, for a total of 8 minutes (i.e. 4 sets), but with no breaks.

While this is a fast way to get your workout out of the way, the downside of this, of course, is that over time my form began to suffer. I kind of prefer longer, slower workouts, because at least you can focus on getting the form right.

For our workout, there were just four exercises:

  • Lunges
  • Squat jumps
  • Skater lunges; and
  • Calf raises

By the time we were done, my husband and I had both worked up a sweat, despite him being considerably fitter than me. Even better, we had laughed and had some fun together. I always find that spending time getting outside with my husband, whether that is walking, running, cycling, or working out, always ends up being a great time.

On another note, I’ve made some exciting progress. My current weight is 67.9 kg, meaning I had 12.9 kg left! I’d stalled a little over the past few days, so it was reassuring to see the weight coming off.

Until tomorrow – stay happy, stay healthy.

Catherine Delannoy

Day One – Legs

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step

— Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve been interested in health and fitness for a while. I run semi-regularly with my partner, and before a concussion a few years ago, I used to regularly do strength and HIIT workouts.

However, lately I’ve been feeling flabby and uninspired. Combined with this, I have always had a vague dream of getting down to 55kg in my 20s. The end of my 20s are now fast approaching (I’m 28!), so I need to get it done now!

A few days ago, I had an idea to keep inspired with my workouts… What if, every day, I do a different workout? Legs one day, abs another, and strength on another. And what if I sourced those workouts from Google?

An idea was born!

So, let’s talk rules first. Each day I will do a different work out, starting on page one of Google with the search terms “at-home leg workout”, “at-home ab workout”, and “at-home arm workout”, and working through deeper into the workout pages.

For a page to qualify as a workout, it must contain a number of exercises, and must specify sets and/or reps.

I decided to start with a leg workout – leg exercises tend to be my favourite type of exercise, so I thought they’d provide an easy way for me to ease myself into the workouts.

For Day 1, I used Coach Mag’s leg workout. It involved 3 sets of 10 reps for each exercise. Here it is:

My favourite exercises were Squats, Good Mornings, Glute Bridges. However, I’ve got to say, the Pistol Squats were really killer.

I started out by doing 10 reps of each exercise, but then realised I could do things my way, so I just did 20 reps of each, to get everything ticked off.

However, I was extremely careful with keeping good form – I know bad form can quickly destroy your chances of working out through injury.

Tomorrow, I’ll weigh myself and measure myself, with the hope of looking back at the stats with a sense of pride, haha.

Till then – have an amazing day!