Week 4 - Health and Fitness Challenge - Shake that booty

Welcome to week 4 of our Pink Lady® Apples Health and Fitness Challenge. Check in on the progress of our amazing challenge winner Rebecca Clark as she focuses on her goals and continues to work hard every day towards achieving better health and fitness through expert instruction from Raechelle Veale, our Pink Lady® Apples Health and Fitness Ambassador, personal trainer and professional athlete. 

This last week was pretty tough for Bex, she struggled with her food a bit but she did the right thing by reaching out for help and she got some good ideas on how to break through from Raechelle. Check it out in her recap video here.

Some of the tips include drinking enough water. A lot of the time when we think we are hungry we are in fact thirsty so always have a big glass of water first, give it 10mins then assess how you feel.  Remember to reach for something healthy to snack on, short term gains from sugary snacks will only lead to a crash and downhill spiral of cravings and bad choices Keep it clean with fresh whole foods (think apples, carrots, celery, a small handful of nuts, cottage cheese or nut butter) and good sources of protein. Check out our nutrition plan.

Raechelle decided it was time to shake things up a bit and add some more fun into the workouts for us so this week was mixing it up with some dance moves together with more functional training and core work. 

Raechelle kicked us off today with a fun dance sequence, she says it's important to mix it up and have fun with exercise and I must say this was a great way to start out. Check out our moves here. If you're doing this at home I recommend putting on your favourite upbeat track and get lost in the music for at least a song if not two.

After the fun of the dancing, we were met with an uphill jog/walk. Rebecca did the jog and managed to do the entire hill without stopping, big ups to Bex! I have dodgy knees from years of running so I did a power-walk up the hill instead, perfectly acceptable for those with injuries or just starting out as believe me, it's still tough going keeping up the pace on a hill climb like this.

We then sat against the wall in a squat which we held for 60 seconds and we both managed to hold it despite only a few short weeks ago not being able to hold 10 seconds of this exercise. 

Then it was back to the trusty step ups, regular squats, touching your butt on the box without resting and then a big push back up using our gluts and hamstrings. As always we do 3x sets of 60 seconds as many reps as possible with a 30 second break in between for all our exercises.

After this series of booty enhancing exercises Raechelle got us working out aggression on some ball slams, basically lifting a medicine ball weighing 4kg or 6kg above our heads then slamming it down into the floor and catching it.  I saw the gorgeous Jason Momoa (aka Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones) doing this on his instagram this week, maybe we can invite him to be part of our Pink Lady® Apples team, what do you think?! He would be a welcome addition for sure lol :-)

Finally we got to punch the boxing bag again. This was awesome and I definitely think I'm taking up boxing after this challenge. It's just so much fun and I even gave it a bit of a kick at one point. I'm not quite a Kung Fu fighter yet but I am feeling like Jackie Chan.

Rebecca bought her grand-daughter along today, and she was at the ready to encourage Nanna with clapping at the end of each set. It's so important to have your squad to encourage each other along the way. We use our Fitbit Flex2 app to keep track of each other's progress throughout the week, with a goal of 10,000 steps per day and we can cheer each other along as we reach milestones. This really helps on those days when you're struggling for the motivation to get going. 

Raechelle shares her tips for the week with us. A hint: some of these are all about the dark greens, good fats and keeping track. 

Till next week, keep shaking that booty, because, you're worth it!

Pink Lady® Apples Team   

 

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