Summer Bikini Blast | Kettlebell and Body Weight Workout

Hey everyone,

Thank you all for your responses to the “favorite exercise” question. It was great to see how many of you favor exercises for the challenge they pose!

On Tuesday I spent the day along the coast and got only 3 pictures. I post these types of updates on my Facebook page quite often and I wrote this the other day about a funny story that happened while I was out on Tuesday. It kind of shows just how small a “world” Ireland is:

“Was at the Rhinka getting Ice-cream (again) & this girl walks right past me with a huge ice-cream topped with marshmallows. I think “totally should’ve got those”! Looked round as she walks away thinking “she walks like my sister … hang on, she IS my sister!” Same day,same place,same time,same idea!

Funniest thing is, both of us walked right past each other at first. Clearly blood is NOT thicker than ice-cream ;-)”

Barbara and I still think it’s funny that we both travelled there at the same time of day to get ice-cream!

Here are a few pictures from the end of the day when I stopped off at a bar in Carrickfergus for a pint (or three) of my beloved Magners Cider:

Carrickfergus Castle

Carrickfergus Marina/harbour

Cheers to a great day!!

Great weather, great outdoors, great food and drink, and the best company = 😀

I did this workout 2 days ago when the weather here was just sweltering hot. I decided to wear my bikini top to try and get a tan than didn’t resemble one of my workout tops haha! Think it may have worked, even though I look as white as a ghost in the video, people in work think I have been away to America already because of my tan haha! But that is yet to come 😀 😀 😀

Ok, so I better explain the workout before this post turns into a boasting session that I am going on holiday in EXACTLY two weeks time!! (evil laugh)

The Workout

Pure and simple today everyone, a traditional myomyfitness.com variety interval workout. Simply 3 rounds of 10 exercises with either a break between rounds (like I did for about 2 mins), or 3 continuous rounds.

This type of workout is great for conditioning, building co-ordination, stability, burning plenty of calories and, depending on your diet, fat burning.

Set your Gymboss Interval Timer for 10 or 30 cycles of 15 seconds rest and 45 seconds effort and complete 3 rounds of the following exercises. You will see my numbers in brackets.

My camera battery died shortly after round 2, and because I was outside, I had nowhere to plug it in to continue filming, but you all get the drift. I still reluctantly completed the 3rd round and have recorded my numbers with the rest.

My yellow KBs are 16kg and the grey one is 20kg. So I was working with moderate to heavy today:

1. Kettlebell Vertical Swing Burpee (12, 11, 11 )
2. Jump Rope (running/high knees) (110, 100, 105)
3. Two-handed Kettlebell Swing (31, 30, 30)
4. Side to Side Step Overs (46, 46, 45)
5. Elevated Plank Climber (23, 22, 22)
6. Jump Rope (jacks) (didn’t bother counting)
7. Kettlebell Renegade Row (17, 16, 14)
8. Two-Handed Kettlebell Swing (30, 29, 30)
9. Stand-Kneel-Stand (left) (17, 16, 16)
10. Stand-Kneel-Stand (right) (16, 16, 15)

• Just as a suggestion, those of you who are wanting to work on grip strength/endurance, you could add a Farmers walk/hold or static hang as a bridging exercise between rounds. But remember that your grip will fatigue quicker for your swings and rows in the next round 🙁

This workout killed me! It was so hot and pretty intense, so I am glad I had longer recovery inbetween rounds – I needed it.  There is something so good about training outdoors, I just love it. It reminds me of the days when I first started my workout videos – fond memories 🙂

I know a lot of you will appreciate the simplicity of this workout, so let me know your thoughts below.

Beginners

• Set intervals to 30/30 or 20/40
• Change the Vertical Swing Burpee, to either a Body Weight Burpee or just the Vertical Swing.
• Side to Side Step Overs could be replaced with forward facing step ups (alternating the lead leg)
• Instead of elevated plank climbers do same-level ones or plank holds
• If you don’t have a jump rope or are still getting used to one, then you could do high knees and/or jumping jacks to replace these, without the need for the rope.
• Instead of renegade rows, do bent over rows with 1 or 2 Kettlebells (or another weight)
• The evil Stand-Kneel-Stands can be performed with body weight only or a lighter weight. This is a great exercise that should be fairly straight forward for beginners to perform, so give it a go.
• Finally, do what you can and rest when you need it, but try and challenge yourself 🙂

That’s all for today everyone. Again I am sorry for my absence, but I will try and post something over the next few days. Something interesting 🙂

By the way, anyone with a Facebook account should invite me as a friend, because I am OFTEN on there posting stuff and it keeps the network tight. I am also getting to grips with Twitter, so feel free to join me there too 🙂

Cheers

Marianne

PS – If you buy a gymboss through text or banner links on my pages, I will earn a wee bit of money for that. I have been a gymboss affiliate since 2010 because I loved them then and I love them now. Especially because it one more thing I can operate that’s not on my phone.