Overview: This week was hard but I felt really positive and motivated all week. My core is feeling super strong and I can do so much more now. I’d like to work a bit at the HIIT workouts. They suck but I feel so happy after. Gimme all those endorphins!!
I’m also so happy to be back to being able to walk without pain. For months now walking has been really uncomfortable and painful. I don’t think I realised how bad it really was until the last few weeks when it started to improve.
Monday (February 1st) – This week starts a new 8fit app program. This one is actually pretty cool as it was designed by a user of the app who is now an ambassador. I find it reassuring to have a user who has had success be involved. I do tend to fall for basic marketing hype though. 🤷♀️
First up was a Boxing with Emily. Emily is queen of cardio. I’m sure Emily is a perfectly lovely woman but I did not like her after this particular workout. Also it was very good. 😀
I have no upper body strength, it’s improving since I started doing this but seriously, I’m like ridiculously weak and anything that requires using upper body strength is impossible. I’ve learned that it’s all about slow and steady though so I’ll just do that.
The 2.5 km lunchtime walk was a tough one. It was also a slow one. I did it though and hips and back all doing okay so today is a win.
Tuesday (February 2nd) – Needed to go the office today. I’m lucky that my office is within walking distance so I incorporated the trip today into my daily walk. Did a trip around the park I used to do my lunchtime walks in when I was in the office. It was nice to be back. 8 km in all. It rained the entire time but I liked the feeling of normality it gave me.
Today’s workout was a 9 minute core blast. I naively thought I’d be able to add in another workout because what’s 9 minutes?
A bloody lot is what it is!
This was intense core focused. Two exercises for 8 rounds each. 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off. Plank rocks and extended leg crunches.
I did not do another workout because my abs BURNED. It felt great after though. A lot of the time when I did stuff like this in the past my lower back would be in bits after. The last few weeks have been all about working on that core strength and I’ve been super careful about making sure my core is properly engaged while doing all the workouts and walking. This has been about learning what core engagement on the mat actually means and learning that constantly sucking my tummy in is actually not helpful! If anything, I think it could have contributed to a lot of the pain I’ve been experiencing.
Can we stop teaching young girls and women that they need to suck in their stomach ALL THE TIME?
Wednesday (February 3rd) – Today’s workout was a nice morning wake up yoga. The instructor is Mel, the same instructor for the magic hips Yoga and I really like her. It was also a gorgeous day and I opened the French doors for a little bit while doing it and I could almost feel Spring. This gave me happy feelings and I was incredibly productive for the rest of the day. If I could just get up early every morning to do Yoga and then do a morning walk. Will I ever be able?!
Yesterday’s walk to the office and the park next to it was so nice that I decided to do it again without the office part. Another 8 km on a beautiful day. The park was really busy but had my mask on so felt safe.
Thursday (February 4th) – The 8fit workout this morning was an Arm workout with bands. As I mentioned on Monday, I have no upper body strength. I was unable to stretch the bands as much as the instructor. Let’s see how I do in a few weeks.
Followed the arm workout with my favourite hip Yoga.
This hip Yoga! I’m going to be honest, I don’t think I actually enjoy the doing of it. It’s tough and it burns the legs up in places and as I’ve said approximately 100 times, it’s very long. I’m sitting here after finishing though and I’m weak with the exertion of it but I feel sooooo gooood! My whole body feels sooooo gooood! Like when I need to take the nice muscle relaxants good. Well except for my shoulders but I think that’s a combination of the bands workout and be being generally terrible at relaxing my shoulders during Yoga.
I’ve noticed, that for a very short period of time after doing this Yoga, my back, hips and legs have what I would say is zero pain. I think that’s why I love this one so much. For a little bit I get to properly have no pain in places I can’t remember not having it. It doesn’t last for long but it’s enough to make me keep going back for this particular drug.
Quick 2.5 km walk and done with my workouts for the day by 1.00pm. This is because I didn’t faff about in the morning and got right to it. I usually only do this on Friday’s when it’s a hectic day to get to an early finish.
Friday (February 5th) – So I woke up with a lot of pain in the arch of my left foot last night. Possible strain? Weird that it came on at 2am and not during the day. I used some Biofreeze roll-on and after about 20 minutes the pain seemed to subside. Woke up today and it was okay so I’m just going to go ahead and assume a small strain.
Today’s program workout is a 4 minute meditation. I acknowledge that meditation is helpful and I benefit from it, especially in the middle of the night when you are woken up by a weird pain and then can’t get back to sleep because of intrusive thoughts. I’d love to get to the point where when something like that happens I just go straight to meditation. I turned on Modern Family instead! 🙈
So, meditation is for later. I want to finish the week strong so I also added a 35 minute full body HIIT class. It was horrific! 😀 Not much I can really say other than that. I was able to do more than in previous HIIT sessions but still wasn’t able to do the whole thing. I’m coming along slowly and I just need to be happy with that.
Tried a new quick Yoga session after this but I got a new mat (SUPER thick) and found it hard to do the balance stuff and most of this was balance. Might just use the old mat for stuff like that. I did my favourite hip stretches’ from my hip Yoga instead. The new mat is perfect for those. It’s also perfect for the bouncing around during HIIT.
I followed all of this up with gardening in the rain. Needed to clear out everything that died over the winter and I might have left cutting back a huge rose bush far too late and hacked at it just before a frost. 🙈 Let’s all cross our fingers and hope I didn’t ruin the Spring bloom. It won’t die. The thing is an absolute monster!
Didn’t end up doing meditation. I drank wine and gabbed on the phone with my mother for two hours instead. I’ve decided to do it over the weekend instead.
Saturday (February 6th) – The 12 km Saturday walk.
It wasn’t the nicest day but it wasn’t as bad as last week so I had a partner again. Typical Saturday now: Walk, shower, lunch, nap, movie and drinkies!
I do love Saturday!
Sunday (February 7th) – Meal prep day and I really wasn’t feeling it but got it done. Thankfully I didn’t have a lot to do as last weeks dinner prep got me two weeks of dinner.
Today I just felt a bit bleh. Tried my meditation as well and it just did nothing for me. Restless night overall. Just felt anxious and dreading Monday. That’s not happened in a while so it kind sucks.
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