Monday, February 15, 2016

Valentine's Day, Leg Day Workout & a Winter Hike

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all enjoyed Valentine's Day whether it was with someone special, yourself, or friends and family. I had the best Valentine ever for the 3rd year in a row :) 

Yep you guessed it-- Layla haha! But seriously. She's the best Galentine ever even though she always forgets to buy me a card. 

I honestly have no issues being single on Valentine's Day because it truly doesn't bother me in the slightest. I know a lot of people hate it as a holiday and resent it, but I think that the message should just be about love. Whether or not you have a significant other or not, you can still spend it with people you love! 

But at the same time I'm not about to pass up a good joke and this one gets me every time I see it hahaha! 


I started off Valentine's Day just like any other day-- Jesus, oats, and coffee. I only have a week left with my Made to Crave devotion, and I'm looking for a new book to start. Any suggestions would be welcome! 

Oh, and for those of you who didn't see on Instagram-- I decided to give up peanut butter for Lent! It was nawwwt ideal but I felt a little tug on my heart that knew it meant I should make the sacrifice this year. I seriously tried talking myself out of it and was trying to offer up anything else that I could think of haha! Which only told me more it's what I needed to do. Anywayyy, so that's almond butter in my oats and honestly it's been fine the past six days without peanut butter! 


After serving at a church dinner, I ended my night with the best-- froyo bowl! With festive sprinkles of course. Layla was hard-core jealous of my glorious creation, but I wasn't gonna share even a bite! Usually she can luck out if the carton or cool whip container is empty because I let her lick it clean, but it wasn't her night. 


This morning I was up bright and early to go train quads! I've had to adjust my schedule a bit because I now meet a friend right afterwards (we go to the same gym luckily) to help her train. She wanted a workout buddy to hold her accountable plus didn't know very much so I've been happy to help out. Besides, it's fun having a test client that isn't related to me haha! 

For my workout, I did mainly deadlifts (hypertrophy focus) and front squats (also hypertrophy focus) as my main two compound lifts, and then did a lot of quad accessory work. I've been asked before what I qualify as "accessory work" and to me it's anything that really isn't the main heavy lift. For example, my main quad focus lift today were front squats and leg press, and then the accessory work was the circuit, jumping leg press, and leg extensions. For me, it's usually exercises that are not compound but rather meant to facilitate in working the muscle further after the heavy lift. 

So here was my lift from this morning: 
5x10 deadlifts (80% of my max)
5x12,10,10,8,8 front squats 
4x8 single leg extensions (each leg) SS double til failure 
4x20 jumping leg press
6x20,15,12,10,6,2 leg press
Circuit (3x): 20 box jumps, 20 goblet squats, 1 minute wall sit, 100 high knees (NO REST)

The leg circuit is a killer! I like to do burnout circuits every so often at the end of a lift to really just exhaust the muscle. Afterwards, this older gentleman came up to me laughing saying that I tired him out by just his watching me haha! 

Then, this afternoon I didn't feel like doing work or studying so I took Layla for a hike in the woods by our house. The poor thing doesn't get nearly close enough to her regular walks/runs with the combination of bad weather, unsafe sidewalks, and the salt burning her paws. I still put Musher's Secret on them like I did last year but for some reason this winter it's been harder on her paws. 

I promised her that if the freezing rain stopped in the afternoon we would go, and it did! As soon as I opened the car door she bounded out and ran around frantically in the snow. I haven't seen her so happy in several days. The best I was able to do this weekend was let her out in the yard to run off her energy and play a little bit. The problem is we don't have a fenced-in yard so I have to stand out there to watch her but it was bitterly cold! Probably the coldest weekend I can ever remember so we couldn't stay outside long. 


We had the woods to ourselves, which was great but I honestly wasn't expecting a lot of people at 2pm on a Monday in 30 degree weather. I bundled up, though, because a promise is a promise and I knew Layla desperately needed this for her mental sanity. 


She was absolutely thrilled and it was so worth taking the time off studying or doing other work just to give her the afternoon out of the house. 




At one point we did see another person and their dog off in the distance but our paths never actually intersected. Layla was a good girl though and stayed by my side when I called her over and told her to stay with me so she wouldn't go off running to try to greet them. In the past two years I've learned that other people aren't always the greatest judge of their dog's character and tend to greatly overestimate their dog's friendliness. I trust Layla implicitly with anyone or thing, but have learned not to always trust other dogs. You're technically supposed to keep your dog on a leash in these woods but shhh no one ever actually follows it...

Case in point as Layla is clearly not on a leash haha! But I had her leash in the car so that kinda counts, right? Again, though, I trust her and I know she comes when I call her so I consider myself a pretty responsible dog owner. 



And as the pictures don't really do her excitement justice, I captured a video! 


Hope you all are having a wonderful day!

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