Orangetheory Fitness Review Mission Viejo
I am an all or nothing type of person. If I am going to do something, I am going to do it 100% or not at all. I approach working out this way. I go through periods in my life where I work out and periods where I don’t. When I exercise, I want something pretty hardcore where I am going to go a lot and try my hardest to be the best. When I look back at my life, the times where I was really into a certain type of exercise whether it was hot yoga or boot camp, I was the happiest and had my s**t together. I am happy to report that I am currently at a place in my life where I work out regularly. I met Orangetheory Mission Viejo about 4 months ago, fell in love, and have been happy ever since. 🙂
the dreaded rowing machine
The first thing I heard about Orangetheory is that you wear a heart rate monitor in class. This totally intrigued me, and I wanted to learn more. I personally don’t wear a heart rate monitor in my day-to-day life. My brother William wears one, and I can tell he gets a lot of enjoyment out of tracking his steps and calories. Our OCD runs in the family. 🙂 I have a feeling I could become obsessive over it, and with my Instagram obsession I really don’t have time for that. But I LOVE the idea of wearing a heart rate monitor in class. Basically each person in the class wears a monitor, either on your wrist or on a chest strap (I’m wearing the chest strap), and your heart rate is projected on a big screen. You aim for different heart rate zones which have corresponding colors. The “orange” zone is where the name Orangetheory comes from…
BASE PUSH ALL OUT™
Base. Push. All Out. Fitness, meet science. The idea of Orangetheory is this: a 60-minute workout designed to push you into the Orange Zone. This creates “Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption,” or EPOC. It’s what burns calories after your workout and gives you noticeable, lasting results with Orangetheory Fitness.
Source: Orangetheory Website
The class is a mix of cardio (treadmill and rowing) and weight training. I love this because I have worked out with trainers in the past where we focused only on weight training, and I was supposed to do cardio on my own. And… ahem that never happened so I didn’t get the results. I want to go somewhere and get an all-inclusive workout where I don’t have to think. I prefer someone telling me what to do and just doing it. I have also learned that personally I do better in group workout settings. I am a total competitive athlete, and I push myself harder. I can be kind of a weirdo about it. My husband says I would make a great Marine. Bet you never would have guessed that about me! With my competitive nature, I push myself harder in a group training setting. Also I get inspired by other people who don’t stop or give up, and it keeps me moving too.
I believe that wearing the heart rate monitor in class has been instrumental in getting me results faster than ever before. Here’s why. At Orangetheory, you spend some time on the treadmill- sometimes even half of the class. The coach takes you through a treadmill workout, targeting specific heart rate zones. Maybe we are doing cardio on the treadmill at a “push pace” which means targeting the orange zone on the screen. I select the speed that normally gets me to that orange zone, but sometimes I notice I am still in the green zone and need to work harder. My body has adjusted to that speed and it doesn’t need to work as hard to maintain that speed. I increase my speed until I see that I have hit the targeted heart rate and now I know that’s my new speed. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be as aggressively increasing my speed if I didn’t visually see that my body wasn’t working hard enough on the screen. I am going faster speeds than I ever believed I was capable of… but your body gets used to exercise with practice and when you break through these plateaus you get results. That’s what I believe anyway. 🙂
Coach Nick explaining the next exercise.
I have been working out pretty regularly for maybe 5-6 months now. Some weeks I go up to 4-5 times a week, but those are my best weeks. Some weeks I go less because let’s face it stuff happens when you’re a mom. It’s definitely more of a challenge to consistently work out when you have kids, and I am still trying to figure out a good balance. My eating is not perfect, and I can still make improvements. For me that’s the hard part. I love chips! haha My legs and arms are always pretty lean even when I don’t work out. They just don’t look as toned. My trouble spot has always been my midsection which don’t they say is all carbs and diet? I have to say though my abs have never been this defined in my entire life. I have gained more muscle in this short time than anything else I have tried in the past.
If I could share two tips for keeping lean, they would be:
1. Drink tons of water, especially right when you wake up in the morning and before you eat anything. (so original I know). Honestly I hate drinking water so this is a tough one for me.
2. Don’t eat dinner late or snack after dinner. I used to be SO good about this! If I don’t snack after dinner, I feel like I wake up with a flatter stomach and weigh like a pound less. It’s weird. The problem is by the time the kiddos are in bed, and hubby and I settle down finally to watch a show, it feels incomplete without a snack. I am going to try and drink hot tea and see if that distracts me. There’s this saying, which I totally believe in:
“Eat Breakfast Like a King, Lunch Like a Prince, and Dinner Like a Pauper”
Now in full disclosure I am not a nutritionist and this is just my own personal opinion with what works for me!
I hope you enjoyed this post. I know it’s different from my usual outfit posts, but I am always interested to know what other women do for exercise and what works for them.
Thanks for reading! xo
Photos by Taylor Cole.
