WorkTravel Boot Camp

I'm on the road again, and this time I've decided to be even more structured about my workout plan. I've come a long way since my first few trips over a year ago, and have since realized that while I'm here in Cyprus editing I don't have any of the normal every day distractions that I do back home: no errands to run, no shopping to do, no cooking for myself, no house cleaning, no social distractions (well, hardly any)... You get my drift. It's just working, eating and taking care of myself.

I realized that while I could force myself to just plow through entire days of work, I am much more productive when I take breaks mentally and take care of myself physically. In fact, this work-travel scenario is ideal for a boot camp: I can make myself workout twice a day! As I mentioned in the past, I've been limiting myself to workouts that don't involve any equipment. So I loaded up my laptop with my P90X videos (the ones that didn't call for weights), Podcasts and my running buddy, the Nike+ enhanced iPod.

Here I am one third of the way through my trip and so far, it's going swimmingly:

Day 1:

• Woke up far too early (jetlag)
• Morning (pre-breakfast): Did 24 minute pilates routine from a podcast (Fit for Duty: Pilates is the podcast) - Verdict: could feel it wake up my body, could feel my core working, not my favourite workout though... Will keep searching for another good pilates podcast. Suggestions greatly appreciated!!
• Evening (pre-Dinner): Did Yogamazing podcast: 25 minutes of Yoga for Back and Shoulders. It was a decent one, not brutally hard but made for a first day of jetlagged working out.

Day 2:

• Woke up far too early (still jetlagged!)
• Morning (pre-breakfast): Yogamazing Podcast: 25 minutes of Yoga for Abs. This was good, could feel the results, that super satisfying ab burn. whoo!
• Evening: Kenpo X (from P90X). Good tiring sweat-producing workout. YAH!

Day 3:

• Still woke up a bit on the early side despite having stayed out till 1am. Soooo tired :(
• Morning (pre-breakfast): 15 minutes of Yogamazing Podcast: Heart Openers. Just going for stretching here. Since it was Sunday, I decided it would be my day off from working out since it's usually our most productive edit day (what with my director being stuck with me all day) but felt I needed a bit of a stretch from my many hours spent at the computer.

Day 4:

• Early morning: Back on track! Got to bed a bit earlier and had a pretty solid night sleep.
• Morning (Pre-breakfast): Cardio X (from P90X). I was FIRED UP! I love this workout! I felt all worked out and awesome afterwards and absolutely scarfed down my breakfast. (which by the way is the typical Cypriot Breakfast: tomato, halloumi cheese, olives first, then a slice of toast with some homemade fruit preserves and a slice of Anari* cheese on top. Yum!)
• Midday (pre-lunch) - 8 minute Office Stress Relief yoga session from Yoga Today Podcast. Feels good... My neck, shoulders and back were getting a bit pissy from all this editing.
• Evening (pre-dinner) - Yogamazing 17 minute yoga for neck and shoulders & Yoga Today Deep Core Strengthening for 10 minutes.
  

My plan for tomorrow is to go for a run (ideally about 40 minutes) in the morning and do yoga workout (this time with an upper body strength focus) in the evening.

So the working out is going according to plan. Meanwhile, the eating part is pretty much going as expected: I mean clearly, it's a great thing to have a fabulous Cypriot cook (my director's mother) preparing meals for us all the time, but everything is so yummy, I seem to be eating quite a lot. At least her style of Cypriot cuisine is chock full of veggies and salads and is generally quite healthful. Or at least, that's what I keep telling myself.

*God, I wish we had Anari in the states. It's basically the leftover whey water from making Halloumi (which gets all the fat), so it's kind of like a super fresh ricotta, a bit softer with slightly bigger curds, very low fat, pretty high protein, which makes it an awesome healthy breakfast cheese.

A Creature of Whim

What's the opposite of habit? I looked everywhere and couldn't find a good antonym. What I'm trying to say is I'm not a creature of habit. Repetition bores me. Which is why I keep swapping out workout plans. ALL the time!

The only thing I seem to be able to do repetitively is run. So my workout routine will always have a certain amount of running. But it helps that it's usually training for a specific goal, like a marathon.

These days, since I'm in travel-mode (Again! Still!) I've been limited yet again to workouts that are portable and equipment-free.

Here's what I've been doing: 3 days a week, I run. Twice, I run for about 4 miles, then on the weekend I do a longer run (I'm currently working my way back up again, so I just did 7 miles this past sunday and plan to do 8 or 9 this coming sunday). I keep meaning to add a 20 minute interval run, but I've yet to work that in. Maybe today will be the day...

In addition to that, I've been intermittently (about 3 times a week) doing the Nike Yoga for Runners, which I bought on iTunes, by Kimberly Fowler - a 15-20 minute yoga stretching routine.

I usually also do a core workout: P90X Core Synergistics or Yogamazing podcast for example. An upper body workout, often also from Yogamazing. And then I through in P90X Cardio X or Kenpo X for good measure. Other than the running, I usually let my mood, work schedule and the way my body's feeling dictate what I'll do that day. And I've been pretty good at keeping it to 6 workout days a week.

