Today’s guest post is courtesy of Meredith, also known as Hiit Mama.

Some mornings I wake up feeling overwhelmed and rushed. The three year old wants breakfast – now. I have a prenatal appointment, then a playdate, then storytime at the library, all within ten minutes of each other. Not a great way to start to the day, especially if I want to fit in a workout.

When I am feeling this way I think the best thing to do is to exercise anyway, no matter how little time I have. It helps purge all that frantic energy and makes me feel great for the rest of a busy day.

If I don’t have an hour, or even thirty minutes to devote to a cardio or circuit training routine, I just call up one of the many Crossfit websites and do a Workout of the Day.

My husband, who is in law enforcement, first introduced me to Crossfit. I was a little skepitcal, (okay, scared) of trying Crossfit. Popular with police agencies and hardcore exercise junkies, Crossfit can be a fun way to compete with yourself, your workout buddy, or your husband. Talk about motivation to workout!

Crossfit will challenge your endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, accuracy and coordination. These workouts include heavy weights, sprints, pull-ups, high jumps and calisthenics. Some routines are for the very advanced, but there are adaptations for everyone including children and pregnant women.

Crossfit workouts are fabulous for moms like me who sometimes have difficulty making time for exercise. The workouts I look for at these times are the ones that call for doing as many rounds as possible in a given time period.

For example, this morning I did the “Cindy” which takes only 20 minutes. Here’s the routine:

• 5 Pull Ups
• 10 Push Ups
• 15 Squats

Again, do as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes. Rest when you need to and make modifications when necessary. For instance, I cannot do a Pull Up – yet. So I modify by either having my husband hold my feet, or, now that I am 28 weeks pregnant, by keeping my toes on the floor.

See how many rounds you can do in 20 minutes.

When you are crunched for workout time, do this workout again and see if you can beat your last score.

You can find great Crossfit workouts for pregnancy at http://www.crossfitmom.com/.

Photo source:  Crossfit Mom

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 by workoutmommy at 5:25 am and is filed under fitness, guest posts, workouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.