Fitness

WELLNESS WEEK // A FITNESS UPDATE + MY REVIEW OF THE FIERCE AT HOME PROGRAM IN THE SWEAT APP

01.10
WELLNESS WEEK // FITNESS UPDATE

It’s been a long, long while since I’ve shared a fitness update! With it being Wellness Week, now seems like the perfect time. I started doing Wellness Week a few years back, and when doing so, I dedicate the entire week to health and wellness content. On Wednesday I’ll be sharing a big roundup of chic activewear finds in THE EDIT, and on Friday I’ll delve into my current eating routine and diet at the moment… but today, FITNESS! I’ve mentioned this on the podcast several times already, but since quitting the Sweat App at the start of the pandemic I’ve felt in a rut fitness wise. At the time, I had just ordered the Peloton bike. I wanted to give it and the rest of Peloton’s app offerings a real go, so I decided to take a break from the Sweat App and BBG (now known as High Intensity by Kayla Itsines). It was the first time I’d ever taken a break from the program, and I’d been doing it for three years at that point! I was sort of burnt out from it anyway, and I was hopeful I’d be able to recreate a similar setup with all of the exercise classes offered on the Peloton app.

Unfortunately, after a year and a half of using the Peloton app in all kinds of different ways, I’ve never been able to recreate as effective a workout routine as the one I got from the Sweat app. I think the major difference is that Sweat sets up an actual program FOR you – each week you’re given the exact number of classes to take and you perform the moves they tell you to each day. Every week gets progressively more challenging, and you really start seeing results and changes as you go along! With the Peloton app, while there are thousands of classes, there’s no “program” per se and YOU are in charge of selecting and stacking classes together. So you could take a really challenging class one day, and then the next day you might select a class that is way easier – there’s no real way to build out a program that challenges you more and more every week. There’s just a general lack of structure, as you choose all of the workouts to do on your own. They have a couple of programs in the Peloton app like “Beginner Strength” which is six weeks long, and “Total Strength” with Andy, which is 10 weeks long in total. But either way, after those ten weeks, you’re sort of on your own. Maybe one day Peloton will create more lengthy program plans like the Sweat App does, but they just don’t have that at the moment!

Needless to say, because I wasn’t challenged and couldn’t figure out the right stacks to make my workouts progressively more challenging, they weren’t nearly as effective. I gained weight, lost a lot of strength and I felt like I had lost everything I worked so hard to build with BBG/High Intensity in the Sweat App. After doing my egg retrieval (and having to take a full month off of working out during that process), I decided to whip my ass into gear and download the Sweat App again!


A REVIEW OF THE FIERCE AT HOME PROGRAM IN THE SWEAT APP

I wanted to try a different program in the Sweat app, as I was still a little burnt out on the idea of doing Kayla’s program again – it’s very repetitive, so I wanted to try a different instructor that used different format. After looking at each individual program (there are a ton!!!), I decided on the Fierce At Home program by Chontel Duncan. It’s a 34 week program that mixes strength and HIIT! As of today, I’m on week nine of the program and I’m loving it so far! I’m already seeing changes in how my clothes are fitting and can feel certain areas on my body tightening and toning up. It feels SO good to see real progress after almost two years with a lack of that!!

In the Fierce At Home program, each workout takes between 20-45 minutes. Not only does the program get more challenging each week, once you reach certain weeks you are given additional workout days if you want the option to add another day to your routine. The first four weeks are all full body workouts, three days a week. Once you reach week four, one of the workouts becomes lower body focused, and another becomes upper body focused, in addition to two other full body workout days. When you get even further in, you get more days as options to add in! As I mentioned, I’m on week 9 right now and there are 5 workouts I’m given as an option to do each week. I’ve been doing them every day Monday-Friday! Because the workouts are shorter, I enjoy doing them and don’t mind doing the extra days. I love how the Fierce At Home program changes up the workout format day to day too! Below is an example of what my current week in the Fierce at Home app looks like, as well as how long these usually take me to complete:

  • Monday: Lower Body Strength (30 minutes)
  • Tuesday: Full Body AMRAP (35 minutes)
  • Wednesday: Upper Body Strength (25 minutes)
  • Thursday: Full Body Tabata (20 minutes)
  • Friday: Full Body Speed Circuit (35 minutes)

Now to explain what all of these mean and how they are formatted! See below for a screenshot of three of the different workout days from week 8 – I only screenshotted the Lower Body Strength Day, Full Body AMRAP and Full Body Tabata days as those are the three different formats. The other workout days have the same layout/format as the Lower Body Strength day, just with different moves/body focuses. Keep scrolling for a description of each + the other workouts each week!