So, any of you folks out there the "non-habit" types? How do you switch up your routine?
Or if you're doing P90X or P90X+, do you ever stray and create your own workout combo? What do you like to do?

What I did on My Trip to Cyprus...

As I mentioned a while back, I went to Cyprus for work for several weeks and was debating how to work out while I was there. Several of you had some very handy suggestions... Some of them were totally doable, others were maybe more applicable to traveling in the US and staying in hotels. (I'm just guessing here... I don't do that for work very often.)

So here's how the fitness game played out for me. I went to Cyprus to start editing a documentary. I knew I had a ton of work to do and limited time in which to do it. This translated to many many long hours spend sitting at my computer, for days on end.

The first several weeks, my working out was intermittent. No matter what I told myself at the start of the trip, heading into it, once on the ground nothing could pull me away from the looming mountain of work that needed sorting through. I'd get to the computer in the morning and work straight through till 1:30pm when my director showed up. We'd have lunch together and then edit until 8:30pm or so, when it was time for dinner. Occasionally, we'd go back to work after dinner. The working out wasn't really happening. I'd squeak in a run maybe in the morning, but that only happened 2 or 3 times those first couple of weeks.

In addition to that, I was being fed 3 meals a day by a fantastic cook (the director's mother) who was intent on teaching me about Cypriot cuisine. Which is delicious. This didn't help me stay in shape though.

My last 10 days there, my aching, stiff, tensed up body finally caused me so much pain (and actually threatened me with a gun) that I figured out a way to make the working out and working work out for me. (Was that too much work? I thought so. My apologies)

Here's what I did:
Every evening, if it got to be 7pm and I hadn't done a workout yet that day, I would tell my director that no matter what, I had to go get a workout in an hour before dinner was served. That resolved the timing issue. She was understanding.

The next issue was what workout to do. The obvious easy answer was running. There was a lovely trail right near my house that was beautiful and filled with other walkers, runners, bikers and mysteriously, kittens. Lots of kittens. They occasionally attacked but not in any seriously harmful way. So I ran about every other day, but I wanted a more balanced workout regimen.

I didn't have weights: couldn't bring them with me and didn't really have the knowledge or flexibility or frankly the desire to spend euros on weights I would abandon at the end of the trip. Unfortunately, this eliminated a lot of the P90X workouts. The other limitation was time: I really didn't have the luxury of doing Yoga X, while I would have loved to, for 2 reasons: one was that it's an hour and a half and that was just too long for me to take during our joint workout time. (Also, please don't tell me I should have gotten up in the morning and done it before work. I'm not a morning person at the best of times and given the difficulty of the topic I was working, I wasn't really sleeping well, so that made waking up all the more difficult).
The other was that the intensity of my work schedule was messing up my wrists again and I didn't have my Push up bars for all the downward dogs. Ouch!

The only plausible P90X that really left me was Cardio X (well, Core Synergistics was also an option but that also had too many push ups for my wrists). So I started my 10 day program with that. The next day was a long run. So far though, that doesn't leave too much variety if I just alternate the two.

That's when I discovered this new concept, something I'd never done before. It solved all my basic problems: variety to keep the workouts interesting, variety to also shift the focus on different parts of my body, flexible timing so that I could fit in a workout in the amount of time that I had, something that I could do from my living room in Cyprus without having to purchase or bring something with me...

The answer was Podcasts! I browsed around in iTunes and discovered that there are tons of workout podcasts out there... It's amazing! While I was there, I found two yoga podcasts and a pilates one. The workouts are as long as 30 minutes or so and as short as 3 minutes: just one move. You can find workouts to stretch your body post run, workouts to strengthen your core, release your office stress, sleep better, upper body, lower body, morning wake up (yeah right!)... The options are endless.

So now, on alternating days, when I wasn't running or doing CardioX (which I still love), I selected around 30-50 minutes worth of yoga and pilates to satisfy whatever I felt my body was missing, workout-wise. It was fantastic.

The podcasts I enjoyed were:
* Yogamazing: This is the one I used the most.
* Yoga Today: Liked Adi, not so much Sarah Kline, or at least not her workout for walkers and hikers.
* Pilates on Fifth: Pretty good 30-min workout, though they occasionally say "do the same on the other side," so you have to hop up and pause it to do that, which sucks.

These are just quick first impressions. I'm going through the workouts and will have more details on them soon. But on the whole: great resource, greatly varied, can access it from anywhere and doesn't need equipment (well, I did have a borrowed yoga mat, but could do it without).

What about y'all? Any workout podcasts I should know about?

The Travel Question - Expanded

Well, work's gotten in the way again and I've let the P90x and other general workouts slip by the wayside. Not so much a lack of motivation at this point, as a sheer exhaustion and a complete lack of time. The best I could muster, yet again, was getting out the door and hitting the road for a run.

