Ramped Up

I know I'm not the only one out there that looks at their workout sometimes (ok, most of the time) and thinks in their most whiny voice "I don't wanna do this!" I admit it. I did that last night. I didn't want to do my tabatas. They suck. Still, I put on some peppy music and pushed through anyway. By the time I was done, I was feeling pretty kick ass. I was all proud of myself, struting around my house, informing my cat that "Yeah, that's right. I did that. Did you see? I totally just did that hard thing and I kicked its butt!"

Yeah, that was me.

There's nothing wrong with being proud of your hard work either. I was mighty proud last night when I peeled my sweaty butt off the floor. I could take on anything at that point. In fact, I then went to my dance studio and signed up for a new belly dance class that was starting.

For those of you who aren't familiar with belly dance outside of the video I've shown you and bad 70's movies featuring scanitily clad women swaying in  lounges, allow me to dispel some myths. Belly dance LOOKS easy. It's supposed to. Heck, most people just think it means getting dressed in sparkly stuff and jiggling a lot. The first part about the sparkly stuff is true, the rest is bull hockey. Dance of any form is very hard and belly dance isn't just jiggling in place. It's the careful, precise isolation and movement of individual muscle groups. It's a very hard thing to do correctly.

To get a feel for what I was doing last night, try standing on your tip toes. No, no, higher than that. Ok, now bend your knees slightly, tuck your pelvis under, and suck in your tummy till all of your abs are clenched. Then lift your chest, place your arms out to the side with a slight bend at the elbows, lift your chin and don't forget to smile. Hold that for an hour and a half while rapidly shifting your weight from thigh to thigh. Then keep moving your hips, while standing on your toes, and dip your knees till you lower down a good foot and back up again.

Seriously, my calves are going to look like this at some point.

By the time I got to the end of the class, my thighs were shaking so hard I could barely walk and my calves were knots. I dragged myself home, cursing my stupidity for trying to combine my workout with a class, which mind you is 5 weeks long so I have 4 more of these sessions to look forward to. On the plus side, I told my husband about it and asked if perhaps I'd pushed too hard but he assured me that my lack of permanent injury means I'm pushing myself just enough. So, I suppose I'd better get used to it since it seems my work out has just taken a massive step up in its intensity.

I am convinced, however, that given 6 weeks of this kind of work out, I'll be able to crush walnuts with my butt cheeks. You know, cause that's useful as a skill. ;)

Day...something or another.

I learned a very important lesson while working out today.

Do not ever workout to songs that include a number in them.

Ever.

You WILL lose count of your repetitions. >__< 

Stretching is supposed to feel good

So for the last week I haven't been able to work out because I've been sick. This also had the effect of driving me nuts since I'd just started this whole workout thing and then found I couldn't actually DO any of it.

I made the rather understandable mistake of mentioning this to my husband. As a Marine and consumate badass, little things like illness (or loss of surface skin, for that matter) don't really slow him down much and he sympathized with my plight more than I think I'd intended. This whole not working out thing was a problem that had to be solved. He'd been the one to say "don't work out this week" since I'd been sick but I had underestimated the true depth of his knowledge in all things designed to suck when it comes to exercise.

He suggested I stretch.

Photo from yogagirlsorlando.com

"Ok," I thought, "sure! I can do that! It'll be relaxing! I'll just do some fun yoga or something and that will be my exercise." So yesterday, I told my hubby I was going to take his suggestion on stretching. That's when he sent me the link to this site. It's a mobility workout of the day site by a guy called KStar. He's actually a well respected athlete who looked at his fellow muscleheads and said "Wow, we are all in a lot of pain." He decided that people knew too little about how their own bodies work and he set out to fix that. His site is a series of mobility workouts, one per day, that are designed to stretch you out in ways that might otherwise go overlooked.

Sounds great, right?

I clicked the play button on video number one and found that my first daily stretch was just sitting in a squat for 10 minutes. Well THAT'S not hard, right? It's just a squat. In fact, peoples around the world who don't have a ton of European luxuries actually sit that way normally all the time. Scientists even tell us that this is a NORMAL position for people and that we aren't really designed to sit squarely on our rumps. This can lead to lots of back pain.

Photo from goyavier.wordpress.com

Ok, this whole squatting thing is natural and perfectly normal so sitting like this for 10 minutes should be cake. I plop down into a squat and congradulate myself on having managed something this easy. Then I take a closer look at how Kstar is sitting. Ok, so my heels aren't on the floor. I correct this...and promptly fall over. What the hell? Turns out that it's not as easy to sit like this as you might think. Also, it hurts like holy hell. It's not because it's not natural, it's because since I was a child, I've been taught to sit in a chair so this seemingly normal squat becomes somewhat problematic. All the muscles that SHOULD be stretched to do this, namely the hips, back of the thighs, and butt, are all shortened from lack of stretching over the course of years and now I'm trying to tug them into a position they no longer deal with well.

I spend the next five minutes trying to convince my heels to stay flat, my knees to stay apart, my butt to stay off the ground, and my back to stay straight. That last part is important. PAY ATTENTION TO IT. Seriously, it hurt when I found myself curling over to try and balance better. Instead, I just caused some serious lower back pain so don't do that. To help with my balance, I wound up clinging to the leg of a table like some cracked out lemur while I tried not to topple over, all while counting down the minutes with a desperation I hadn't realized one could get just from stretching.

The whimpering sounds of my agony eventually drew my husband back out of his office and he gently informed me that the 10 minutes didn't have to be consecutive. I could build up to this sort of thing. After which, he helped ease me down to the floor and kept me from hyperventilating as my screaming muscles finally relaxed again. Now at least I know not to try to do these exercises all in one go. They are not for the faint of heart and much like fighting a dragon, if you go in unprepared, it will eat your butt alive.

Thus ends my lesson in how stretching isn't always relaxing and how I am apparently tense in muscles I didn't even know I had. Tonight, I'm back to my workout so, seeing as my butt is reminding me of what I did to it yesterday, doing weighted squats tonight should be fun. >__>

Dear God, What Have I Done?

Day 2:

It's day two of my training tonight. I posted my intro earlier today so you'll have to forgive there being two posts in a row but from here out, I will only be doing one a day.

I've just finished up tonight's workout. Allow me to introduce you to a special exercise called "Tabatas". Never heard of it? Neither have I. Let me share with you what I've learned.