If you follow healthy lifestyle and fitness experts on Instagram, you may have found the fantastic abs of Kayla Itsines on your phone. Kayla is a 23-year-old personal trainer from Adelaide, Australia. At first I was hesitant, since a 23 yr old's body is WAY different than a 30 year old's. But, Kayla also shares #fitspirations from her many, many members of #thekaylamovement and some are new moms, moms of three, and others who are living incredibly busy lives. We are talking abs for days, people.
So I went ahead and purchased her Bikini Body Guide 1.0. Her workouts follow a great interval format, in total it is 28 minutes of resistance training -- two 7 minute circuits that you run through twice. You tend to do these Monday, Wednesday and Friday with Monday being a cardio/leg day, Wednesday arm/abs and Friday total body. The remaining days are either low impact cardio or recovery days. The full program is 12 weeks long.
I am a month in, and really love the challenge these circuits bring. In truth, I haven't changed my diet so my progress isn't necessarily the same as some of her other participants. Also, I haven't taken my progress photo yet...because I am scared of photos.
Of course, my "low impact cardio" days are my Orange Theory Days, which isn't low impact and just cardio, so my body is incredibly tired. I have a hard time resting, and was recently counseled that "yoga isn't resting." Maybe I can change that up for the next four weeks.
In all honesty, I just love the fact that Kayla didn't see her nearly 2M Instagram followers coming. She was just a humble trainer posting progress photos of her clients, then she started answering questions, and THEN she launched her eBooks.