30 Day Summer Shape Up, LAST DAY!

For the very last day of the challenge, I thought I would revisit an old fitness "foe," the KickButt! - Volume 4 - Floor Burn video from Amazon Instant Video.  I purchased this title around 2008, the last year I toured as a dancer.  I suppose the earliest onset of my physical injuries made me feel that I should get in better shape.  (I really wish I had followed through on that notion.)  This and a few other titles I bought ended up never really being used.  I remember getting through not even 10 minutes of Floor Burn and thinking something to the effect of, "Screw this - this woman is nuts!"  I may have even said that out loud.

I still think she's nuts, but in a way I can have an appreciation for these days.  I didn't finish the video today, but I did get more than halfway through it, which made me feel pretty good.  I also noted how proper form really changes the way an exercise feels, something I've been marveling at for this entire past month.  Also, I can manage pushups and chaturangas now, which I definitely could not one month ago.  

I didn't lose crazy amounts of weight  with this challenge.  I've lost what I've been averaging the entire time I've been trying to get fit  - about a pound or two a week - which is a good, safe rate at which to lose weight.  Somewhere in the middle I even gained a few pounds as my calorie needs became greater due to the work I've been doing and (I'm assuming) muscle building.  I feel stronger.  My "tight jeans" don't feel as tight as they used to.  That matters so much more to me than a number on a scale.  My back also doesn't hurt nearly as much as it used to. (Yay!)  Two months ago, standing for an hour or doing several loads of laundry would have made me feel like I wanted to cry.  I could do either without a second thought now. 

I'm proud of myself for powering through this past week's feelings of boredom and monotony to get to the end of this challenge.  These are feelings that all of us face when it comes to making a commitment to getting fit.  How we deal with them determines whether or not we achieve our goals.  I couldn't stress more the importance of keeping it fresh on a day-to-day basis.  If I was doing the exact same thing every single day, I probably would have quit at Day 10.  I feel very confident that I'll continue this effort on a daily basis.

Now I'm ready for summer!

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 29

At this point and after how I felt weekend, I'm just going to relax and have fun.  I've found I really love Pilates.  I did this video this morning:

I thought it was great, but then, I'm biased.  One more day!!  See you then...

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Four weeks!!!!

Yesterday and today I had major housecleaning to do that's been neglected since I moved here, and I dare anyone not to count that as as worthy "sweat into summer" activities, because I was busy with it for hours both days and drenched in sweat when I finished.

I'm happy that I decided to keep this blog because it really made me keep my goals in focus, but the last week or so I've had anxiety about finding interesting material to write about every day.  I feel like I've been repeating myself for a while.  These feelings are valid and worth acknowledging.  I'll just be glad when this is over in two days and I can go back to blogging about what I like instead of filling a requirement daily.  It's quite likely I'll still exercise daily as I've come to grow fond of spending that time improving my health.

Two more days people.  I can do this!

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 26

I believe after reviewing all the other Android apps I found interesting enough to download that I'm through with that here.  After we make some site revisions at Tech Reviews East, I'll continue to review technology related to fitness, but so far as my purposes go here, I'd rather go back to focusing on my personal experiences with getting fit and finding simple and effective ways to exercise without having to buy lots of equipment or join a gym.

I found a short but extremely effective upper body workout on YouTube.  It only takes five minutes and you just need yourself and a little floor space.

Intense (for me, anyway) but doable.  Recommended.

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 25

Today's workout video came from the Pilates for Women app from Temple of Android, the makers of the app I reviewed on Day 22.  I really like these guys!  They make small little apps that don't muck up your phone.  Basically a little search engine for the type of exercise featured in the app.  I found this video there:

Nice little workout!  I enjoyed it.

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 24

Today's workout was the "Daily Yoga for Back" on the Daily Yoga Android app from IMOBLIFE Co. Ltd.  I have to say, the app was problematic and the guidance left much to be desired.

If I didn't already have rudimentary knowledge of yoga I would have been confused and probably would not have been able to follow.  I was really excited about this app when I downloaded it.  If you'd like to see my technical notes on the app, please visit my new column over at TechReviewsEast.com, which should be up later today.

Six more days, people!  I feel really good about myself for making it this far!

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 23

Today's Android fitness app review comes to us via one of my favorite fitness groups, Women's Health.  Women's Health Workouts is everything I could want from such an app.  It doesn't take up very much space on your phone and it gives you exactly what you want.  Today I did the "Get a Tight Butt and Legs" workout.

You can even track number of reps you've done in a set and log them to review later.  It automatically logs time spent on each workout.  Big thumbs up.  This one's a keeper.

