5 Calorie-Torching CrossFit Workouts to Try

Haven’t tried CrossFit yet? If not, you’re missing out! It’s a high-intensity workout that gives you fast results, so it’s no surprise it’s so popular right now. And with the 2014 CrossFit Games having wrapped up recently, there’s even more of a reason to give it a try for yourself.

If you’re not quite ready to check out your local box, you can get a taste of what CrossFit is all about with one of these workouts that you can do at home or at the gym. Instructions follow each list of exercises.

Get a full-body workout in just 10 minutes! Set a timer for 10 minutes and try to do as many rounds as possible of 10 Medicine Ball Thrusters, 10 Push-Ups, and 10 Lateral Burpees without taking too much time to rest between exercises. If you push yourself, I guarantee you’ll get a great full-body workout in a short amount of time!

You can work your entire body with just 4 exercises. Try to do as many rounds of the following moves without taking too much time to rest between exercises. Set a timer for 15 minutes and then start with 15 Kettlebell Swings. When you finish, move immediately to 10 Burpees, then 15 Air Squats, and finally 10 Push-Ups. When you finish all 4 exercises, you’ve completed 1 round. Be sure to keep track of your rounds and reps, so the next time you do this workout, you can try to do more!

Everyone has 10 minutes, right? Even though this kettlebell workout is just 10 minutes, you’ll feel like you had a much longer sweat session. Grab a medium-weight kettlebell and try to do as many rounds of 10 Kettlebell Swings, 8 Goblet Squats, and 6 Burpees as possible in 10 minutes.

Rise ‘n’ shine! It’s exercise time! This workout doesn’t require any equipment, so you can do it just about anywhere. You just need a little bit of space. Perform all of the reps for each exercise for before moving onto the next one. So, for example, do all 80 Air Squats before starting the 40 Burpees and so on. Unsure how to do some of the exercises? Check out these video demonstrations: Air Squats, Burpees, Hand Release Push-ups, Sit-Ups, Hollow Rocks.

Start off the work week with this “Monday” WOD (“Workout of the Day). For this workout, you need a kettlebell and a rowing machine (erg). Here’s how this workout works: Set a timer and then perform 30 reps of Kettlebell Swings, 30 reps of Goblet Squats, and then hop on the rower and row until you’ve reached 30 calories. Then, perform 20 reps of Kettlebell Swings and Goblet Squats and row 20 calories on the rower. Finish the workout with 10 reps of each exercise and 10 calories on the rower.

RELATED: How to Do the Perfect Push-Up

Read Tina’s daily food and fitness blog, Carrots ‘N’ Cake.

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The Kindness of Strangers: Man Cradles Mom’s Sleeping Baby So She Can Fill Out Medical Forms

One man’s willingness to help out a total stranger has tugged on the heartstrings of internet users everywhere.

A recent photo of a white man holding a black woman’s baby while she filled out forms in a doctor’s office quickly went viral last week. The interaction was captured by another patient in the waiting room, Natasha Crittenden Wilson of Florence, Alabama, who shared the image on Facebook.

RELATED: Serena Williams Just Shared the Most Relatable Motherhood Moment on Instagram: ‘Kids Humble Us’

“I was in the waiting room at the doc office today and this lady walked in with her sleeping baby!” Wilson wrote in the caption. “They handed her paperwork to do & as she was sitting there trying to figure out how to hold her sleeping baby while filling out the paperwork, this man, from across the room, asks her if she would like for him to hold her baby while she did her paperwork!! She smiled and said that would be wonderful!! This man went over there and rocked and loved on that baby like he was his!!”

Wilson continued, “My heart Melted!!! Racism is still VERY real in our society today BUT THIS MAN GAVE ME HOPE & a sweet memory I’ll never forget!! If you know this man tell him what an amazing person he is!!”

RELATED: A Bystander Had the Perfect Response to This Preschooler’s ADHD Tantrum

Wilson, a mother of seven herself, told Good Morning America that the man, “sat and hummed to him and rocked him until he was called back to his room. This was something I had never witnessed in my life … People just don’t normally offer help anymore to someone they don’t know.”

The woman in the photo has since been identified as Jade West, and the man as Joe Hale. West’s son’s name is Jayce Billings.

“I felt relieved and appreciated at the fact that he wanted to help. He seemed really genuine,” West recalled to the morning show. “He talked about how he never stops being a ‘paw paw’ and how he loved kids and just about my baby in general. He was literally just loving on him and talking to him as if he was his own grandchild and had known him his whole life. He was just the sweetest.”

Said Wilson to GMA, “For a stranger, a white man at that, asking a young black mother if he could hold her baby to help her out, then the way he loved on that baby like it was his own, it almost puts me to tears every time I think about the love you could see radiate from him for that baby.”

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Fitness Influencer Shares Instagram vs. Reality Photo

This is what you don’t see when you scroll Instagram.

Ever scroll through images of your favorite bloggers and wonder how they can look so perfect, or why they always seem so happy? Well it’s time for a reality check, courtesy of fitness influencer Nina Zeiler.

In a recent Instagram post, Zeiler reminds us that behind those seemingly flawless photos are normal human beings with their own insecurities.

RELATED: These 13 Women Prove Every Body Is a Bikini Body

“It’s funny how you can feel you ‘know’ people you follow on social media. You see what seems to be their life, what they are like, how they are feeling. But do you really?” Zeiler captioned her post, which featured side-by-side images she took of herself posing in a bra and leggings. 

In her post, Zeiler wrote “what you see” on one of the images, which shows her to be the fit, strong, and confident dancer she is. Next to it is a photo that says “what you don’t see”—that she lives with chronic illness, is often bloated (and insecure about the bloat), and has anxiety.

“Yes I am into fitness, I pole dance, can be flexible and have some strength, love promoting body confidence and share my happiness. But anyone who thinks that is all of me and my life is so mistaken,” she wrote.

RELATED: What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About Body Positivity

Zeiler went into more detail covering the things she leaves out of her photos. “I don’t share my frustrations with my chronic illness, the lengths I go to day-to-day to stay healthy enough to live a semi-normal life,” she wrote. “My feeling that I’m not actually *that* strong, that somehow I manage to fake a sense of fitness, haunts me with every workout and yet who would know to look at my feed?”

Spilling your insecurities online is definitely not easy, and we give Zeiler a lot of credit. Next time you start to compare yourself to someone on social media, think of her message.

Influencers and others on social media “have their bad days, their insecurities and problems and life lessons they’re learning too,” she wrote. “Remember that you only get to see 5% of someone’s world.”

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