So, it’s festival season. It’s warm, it’s sunny; it’s time for weekends filled with live music, pool days, and barbecues. Time for fresh local veggies, fair trade burgers, and beer. Lots of beer. With the farm-to-table, eats on wheels, vendor sampling culture of Atlanta summers comes fun cocktails and craft beers.
Picture this scenario (and try not to relate): You work, hit the gym most days, and keep a clean, orderly diet during the week. Then, around noon on Fridays, the texts and Facebook invites roll in. You’ve got a choice this particular week between the local music and beer festival Saturday and a weekend on the lake with friends. You pick both. Eh, split it down the middle to maximize fun-having. So you rock out. You get home Sunday night and start laundry and you feel like your stomach is involuntarily sticking out, ever so slightly. It’s because of the 16 craft beer samples at the festival (damn that Monday Night Eye Patch Ale and it’s deliciousness!) and the corona-brat-pretzel-chips-and-hummus combo at the lake, and you know it. UGH, what to do?
Luckily, I’ve experienced this pseudo beer belly a time or two and, while it may simply be a mental disposition (your body can’t literally transform in 24 hours), it still doesn’t do the ‘ole confidence any favors. So, I’ve crafted the beer belly workout–a quick and dirty circuit that requires nothing but your body and your determination to shake off the physical evidence of your weekend adventures.
I once did this little circuit four times in a 15 minute window (I crushed it, and still use this time frame as my goal each time I bust it out), and had a noticeably tighter tummy the next morning.
It goes like this:
Warm up: 50 jumping jacks
Here’s a little summer workout playlist I’ve been digging:
I like my workout playlist a little heavy, but peppered with a few fun EDM tunes and sprinkled with some rap. Sorry if I offend with my bizarre love of metalcore. 😀
RACHEL REED 