At Home Workouts | Fitness & Feta

Look at what Santa brought me.

Kettlebell

This kettlebell is quickly becoming one of my new favorite fitness toys. It’s perfect for strength or metabolic resistance workouts at home when I don’t have time to get to the gym. Lately my at home strength workouts have been mostly bodyweight workouts with some work on my pull-up bar thrown in. I like using my Dynamax ball and gliding disks too, but sometimes I’m just craving a heavier strength workout, you know? And now that I’m lifting heavier, my home dumbbell sets are too light! I have a set of eights, tens, and fifteens, so my new 25 pound kettlebell is a welcomed addition to my home equipment collection. It’s also just a great way to switch things up since I haven’t always done a lot of kettlebell work in the past. It really is one of the most versatile pieces of fitness equipment out there, and it lets you do strength and cardio at the same time. Score.

On New Year’s Day, since the gym wasn’t opening until noon (what!?), I opted to give my new bell a go at home. I created this circuit and busted it out in our dining room. Words to the wise: this is probably not the best routine to do on your hardwood floors. Whoops.

total body kettlebell circuit

This workout is designed to be done circuit style where you move from one move to the next with little to no rest in between each exercise. Do 10 reps of each move, and rest when you get to the end of the circuit. Repeat for a total of 3-4 rounds through. Of course, always listen to your body and take breaks as needed.

When I did this three times through, it took me about 25 minutes to complete, not including the warmup. If your kettlebell is on the lighter side, it would probably take you shorter. My 25 pound bell was too heavy for those situps to single arm presses, so I dropped down to my 15 pound dumbbell for those instead — just to help you guys gauge weight! Now of course I want to go buy more kettlebells in multiple sizes, but I’ll try to contain myself (gotta save for the wedding!).

Readers, let’s chat! Do you work out with kettlebells? What’s your favorite kettlebell exercise? What is your favorite fitness toy?

Hopefully there will be a lot more F&F kettlebell style workouts to come! If you give this one a whirl, post your sweaty kettlebell selfies to social media and tag me @fitnessandfeta. I want to see you rock it!

Did you guys know that it’s going to snow today? Oh wait, I already knew that thanks to each one of my Facebook friends who has decided to enlighten me with pictures of weather reports, temperature gauges, and status updates. Thank goodness for them, otherwise I would have been so out of the loop.

Ooof.

I started my day off today with a pre-blizzard workout at the Y. I forced myself (and Tim) to get out of bed and to the gym where I busted out a 40 minute cardio workout on the elliptical. I followed the same template from Best Body Bootcamp that I used for my treadmill workout on Monday. Here’s what each of the workouts ended up looking like:

40 Minute Treadmill Workout

40 Minute Elliptical Workout

The treadmill was definitely harder, so I added five extra minutes of sprints for the elliptical this morning and challenged myself with higher resistance toward the end. Both workouts were good and sweaty! You guys can adapt these to your own fitness levels – don’t forget that every machine will be different too, depending on the brand.

Breakfast today was a nice mix of scrambled eggs, ham, and salsa. With coffee.

For our Superbowl party on Sunday, we cooked up a ham and made a couple different homemade salsas. We had so much leftover, so we’ve tried to eat as many meals with ham and salsa as possible.

Cod with pineapple salsa, farro, and garlic spinach:

Ground turkey lettuce wrap “tacos,” including salsa:

We also had ham, cheese, and salsa sandwiches one night but they were ugly so I didn’t take a picture. And I’ve been munching on Triscuits and salsa… or celery and salsa… for my snacks this week. Ham and salsa overload, for sure!

I’m so thankful that I can work from home today. I really needed the extra non-commute and lunch time to quickly clean the apartment, write this blog post, and throw some laundry in. And even though stupid Nemo ruined all my hard work planning the Spin A Thon for the Y and got in the way of Erica’s Boston visit, I’m kind of excited to be snowed in. We have tons of food in the apartment, and lots of beer and wine to keep us occupied tonight.

To all my readers from the Northeast, I hope you all stay warm and safe today and through the weekend! If you are looking for at home workout options (which I know some of you are, per your requests!), here are a few suggestions:

Being snowed in — love it or hate it? What’s keeping you occupied during this storm?

I’m off to eat the quinoa with mushrooms, kale, and sweet potatoes that I prepped for lunch last night, then continue my work day. Catch ya later, friends!