Work has been inspiring and exhilarating lately, not just exhausting: I've been working my wrists into a frenzy on the fantastic documentary See What I'm Saying, directed by none other than the lovely Ms. Gabrielle Mullem. I'm also getting an amazing opportunity to travel with work to Cyprus to edit another documentary - truly a rare thing... most film editors don't get to travel much for work.

Which leads me to the topic of this post. I've written about travel workout schedules in the past, but that was related to vacation travel. Work travel is quite different, and I've never done it for quite this long... I'll be in Cyprus for almost a full month. So what is my strategy here?

My first tactic was to figure out my running options. I did that by looking for a Hash House Harriers group in Lefkosia which is where I'll be staying. Sure enough, there's a group that runs every Tuesday. First success! That should help me learn the running in Cyprus ropes, and give me some running buddies to boot.

Secondly, I've made sure my computer is loaded up with P90X workouts. However, I needed something else to supplement that. I don't really know how difficult my work schedule is going to be. So Big E helped me find a DVD set of Yoga workouts that have shorter workouts, relaxing workouts, stress-relieving workouts... the works. Good Stuff.

I'll let you know how it goes and hopefully some cool photos of Cyprus while I'm at it.

Any of you P90Xers out there big work travellers?

Yoga and Your Wrists

Yesterday was a lovely little recovery, with Yoga X. Don't go thinking that that means it was easy though. It wasn't! The first 20 minutes were a monster with the plank-downward dog-warrior combos again and again. Those were killing me, although not just because of how difficult they were.

My main problem is my intermittent carpel tunnel syndrome which has been flared up lately (because of too much video editing). How can one do yoga with this kind of a problem? For push-ups, I use push-up handles. But I haven't tried them with yoga. Has anyone had any experience with this before? Any advice would highly appreciated!

The rest of the workout was fantastic and much needed. The held poses for the second part of the workout were challenging without being too painful. And the third part, the stretching, was much needed! Now I feel ready to move on to tackle today's plan, Lower body and Ab ripper again. Hopefully this will give my wrists a break.

Ups and Downs of Upper and Lower

The balancing act of late has been akin to the side plank (from the Shoulders, Chest and Triceps* set - Yoga Journal online has a picture of this pose). How to balance sudden shoulder irritation with lower fatigue? Tricky.

Bursitis in both shoulders lept into my world last week, so this week I stepped back and gave *SCT a rest, which I have grown to love (my shoulders have great definition, my triceps are trimming up and Push-ups Are My Friends), as well as Back and Biceps, just in case. Alas, it also eliminated Yoga X from the process so I was left with Plyometrics (also a favorite), AbRipper and Legs and Back.

But.

The Relay is this weekend. My race segments (#5, 17 and 29) are not terribly challenging, but Plyo and Legs and Back have utterly kicked my lower body during this second phase, leaving my running legs - uh - irritable. Cranky. Bitchy. "Why are we running?? You just worked us, COW!"

Never listen to your legs. (Well, until you hear the "SCHK!" sound of the switchblade.)

Ideally, this week would have been about water - easy laps in the pool, perhaps a bit of water running. But water takes time, time I didn't have. So I've spent the week doing relatively nothing in the P90X set, and taking on a tapered week of running. I missed the X, it left a void...all week I have had this odd sense of having left the gas on (ref: Eddie Izzard on squirrel reflections, about 1:13 in).

Gratefully, my shoulders are aching for a workout, so it will be back to the routine on Monday. It was an easy week physically, a tough week mentally. Unbalanced. I kept looking for something that wasn't there.

Monkeys thin on the ground, folks.

Bring it, now!

Having said it to the tune of "y'all come back, now!", Maya just didn't really inspire the bringing it feeling I was hoping for. Not that that didn't mean she was doing all she could to take it from me, whether I'd brought it or not.

Much like Teetering Tamsen, Maya had me doing some yoga moves for my core workout this week that had me flailing about, grabbing on to the nearest bit of furniture and desperately trying to keep my balance. Tamsen and I were complaining to each other and realized that we were having trouble with the very same move (the half moon pose, I believe) - which was fascinating, because that meant that our very different workout programs seem to have quite a bit of overlap.

It would be interesting once our 90 days are through to swap workouts for a week and see how we do on the other.

Om-Ow-Om-Ow

i do try very hard to clear my mind when i'm doing Yoga X. i do try very hard not to laugh when i'm wobbling uncontrollably in a terribly advanced pose. i do try very hard not to fall in such a way that i will smash something valuable - like my head. i try even harder to jump back into the pose for the remaining time after i've narrowly avoided careening into a wall.

it ain't pretty, but it sticks with me all day. i can feel my muscles just a wee bit stronger, my chest lifted a wee bit higher. can't say i've gotten that from any other yoga i've taken in studio - bikram, hatha or iyengar. but then again, i've never gone for the more advanced classes. i am known for not pushing myself hard enough, this program forces me to take that issue more seriously.

don't expect to see me in studio doing advanced ashtanga, though - one false move and i'd take out about neighboring students like they were a row of harleys.