DEL.ICIO.USMY FAVORITE WORKOUT
11 Alive News anchor loses it at boot campFor the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/09/08
In our new series, "My Favorite Workout," we'll feature a person in the Atlanta area who has discovered their exercise utopia. Every other week you'll read inspiring stories of regular folks who lost weight, gained strength and, in some cases, even avoided death thanks to their newfound format. You may be inclined to try their workouts or you may say, "That's not for me." Because exercise, just like shoes, is not a one-size-fits-all product.
KARYN GREER, co-anchor of 11 Alive News Today, who lives in Johns Creek, can attest to that.
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| Karyn Greer, co-anchor of 11 Alive News is a fan of boot camp. | ||
 Becky Stein / Special | ||
| Greer does hamstring curls using the exercise ball when she's at boot camp. | ||
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Her challenge: As a TV anchor, it's important for Greer to look her best, even at 5 a.m. And like most people, Greer has always struggled maintaining her ideal weight. "I'm losing, gaining, losing, gaining."
What wasn't working for her: "You get into a rut of doing the same thing every day. That's when exercise was really terrible for me. I can't put in a tape and just do it because I won't do it."
How she jump-started her fitness regimen: Military-style boot camp. "You're motivated; you have a group that you meet with everyday," Greer says of an eight-week camp she recently completed.
A breakdown of her sport: Boot camps are becoming a regular activity all over Atlanta's parks and gyms. Participants show up either early in the morning or in the evening to have an instructor put them through rigorous drills like jumping rope, doing push-ups and sprinting. The eight-week course Greer attended was with her trainer and three girlfriends. "It was boxing and just a little of everything. We would get on the stair climber for a couple minutes really fast, jump down, jump rope."
What she likes about it: "It was fun; it was tough. There were mornings we were pretty much in tears, but you could see some results." She says that between changing her diet and working hard in boot camp, she's lost 30-35 pounds over the last six months.
How she sticks to it: Now that her job requires that she be on-camera during the early hours when she used to be in boot camp, Greer works out with her trainer doing boot camp-style moves three afternoons a week. He either comes to her house or they hit the gym. And while she can't always exercise with her buddies, one thing hasn't changed—she's always doing something new. "This gives me a lot of different things to do so I love it."
Benefits: Besides losing weight, Greer says she sees a difference in her overall body shape: "Toning, definitely toning. He worked all parts of the body: the glutes, the hamstrings." She believes that jumping rope really helped to change the shape of her legs. Plus, she says boot camp strengthened her endurance. Now she says she has more energy.
Cross-training: On days when she's not doing her boot camp routine, she exercises with her two sons, ages 12 and 9. "We'll go for a walk. We'll go downstairs in the basement; we've got weights and a treadmill. It works for me if I can involve them because then I feel like I'm not leaving them to go work out," she says.
Advice: Even though she's passionate about her boot camp workout, her road to weight loss wasn't easy: "It wasn't overnight. If you want overnight, that's not going to happen."
MORE ABOUT BOOT CAMP
There are so many different boot camps that you won't be able to use the excuse that there's not one close to you. Plus, most are at different times of day so there goes that excuse. Check out one of these:
WHAT KEEPS YOU MOVING?
If you have found an exercise regimen that helps you stay motivated, we'd like to hear about it. We'll run the most inspiring stories every other week in a new feature, My Favorite Workout, which will appear on weeks alternating with Good Form. E-mail us at betterhealth@ajc.com.
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