2014 IDFA International Championships Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness

August 19, 2014 – IDFA International Championships News

After months of sharing her journey to the IDFA stage with her readers and followers, Penny Phang takes home second place for Women’s Fitness at the 2014 IDFA International Championships Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness competition.

What you do first thing in the morning counts for a lot!

What you do first thing in the morning usually sets the tone for the rest of your day. If you start the morning flustered and in a big rush, feeling anxious or quietly worrying, chances are, your day will imitate a similar pattern, or create scenarios that are more of the same.

However, if you start your morning with a calm mind, chances are, as your life events unfold through the day, you'll be more effective in dealing with it. You'll be more equipped to make better decisions. With this, your day can be a more productive one, one where you can sit back at the end of the day feeling some form of contentment.

For me, I like to start my day with at the very least 5 minutes to myself to quiet my mind, focusing on my breath to "still" my thoughts. I sit silently enjoying a hot bowl of Matcha green tea. Some might call this meditation, others might call it being present to the moment without judgment. Doesn't matter what you call it, the end result is the same.

And I've come to learn that it isn't so much what happens during this 10 minutes of "quiet time," but more so, the beneficial "side effects" that occur as a result of having made the time to have this small moment in the day.

Need a short, total body-burn gym-workout?

Here is a short, intense workout involving compound and dynamic movements. Also having multiple joints and muscle groups working at once, with many different exercises involved at the same time. 

These kinds of exercises demand so much more from your body's energy systems that it burns major calories in a short period of time while also continuing with its "after-burn" effect long after the workout is over. This is also described as maximizing your calorie expenditure, or boosting your metabolism. This means you can enjoy more foods and not worry so much!

This method of working out is fun, but challenging and intense. This is why it is highly effective remaining as a short workout (20-30 minutes max). This kind of short, intense workout can supersede the benefits of a full hour of mediocre workout. 

If you have a good fitness base, you can start training your body to become more conditioned to do advanced moves and not have to spend hours at the gym when you can spend less time to do more. Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable because change only happens through challenge. So just know that if you're not challenging yourself, you're not changing.

This workout here can be done with or without a BOSU ball. The use of the ball is simply to create more challenge as it creates an unstable surface. You can perform this exercise using timed interval, or sets and reps, or both. You can even change the weight volume and the number of reps as you perform each round. Here's an example:

- 10 cable close-grip pulldown

- 20 lateral jumpsquats

- 20 wide squat jump reach

- 10 push-up wide-leg burpee

Repeat as time permits. Maybe even time yourself and see if you can beat your own time! ;)