Hi !​​​​​​​

I hope you had an amazing week and are looking forward to some great weekend plans! 

I'm looking forward to the weather FINALLY feeling like fall!  Fall is my FAVORITE time of year!  I love the crisp air, the bright colorful leaves, cozy sweaters and hoodies, the smell of wood burning fires, apple picking, pumpkin carving...  Well, you get the point!  

Fall is a great season to take your workouts outside!  Hiking and biking this time of year is an ideal way to check out the fall foliage (if you're into that sort of thing).  Grab some friends or your family and get outside!

If you're in the Maryland/DC area and looking for a great place to hike, my favorite spots for fall hiking include:

With the cooler weather the sweaters and hoodies come out, it gets dark earlier, and the couch and a pile of blankets calls!  It can be challenging during the fall and winter months to stick to a workout routine.  As the holiday season approaches, things tend to get a bit hectic and it's easy to let other tasks and events become a priority over your health and fitness.  Establishing a solid routine now will help you maintain your workouts through the end of the year so when the ball drops and we ring in the new year, you're not setting resolutions and "starting over" yet again.  

Workouts can be short and quick and still be effective at helping you reach your fitness goals.  When your time is limited, you can often feel like a short workout isn't even worth the effort.  I assure you, it absolutely is!  Some of my go to quick workouts include:

METCON workouts are strength conditioning workouts that consist of circuits of strength exercises performed with minimal rest generally around 20 minutes in length.  You can use strength exercises, cardio (running, rowing, etc), gymnastic movements, or any combination of the 3.  Rest can be set in intervals or based on how long you need to recover before moving onto the next exercise.  The goal is to keep the intensity high and the rest to a minimum while maintaining good form.  

HIIT workouts are high intensity interval workouts with timed intervals that focus on increasing the heart rate to 80% or greater during the intervals of high intensity.  It's most common to do HIIT workouts with cardiovascular activities such and running, biking, or rowing, however you can use strength or plyometric exercises for HIIT workouts as well. 

Tabata is form of a HIIT workout with set intervals of 20 seconds high intensity and 10 seconds of rest.  It's most common to use one exercise for the 8 rounds or 4 minutes of the Tabata workout. 

Shorter high intensity workouts elevate your metabolism and you will continue to burn calories post workout as your body attempts to return to baseline.  High intensity workouts also work your aerobic and anaerobic systems simultaneously making them both effective and efficient.  

Ready to try out a high intensity workout?

As some of you may know I do a high intensity holiday challenge every December.  I'm including one of the workouts from these challenges below.  Give it a try and let me know what you think! 

I hope you all have a happy healthy week!