Wordless Wednesday

Unexpected challenge

When I went into the gym today, little did I expect to take part in a Challenge that was going on. I knew about it, but decided to give it a miss because of the set of exercises that they had advertised. I am not good with full push ups. Knee push up – OK. And my arm strength isn’t good enough for pull ups. I am working on it. There was a total of 6 exercises and we were supposed to do them in serial fashion and see how long we took for all 6 of them. Now, why would I go and sign up for this when I have joined gym after a long break and still working on my arm strength?

My gym instructor thought otherwise. When I went in today, all mentally prepped for my dumbbells workout (today is the arms day, y’all), she comes in with a clipboard and a paper and says ‘Lets do this challenge’. I was like ‘why ?’. She was like ‘why not?’ And then she says ‘I have belief in you. You can do it’. I did a eye roll and one more for good measure and told her that not to expect me to excel in it. I know all about their BS of positive and motivational talks. Been there, heard that a lot with my other instructor, and have done that to others too. There is no kidding me with that line, girl. Since the push ups were an issue for me, she replaced it with burpees. Now, I had no choice as to give it a try.

25 knee pushups

10 burpees

25 box jumps

50 full sit ups

50 skipping or jump rope

500 m running in the treadmill at 9 kmph speed and no gradient

I completed them all in 8.55 mins. She was very happy about that, even though there were better results than that. I told her that I am going home now that my workout for the day was over 😉 Once I got that done, I felt good. That wasn’t bad compared to the standard I held myself. I could have done better, if I had done some more practice at home or the previous day. But that’s all right. I made sure I maintained my form too. Box jumps literally tired me down and I had to slow down a bit when I was doing those. I used to hate burpees. May be still do, but at least when it came to this challenge I got that done. All in all I felt good after being challenged so suddenly and especially when I wasn’t mentally prepared. After that she told me that this was just my warm up and I had to do the day’s workout. 🙄  I had to cut two of my exercises from my day’s workout to be able to complete it on time and be back for work. Anyone want to give it a try? If you do, let me know how it went for you.

When I reached home, may be it was the feeling that I did good, I was craving for something very sweet. Like a Pavlova which was available on a fresh food site to order. But every single time I tried (and I tried for close to 5 times from different browsers), the page would error out the moment I select the sweet. Divine Intervention, you think ? I had to settle for some dates to satisfy my sweet craving for the day.

This photograph was taken during one of our Zumba workouts in a Music bar. Photo credits to a friend of a friend who was using my camera to try his photographic skills.Will be doing Zumba this weekend after a very long time. Getting excited already.

5 day workout

I generally don’t watch YouTube videos and do my exercises unless I don’t have an option and want some motivation. Zumba / dance numbers are different. I wouldn’t mind watching them and learning the moves. But since I had recently joined a gym in Bangalore, I didn’t want to spend more out here in London for a week and a half in the gym and the sports center I went to last time have increased their weekly pass rates 😦 I wasn’t inclined to go there.

So I went with the 5 day  challenge with a husband-wife duo. It looked quite simple actually. Of course I didn’t have my dumbbells, so had to use my body weight for those or simply use my mat (when applicable). It had lot of HIIT moves which I haven’t done too much. But I decided to try it and finished my 5th day today (I cheated by taking a weekend break between day 3 and 4, not my mistake if the weekend came in between 😉 ) It felt good and was happy when I was sweating hard. Keeps the momentum going and since I could record the exercises and see how much I have fared up in my week using mywellness account which was part of my gym membership, it gave me a boost too. We need to take all this with a spoon full of salt as to the amount of calories burnt and also while trying to do these exercises watching the videos, we might end up doing it in a wrong form. One should be very careful. Since I knew the exercises it was OK and I concentrated on keeping my form correct even if I had to do less repetitions. I liked how those two show the hard and easy variations and keep talking to you through out. It was fun. Now I have to do something using my Theraband for the rest of the week.

 

Let’s do it!

I joined a new gym, much closer to home, from this month and as part of their process, they do an evaluation and tell you the kind of exercises, the frequency, etc would benefit you and of course they take your preferences into consideration too. It is a little high tech when compared to the one I was used to. But the best part is that I can use any facilities i.e. the gym, the classes, etc as many times I want and whenever I want. And given that it takes only 10 mins from my home it is a huge deal. No more traffic. And the walk to the gym is my warm up. This video couldn’t have come at the more appropriate time, I should say 🙂 I have done well with my health after gymming for almost 2 years. But there is a lot more to do. The list is ready (after a couple of assessments) and goals are set for the next 6 months. Now, Let’s Do It!

Working it out

If someone had told me 2 years ago that I would be going to gym regularly and would fall in love with weights and the strength training exercises, I would have rolled on the floor laughing. But after a year of doing the strength training, reducing almost 10kgs of weight, not to mention a couple of inches, I am so addicted to it now that I feel that if I don’t do at least three classes per week I am committing a sin 😛 And my progress has in turn inspired my siblings to make sure that they take care of their health too (especially when my mom broke her back and couldn’t do anything about it because of her obesity also triggered a panic among us).

Last Sunday, we went to a very posh gym where we did a body pump class, as a trial run for our Zumba instructor, who is also an instructor for body pump. I think I will love that too, because it is more about music and weights. But with the schedule I have now, I won’t be able to include that but I am happy to do these trial classes now and then. Here are a couple of photographs I took with my phone from that studio.

 

And as they say,

“Fitness is not about being better than someone else…but it’s about being better than you used to be”

and trust me…it is so true.

I am not very good with diets. I don’t even try. I just can’t give up ice-creams or chocolates, no way! But the fact that I am in a position to not feel too bad (that means, I do feel a teeny tiny bit bad…) about it, is all because of these workouts. I always go back and tell my instructor that I did indulge a bit and she gets very happy because she can use my guilt to make me work harder 😉 She is cunning that way. But without her I wouldn’t be where I am. She knows when to push me and when to relax and never fails to encourage me. And I should thank my close friend too, who gave me the nudge by saying that I should at least try it and then go ahead if I like it. He probably knew that I would love it.

I am really happy that I got into this regular routine and hope that I can keep this going for a long time to come.