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 22

I downloaded several fitness apps to my Android phone last night.  One simply called "Workout Videos for Women" (available for free in the Google Play store) basically does what I've been doing for about half of this challenge.  The app is ad supported, but not in a terribly annoying way.  There are tabs for different types of exercises.  My choice today was this video:

It was a good workout, but I probably would have liked it better if the video hadn't stalled on me every minute or so.  I have an excellent wi-fi connection here.  Maybe the site was just overloaded.  I'll be playing with other fitness apps I just acquired and sharing results here over the next few days.  Happy Monday!

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Three Weeks!!!

Today we revisit arms.  I've always wanted to have arms that were strong, yet still shapely and feminine.  And just to have better upper body strength.  Something like this is the ideal, except in color and in this century:

I found this great workout from http://www.mademan.com.  I'm happy to say I managed two sets of most of them.  The swan pushup was one I hadn't heard of before, and the downward dog pushup was interesting.  Overall, it was a simple, solid workout.  Recommended.

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 20

Today begs to be a gorgeous, sunny day.  I am going for a nice long bike ride in a little bit and then am heading out for the day.  Happy Saturday and I will see everyone tomorrow!

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 19

Sometimes you just have to deal with accepting your limitations.  Looking for great butt workout this morning, I found this post on the Women's Health site.  When I first saw the number of sets for each move, I thought they were kidding.  Already knowing I couldn't manage 2 to 3 sets of each, I bargained for one, but I still only got halfway through the workout.  That's okay - I met my Sweat Into Summer requirement for the day and the gauntlet has been thrown down.  I'll definitely come back to this one, and eventually I'll kick its butt instead of it kicking mine!

Right about here it all went sideways (not literally).

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 18

Livestrong.com just became one of my favorite websites.  Almost every day when I research my morning's activity I end up on this site.  It's well worth the look around.  Today I did some lower back exercises derived from yoga poses that can be found here.

Clockwise from top left: lower back lift,
bird dog, cat pose and lower back  bridge.

These exercises improve flexibility while reducing stiffness and strengthening your abs and glutes.  Simple, yet effective and easy to get through in no time at all.  This routine is not just for people with existing back pain, you can (and probably should) do them if your back is perfectly fine to prevent future lower back issues.  Highly recommended.

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 17

Today is all about arms.  With summer almost here and months of short or no-sleeved shirts, it's good to get familiar with simple workouts to shape this area.  I found this article on the Livestrong site.

Guess what I learned?  Before 20 minutes ago, I had no idea how to properly do a pushup.  That certainly makes this post irrelevant.  But that's okay.  I meant for this challenge to not just be a physical one.  By trying to find a new set of exercises to do every day, I intended to learn more about my body and how to make it stronger.  Realizing that I haven't even come close to doing this exercise right (when I finally did, I found I could only manage 7 of them - and just barely) made me appreciate the importance of proper form when doing exercises.

Moving on, I loved this article.  I focus on finding exercises you can do without any equipment but yourself, not only because I have limited access to any such equipment, but because so many people skip out on exercise by making excuses such as, "I don't have any weights/machines" or "I can't afford a gym membership."  You don't need either of these things to get strong and fit.  You just need to have the motivation to do it.  Hey, if I can find this stuff every morning surfing the net, so can you!  It's interesting and fun to do something different every day.  Why not give it a try?

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 16

This morning I thought I'd revisit the 10 Minutes Solution: Pilates video I wrote about on Day 4.  I did the Pilates For Abs section again, happy to note that the one move I couldn't do then I managed today (with slight difficulty, but still).  Then for an added challenge I also went through the Pilates Burn routine.  I'm happy to see that I can take on more of a challenge.  I thought my back was bothering me for several days and I think what was going on is that my core muscles were getting stronger.  I'm starting to feel stronger all around.  I'm noticing muscle definition in my thighs and calves I haven't seen in a good couple of years.  I don't know that I'm ready for before and after pictures just yet, but they are forthcoming.

Here's the thing, also:  I don't know if any of you noticed my goal on my weight loss ticker at the bottom of the page.  That 65 lbs. I've been working on losing only represents what I've been working on this year.  At the beginning of 2011 I was 100 lbs. overweight.  I'm looking at the screen  as I write this and can hardly believe I'm able to say that, but it's true.  And my weight went up and down a few times last year due to extenuating circumstances with different health issues.  But somehow, without the drive or inclination to take exercising seriously I managed to lose half that weight.  50 lbs. overweight puts you into the obesity BMI bracket.  You never see these things coming, it just snowballs on you.  It's as if one day you wake up and you're sewn into a suit that looks terrible on you, and there's no way for you to take it off.  I was overjoyed to upgrade to just regular old "overweight."

