David Chiu

When of the best way to achieve your goals is to find a partner who wants to achieve the same goals so that you can keep each other accountable and motivated. Lucky for me, my beautiful wife has decided to join me in my 30 day fitness challenge. Today I had a day off from work so I got to sleep in and recover from yesterday’s yoga/martial arts fusion class. Heather was feeling extra-motivated and convinced me to go hiking with her in the morning at Runyon Canyon. I told her that we should probably take it easy and recover since we were going to another cardio class tonight, but she really wants to make sure we get results from the program so we hiked uphill for about 5 miles with our corgi Winston.

Tonight we were back in class. There was a heater in the room, which I wasn’t sure if it was purposely put there to make the room hot, or just keep the room warm since temperatures outside have been cooler. Either way, 10min into the routine and I’m sweating like crazy. The instructor is able to trick us into these advanced yoga poses which require both strength and balance, then transitions them into martial arts cardio moves mixed with the yoga poses. We end up doing a ton of “downward dog” poses which we hold for a minute or two then lower into a push-up and then back arch. I could definitely feel it in my shoulders and my arms. As the workout went on, the room became hotter and hotter with that heater on, and I found myself not able to keep up with some of the cardio moves. Near the end of the workout we move from downward dog position into a forearm push-up, then transitioned into a “bridge” pose which is a killer ab workout, but then continued to a “v” pose and started doing crunches while holding a “v” pose. By the end of the workout I was sweating so much it sounded like it was raining on my yoga mat. That was a killer workout.

Food log:

• 1 1/2 cups of organic flax seed/raisin bran
• 1 cup french press coffee
• 55g whey protein
• Poquito Mas bean and chicken burrito (no cheese)
• 5 bean chips with 2 tbsp bean dip, 1 wheat cracker w/ 2 tbsp organic peanut butter
• 1 large steamed wild alaskan salmon filet w/ 2 cups of brown rice and 4 stalks of broccolini
• 55g whey protein