It’s been a while since I last updated you on my work out routine, but to be honest, there wasn’t anything to update you about. For the past year my work outs dropped to an all time minimum. For a few months I worked out hardly at all, apart from dance class, and then last December I didn’t find my way to the gym or dance class at all. Of course that was all due to my battle against fatigue and exhaustion that ultimately knocked me over completely earlier this year. As a result I’ve put on quite some weight and I’m pretty much out of shape. I’ve been building up my work outs routine for the past few months and I’m almost back to the work out schedule before all of this happened.  The goal is to get my fitness level back up where it was and here’s how I’m doing that.

My complete knock out and lack of working out for months on end, meant that I was back at square one. My fitness level was zero. Since I’ve been doing some sort of physical activity my entire life and have been quite actively going to the gym for 5 years now. My zero isn’t exactly zero, zero. I took one of those fitness level tests and passed with flying colors once I got back to the gym, but still, I used to be a lot slimmer and fitter. And so I decided to change that.

In January, despite exhaustion and everything else that ailed me, I decided to at least stick to dance class and body balance for the time being. Just to keep my body moving so I would stay flexible. Especially body balance provided me with some much needed relaxation. At first I wasn’t able to do both regularly. For a few months it was either/ or: if I went to dance class I couldn’t go to body balance that week and vice versa. In April I decided I was going to go for both lessons consistently every week. I kept that up for 4 – 6 weeks when I decided to add something new.

See, my flexibility isn’t the problem. I’m flexible enough and even after not doing anything for a few weeks, I still easily manage to do a body balance class. What I needed was some cardio. And so by the end of May I had added a spinning class to the routine. I started spinning classes in 2012 after giving up a dance class and since this would allow me to focus mostly on my breathing and not on movement I thought it would be a good start for picking things up again. At first the classes were hard and again, I wasn’t always able to go. After my summer Interrail trip, I made a point of going every week again and that surely helped.

Come July, I was ready to add another workout to the routine: weights. This is something I had dabbled in before, but because of the ultimate crash, I had never been able to really work on it. My strength had gone down mostly and I felt I had to build up some muscle before trying out anything like the martial arts/ punching/ kicking classes I used to take. And so I got a weightlifting routine. I diligently went every week till the end of August and then September happened and I wasn’t always able to go. But still, I managed to squeeze in 3 rounds and by now I’ve been given a new, much more challenging round (I could elaborate if you’d like) and I will be using that (hopefully) till the end of this year.

For now, I just want to stick to this routine for a bit longer. First my body needs to get used to the new weight routine and then I hope to add in a body combat or city kick class. Both are similar classes, because you throw punches and kicks around, but one is more of an aerobics type class, and the other an interval training. So it depends on what I want to go for. If I add that I will split up my weight routine into two and add that to an already existing workout.By now, I’m already eager to get this started, but I don’t want to rush into anything.

I hope to be adding a new class in a month or so. That will leave another 2 months till the end of the year and hopefully my fitness level will then be a lot closer to what it used to be. And then it’s just a matter of sticking to it really. Food wise I’ve also made a few changes, but I will leave that for a different post.

How do you stay in shape?