15 lbs. from now, I'll no longer be overweight.  I don't foresee this being a problem.  But since this is about fitness and not vanity for me, I'm not stopping there.  When I took dance as a child all our classes were half an hour of stretching and "tumbling" (gymnastics), and then half an hour of dance.  I've not been in such good shape since I quit taking those classes when I was 11.  I want that body back.  I want every inch of me strong again.  I'm pretty sure I can do it.

Have a lovely day, everyone.

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 15

Who says you can't move forward by standing still?  I had heard of callanetics and isometric exercise in childhood, mainly because my mother was always looking for the best way to exercise with the least amount of effort.  It kind of seemed like hooey to me, but I remember reading books and pamphlets about it that were lying around the house and even being interested enough by the concept to do a little library research on the subject.  This morning I woke up feeling more sore than I'd care to, and I remembered this kind of exercise.  So one Google search later, I found this video.

Screenshot, because Blogger only lets you embed YouTube videos

About 5 minutes in, I made a mental note never to view a workout video on Daily Motion again.  There was an ad every couple of minutes, and when you're doing a stationary move that you have to hold for 100 counts, you really don't want that kind of interruption.  Their hamstring stretch was a no-go since it was basically a 100 count toe touch.  Other than that I liked the exercises I did.  I wonder if they used callanetics as a basis for pilates.  It would seem so.

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Two weeks!!

Most women want a better bustline, but not every one of them has the financial resources and/or the inclination to get surgical enhancements.  The free and natural solution?  Work your pecs and your upper back.  So I set about finding good exercises for women targeting this area.  I stumbled upon this:

I found a lot more than I bargained for - in a good way!  When I was searching Netflix for exercise videos, it completely slipped my mind that I could search on YouTube for the same.  Talk about endless options.  These exercises are challenging, with easier or more difficult modifications.  She doesn't count out every rep with you like almost every other workout video on the planet, so you're on your honor.  No cheating!  The move where you start in the "swan dive" position was a little too much for me.  I had to cut it down to half a set on each side.  I'm looking forward to when I can manage all the difficult mods.  Happy Sunday, everyone.  Two weeks down, two to go!

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 13

It should be noted at this point that I do some sort of aerobic/cardiovascular exercise every day, whether I mention it in my post or not.  I try not to blog about just that to avoid redundancy.  What I find interesting about this is that when I started, everyone I knew was telling me, "Be careful, don't overdo it."  Really?  Because at this point I'm feeling better than I have for a while, and now when parts of me hurt, it's muscles I'm dusting off after a long period of inactivity - the "good" kind of hurt.  When I'm feeling it too much, I give those muscles a rest until they're feeling better.

I decided that since I've been able to manage two straight weeks of cardio for the first half of the challenge without hurting myself, what I'd like to focus on for the second half in addition to my daily calorie burning workout is some kind of strength training exercise every day.  Today I decided to focus on the area that has the greatest impact on my overall condition, my abs.  This morning's search yielded this result from WebMD.  What I like the most about doing this particular sort of research is that I'm seeing and reading about a lot of the same things my doctors and my physical therapist have told me about, which makes me believe I'm on the right path.

One thing I noticed from this article is that it's the first place I've seen ab exercises on the net that mention keeping your stomach muscles tight while doing them.  I do this anyway.  And I'm really surprised to only just now be seeing this after the many, many web pages I've visited since the thing I remember the most about post-surgery rehab is my physical therapist drilling the words "engage your core" into my head whenever she showed me an exercise.  What you do with your stomach muscles when you're doing... well, any exercise really, is hugely important if you care about how they're going to look as they develop.  It's kind of the same principle as when my ballet teachers used to constantly tell me to pull my stomach in, even when I wasn't in class.  If you hold your muscles in that manner all the time they train themselves to stay that way.  So when people bear down and push out their bellies on an exertion, their muscles will get stronger, but they will protrude.  I wouldn't want to get stuck with that, would you?

Back to the article, I was relieved to hear I never have to do toe touches, sit ups or double leg lifts again as any of these would exacerbate my condition.  I'm well familiar with the hamstring stretch and knee to chest stretch, since before the surgery I couldn't get out of bed in the morning without doing them.  I modified the wall sit with my fitness ball.  That just works out better for me and I don't believe it makes the exercise any less effective.  Overall, I thought it was a great article, especially if you have a situation similar to mine.

30 Day Summer Shape Up, Day 12

Yoga for strength training?  Why, yes - it's true.  In my search for great at-home arm exercises, I came across this article from Prevention. 

It consists of three poses:

 

downward facing dog variation

chaturanga

reverse chaturanga

If you're thinking this looks too easy to be an effective workout, you're in for a surprise. These poses work everything from your wrists to your shoulders.  I definitely see this working its way into my permanent routine.