Carrie Underwood is back to business as usual. And that means so are her high-intensity workouts.
Underwood has been slowly returning to the spotlight since she fell outside her Nashville home in November, resulting in a broken wrist and facial injuries which required between 40 and 50 stitches. Over the past month, the 35-year-old star has showed her strength by returning to the stage at the ACM awards, debuting new music and singing the national anthem ahead of husband Mike Fisher’s hockey game last week.
On Thursday, the star continued to shine while hosting a Mother’s Day event for her activewear line with CALIA by Carrie Underwood. She was joined by her mom Carole for a day of fitness and family and led an intense circuit training workout alongside her trainer Eve Overland, showing that her wrist is definitely healed. She also debuted new pieces from the spring/summer clothing collection (available at Dick’s Sporting Goods), took photo booth pictures and sat down with PEOPLE to talk about her current fitness routine.
“I like to switch things up,” Underwood, who is back at the gym full time since her accident, shared of her exercise motto.
“I actually workout with Eve [Overland — her trainer] via Skype quite a bit, because she lives in Atlanta. She’s really great — she tells me what to do, and we’ve done all this stuff before I could do that [refers to the group workout]. I like to run when it’s warm outside. If it’s a nice day I like a little sunshine — it makes me feel good.
The key secret behind Underwood’s lean muscles and tone is centered around consistency and keeping her workouts simple.
“I love doing weight training. We don’t do anything too crazy. I feel like everyone is always looking for that bandwagon type workout — whatever the hot class is. We just do a lot of basic stuff. We do pushups, and pull ups and curls and squats and lunches. All those kind of basic things — they work.”
And having her mom by her side made the event more special for the star.
“It’s been really great. She’s so up for anything. She was a trouper in the workout that we did earlier,” Underwood shared. “I was kind of surprised. She’s having fun.”
Underwood also addressed the crowd of editors, who attended the events with their moms, about how fitness makes her feel.
“When I workout it’s empowering,” she shared. “I feel like it allows me to be a better mom, and a better wife and a better daughter — and I feel good.”
When PEOPLE asked Underwood how it felt to be back at the gym with CALIA, she didn’t hesitate: “I feel great.”
She added that her goal for CALIA is to empower women to feel good when they’re working out.
“What we do for CALIA is we want to make something for everybody and we’re so conscious about what our audience wants and who our audience is, and we’re always striving to make things better,” she shared. “We’ll take things that our CALIA girls love and improve them. Well take feedback and we’ll change things and make them better. We just always want to to do better to create an environment that’s supporting and loving. It’s women supporting women. It’s being your best self and staying the path.”
Underwood and CALIA encourage women to #staythepath, which for the singer means to stop comparing yourself to others
“You’re on your own journey. I don’t know what you want out of life and you don’t know what I want. Same with physical journeys: your fit might not be someone’s else fit. We’re all on our own journey here and we just want to help you get to where you need to be.”