Fitness Friday

Health and wellness are very important to me. I grew up heavily involved in sports (competetive swimming and basketball mainly) and my involvement in athletics definitely helped shape who I am today. Fitness is still something that I feel very strongly about. One of the biggest struggles of residency is the lack of time we have for anything outside of medicine. We work between 60-100 or more hours every week, frequently working "call" shifts where we stay at the hospital for 24-27 hours, often with little or no sleep. This has lead to a major decline in the amount of time I have to exercise or participate in sports. Because of that I have had to get creative in the type of workouts I do, trying to maximize the little time that I do have. I definitely am not a fitness expert by any means, but my undergraduate degree is in kinesiology (exercise physiology to be exact) and I have many friends in the fitness field who pass on their advice from time to time. I am a big fan of interval type workouts that incorporate both cardio and some form of strength training. One day I would really like to try Cross-fit, but unfortunately my schedule won't allow for that right now. Anyways, moral of the story is that from time to time I plan on sharing some of the workouts I do. I am not trying to give anyone an exercise plan or claim that you will get any magic results from what I do but I would love for people to give feedback and share their exercise routines as I find that it is easy to get stuck in a certain work out rut, and sometimes just getting advice or ideas from someone can break that vicious cycle!

This week's workout:

10 min warm up on the bike, alternate 1 min easy and 1 min fast legs

Few minutes of light stretching

Intervals:
5 min bike (moderate pace)
20 leg up sit-ups
20 dumbell/kettle bell swings (I use 25 lbs)
20 squats
10 pushups

Repeat intervals x 6 (no rest in between)

And you're done! I also recommend 5-10 minutes of stretching after every workout to help reduce muscle stiffness and increase flexibility!

Happy sweating!