And now for something completely different. A great Memorial Day workout this morning made better because it was outside. Luckily we did it in the morning, because they day quickly turned pretty stiffling.

The nice thing about outdoor workouts is that it gets you a little bit out of your normal element and forces you to do some different things, as well as deal with the environment.

This morning my wife put together a challenging routine for us, especially because it was pretty hot and humid even in the morning. It's always fun working out with her as she mixes things up nicely for me - I always think I come up with decent workouts, but she'll put me to shame. Which makes sense, I suppose, since she's the personal trainer.

After a couple of days off due to my ongoing recovery from this sinus thing that won't go away, as well as a hectic weekend of baseball and family gatherings, it was good to get back to working out. Today's workout was one of my old stand-bys: the Deck of Cards workout.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this type of workout, it's a pretty simple concept: take a deck of 52 playing cards, plus the Jokers, and assign an exercise to each suit and a "special" exercise for the Jokers. Draw through the card deck and each time you get a card, do the number of reps of an exercise indicated on the card.

Face cards (J, Q, K) equal 10 reps. I generally do Aces as 11, but depending on the type of workout I'm doing (as well as how I'm feeling) I'll assign 20 to the Ace. I like to do cardio for the Jokers.

For this particular day, I was assisted by my 5-year old, who flipped the cards and told me how many I had to do. He even helped count out the reps when he wasn't busy trying to do something on his own. 

I have to say, it was tough to get downstairs and workout tonight. After a long day of traveling and meetings (out at 5:30am, back at 7:00pm), then swim practice, kids homework, etc., I didn't have the chance to get on it until after 9pm.

But I'm glad I did. It wasn't a particularly unique workout, but I like ones where I'm pushing myself to fatigue multiple times.

Here's how I did it:

Looking to do a lighter workout today, as I'm still recovering from this cold or whatever it is. I feel like I have energy, but still congested so cardio may not be the best bet.

So, the goal for the day is to focus primarily on weight training vs. intervals or any other heavy cardio. It's hard to resist, but I think it's the prudent thing to do. Hopefylly I'll be back to 100% tomorrow.

It never fails, right? The day after I announce I'll start posting my workouts, I get sick. It doesn't happen very often, but I think that it's important to allow your body to recover so that you don't drag out the illness and further compromise your training or your health.

So what did I do?

It was a good weekend full of outdoor activities - baseball, Cub Scouts, etc. A drastic change in the weather this morning (60° vs. 90° yesterday) has me ready for a great interval workout.

Here's what I did today: