PT Prep for Half-Marathon & Miss Hampshire Competition

In preparation for Miss Hampshire and my charity half-marathon, in aid of BWAP & Southampton Hospital Charity, my personal trainer at Nuffield Health came up with the perfect beauty competition/ marathon mix workout – so I had to share it with you all.

One thing he did mention is a number of clients want to lose weight and be skinny. He insisted we are meant to be strong, and that involved eating normally, not being too restricted and instead focusing on building up muscles.

Starting off with a simple cardio workout, we did ten minutes on a cross trainer on the uphill setting just to get the heart going a little.

Next we move onto warming the glutes. Individual leg raises, ten each side, followed by leg lifts on your side (just like in the 80’s workout videos to make a scissor shape!) and then the tricky wall arm lift. This is where you have your back, shoulder and elbows against the wall and move your arms and down against it, without lifting your arms off the wall. Harder than you think and it wakes up your shoulders like no tomorrow! Do all of this twice.

Now onto the real stuff. A goblet squat is just like a normal squat, except you cup a kettlebell in your hands as you do it. Depending on your strength, a rep of 10 will do fine for now. 40 second plank sets are next, and boy are these hard. Eventually aim for 1 min with 30 seconds break between them, and complete three if possible. These strengthen up your whole core, and the key to finishing a plank well is to be breathe deeply throughout. Finally a session on the TRX bands; leaning back holding them both with your arms and pulling yourself up into a straight position with your arms and shoulders finish the set off. Repeat all three times.

It starts to get a little tougher around this point. Lunges with dumbbells, ten lunges per leg are next. This is followed by press ups, which are my absolute pet hate. I recommend trying to do a full press up at first, and if the strength isn’t there yet perform them on your knees for now. Finally the superman! This ends the core workouts, and it is where you get on all fours, and lift one hand and one legs, opposites and stretch out – like a half superhero pose.

Finish the workout like you started, with cardio, but a big blast this time! 30 second spinning sprints with 1 minutes rests for now, for ten minutes will heighten your body’s ability to work with less oxygen, and will tone your legs lots.

And now collapse