What is a burpee?

In preparation for our upcoming Caribbean vacation I am striving to workout 5 days a week and eat healthier so I can look and feel good in a swimsuit on the beach.  To do so I will be participating in hot yoga as much as I can in a month (I have a LivingSocial voucher for a month of unlimited yoga, after that it is way to expensive and I’ll have to find something else).  Don’t know what hot yoga is?  I didn’t either until a month ago when I took a couple classes with my sister in law.  Learn more here.

Anyways, I am also striving to swim laps 2-3 times a week.  And do some at home fitness with some quick cardio and muscle toning workouts I found on Pinterest.  Several of the workouts mentioned a burpee, now I had no idea what that was, so I googled.  This is what I found:

The burpee is a full body exercise used in strength training and as aerobic exercise. It is performed in four steps, and was originally known as a "four-count Burpee":

1. Begin in a standing position.
2. Drop into a squat position with your hands on the ground. (count 1)
3. Extend your feet back in one quick motion to assume the front plank position. (count 2)
4. Return to the squat position in one quick motion. (count 3)
5. Return to an upright standing position. (count 4) ^[1]

So basically, I had done them before, but we just called them up downs.

To keep me on track I will do my best to post my workouts and eating habits, good and hopefully not too many bad ones on here so you can all be accountability partners.  To help me with my food choices and intake I’ve recruited Britt – an amazingly healthy lady who has delicious recipes over at the Skinny Bovine.  You can find her blog in my list of blogs with tons of recipes. As we all know I’m not a huge veggie lover and somehow her recipes are packed with veggies and so far each one I’ve tried is amazing!

So for today I did two of the workouts I found on Pinterest:
(from now on I will just list them as workout A and workout B)

Workout A - 2x
50 jumping jacks
5 pushups
20 sit ups
20 mountain climbers
30 sec. plank
7 burpees

Workout B – 3-5x
30 jumping jacks
5 pushups
25 high knees
7 burpees
10 crunches
7 squats
5 pushups
10 crunches
5 push ups
7 squats
30 jumping jacks
1 min wall sit (feel the burn!!)
5 pushups
25 high knees

So, today I did workout A and one set of workout B.  I went up to the fitness room to workout and Ty did great.  We packed a snack and some toys and turned on PBS.  The workout today only took about 20 minutes and I cooled down on the bike for 10min.

For dinner we are having fish tacos.  I found an amazing marinade a couple years ago and we love it.

So, if you’ve got any healthy food suggestions, send me an email or leave a comment below.  I would love a healthy good tasting salad dressing if anyone has a recipe or suggestions.  It makes it so much easier to eat salads when I enjoy the dressing. 

And lastly I’m hoping to get Jeremy to do workouts A and B with me!