Flo Gets Fit Week 4: Going It Alone

With Martin away working at a bootcamp, my challenge this week has been keeping up my training on my own.

Before leaving, Martin gave me a programme for me to complete in the gym. As my leg was still a bit sore at the beginning of the week, I went to a couple of spinning classes instead so I wasn't bearing any weight on it. I stayed with my gym buddy Sarah to do some weights after a class as well, just to keep up with my resistance training.

I felt confident enough to get back in the gym by Sunday and in the afternoon, managed to tear myself away from the 6 Nations to go up there. The programme Martin had given me was a mixture of high intensity intervals and circuits. I started on the treadmill, but as running was still uncomfortable, switched to the cross trainer, where I did 15 repetitions of 30 seconds as fast as I could go, and 30 seconds recovery.

Then I moved over to the free weight area, where armed with a 12kg kettlebell, I began my circuit of 45 seconds of kettlebell swings, 45 seconds of burpees, 45 seconds of kettlebell squats and 45 seconds of mountain climbers. I repeated this three times, but without the encouragement of Martin, definitely allowed myself too much rest time in between!

The next section of my workout was even more difficult! Rowing 500m and aiming to do so in under 2 minutes, then resting, then repeating 10 TIMES!! I struggled to get to under 2 minutes, in fact at this moment I'm fairly sure it's impossible, but that's something to work on!

Seeing as my training has not been so intensive this week, I decided to put more emphasis on my diet. Martin gave me loads of nutritional advice with my starter pack, and also posts loads of tips on his Facebook page, so this was a good place for me to start. One of the ingredients he really recommended was quinoa, so I did a little research and found this salad. The only drawback was I couldn't find canned black beans, so had to soak them overnight and then cook them for an hour! Apart from that it was really nice and made a really good lunch for a few days - I'd definitely recommend.

It was good to realise that I can motivate myself to work a bit harder in the gym than I used to! But I also realised how much of a difference it makes having someone to keep you working, so I'm strangely looking forward to getting back into a routine.

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