FIERCE AT HOME IN THE SWEAT APP

For the Lower Body and Upper Body Strength classes, you start with a circuit of three strength moves that you do three rounds of. There’s no time limit and they give you the number of reps to do, so you just do that at your own pace until you finish. Once you’re done with that, you do a cardio/HIIT circuit. This is a timed section! You’re given ten minutes to complete four different exercises as many times as you can – they give you how many reps to complete for each exercise, so you basically go through the circuit as many times as you can in the allotted time. The “finisher” is a four exercise circuit – two of which are timed at one minute, and the other two are just a set number of reps to complete. You must do the finisher circuit twice, and then the workout is over.

AMRAP days, which stands for As Many Rounds As Possible, are an entirely different format than the two days I mentioned above. You’re given three different AMRAP circuits to complete, with three exercises/moves in each one. You’re given 45 seconds to do as many reps as you can of move 1 in the first AMRAP, then you’ll have 15 seconds to rest before moving on to the second move in the first AMRAP, then you’ll have 15 seconds to rest before moving onto the third move in the first AMRAP. You’ll do that whole circuit four times through, before moving onto AMRAP #2, and finally to AMRAP #3 – which features a completely new set of three different exercises/moves. Hard to explain, but if you look at the above screenshot (or look in the app) you’ll see what I mean!

Tabata days are kind of similar to AMRAP, but instead of three moves in each circuit, it’s just one. The Tabata format makes you do a move for 20 seconds, then lets you rest for 10 seconds before doing another 20 seconds of the move. You repeat this six times! You then move on to the second Tabata exercise. There are a total of six Tabata exercises for the whole workout, each of which you have to do six times through. Again, hard to explain, but once you are in the app you can see what I’m talking about.

The Full Body Speed Circuit is formatted like the Lower Body and Upper Body Strength classes, but it’s a full body workout and not targeting a specific body part or area!

Anyway, I love the variety in the workout formats each day! I think it helps break it up a bit and feels a little less predictable and repetitive like High Intensity did. You’re still doing most of the same moves and it is a lot of HIIT, but somehow Fierce At Home just feels more manageable? I don’t know – whatever it is, I like it!

MY CURRENT WORKOUT ROUTINE

As I mentioned above, the workouts are generally a little shorter than the BBG/High Intensity workouts I was doing previously! This allows me to fit in a little extra cardio each day after I finish the Fierce At Home workouts. Doing both Fierce at Home + a Peloton cardio class usually amounts to a total workout time between 45-55 minutes. Below is what I have been doing since about week four of the Fierce at Home program:

MONDAY – Fierce at Home Lower Body Strength Workout, followed by at 20 minute Walk + Run Workout on the Peloton Tread

TUESDAY – Fierce at Home Fully Body AMRAP, followed by a 20 minute Walk + Run on the Peloton Tread

WEDNESDAY – Fierce at Home Upper Body Strength, followed by at 30 minute Walk + Run on the Peloton Tread

THURSDAY – Fierce at Home Full Body Tabata, followed by a 30 minute Run on the Peloton Tread

FRIDAY – Fierce at Home Full Body Speed Circuit, followed by a 20 minute Walk + Run on the Peloton Tread

SATURDAY OR SUNDAY – A longer Walk + Run, Run or Hike class on the Peloton Tread (30-45 minutes), plus a 10 minute Core workout on the Peloton app!

I’ll be sure to do another update on the Fierce At Home program and my progress as I get further into it. It’s 34 weeks long, so maybe later this spring I’ll share another progress update!

LINKS TO OTHER USEFUL FITNESS POSTS I’VE CREATED!

theShop

View All