Looking for Exercise Fun?

Yes, really. I'm serious.

At the beginning of the year, I treated myself to a few new exercise DVDs. I am really enjoying two of them and thought I'd tell you about them in case you're looking for inspiration.

The first one I've been enjoying is Jillian Michael's Yoga Meltdown. This DVD comes with two workouts. The first is a bit easier than the second, but both contain good descriptions of the beginning and advanced forms of the exercises. What I enjoy about this is you get the stretch and training of yoga with a cardio element as she has you rep out the exercises. There's also no of the Eastern religion that I don't want. The extent is melting your heart to the sky -- or stretching. :-)

I've enjoyed it and I've got my pre-baby abs back -- not bad considering he was born eight weeks ago today (as I type this.)

The other video is Denis Austin's Hit the Spot Pilates. Again, this is a great workout for strengthening and stretching your muscles. An element I really like about this one is that there are seven targeted mini-workouts (10-15 minutes each) and then you string them together. So if I want to work abs/core, no problem. Or I can add a butt, thigh or hip element to it. And then there's a combined workout at the end. I really like it, and it emphasizes the beauty and grace of pilates.

So you can get the strength with yoga and the grace with pilates. Neither takes very long -- and you can stop in the middle to answer a baby's cry, wrestle a toddler, or put out the dog :-)