What is my “Wellness Routine”?

Tonight, the moon is three days old. There’s something about this particular moon – waxing crescent – that makes me want to pull weeds under her light. It’s the strangest little hum of an urge and I don’t think I’ll ever do it, but I enjoy thinking about it.

(The moon that set approximately six minutes ago.)

It came to my attention that a famous actress has been mocked and lambasted for her “wellness routine,” which she divulged to the public recently. The ruckus led me to reflect. How would I sum up my own wellness routine?

My wellness routine includes body lotion after a lavender aromatherapy shower every night; working out and focusing on my mind/body connection while performing the exercises; eating nutrient-dense, high-vibration, delicious food; bonding with my animal babies; listening to music; engaging in my spiritual practices; writing; tending to my twice-daily skin care rituals; making space for my creativity; and being in nature. It’s all divine, all devotional. I’m grateful.

Bonuses to throw in: work, where I (still!) love to go to do the job that I (still!) enjoy. Movies and streaming T.V. shows, which intrigue, delight, horrify, and amuse. Cooking and baking, especially baking. These days it’s healthy quick breads, muffins, and scones.

Family and friends… I would call those blessings.

I still aspire to getting more sleep, as it’s critically important, but my return to working out 4-5 days per week has been the greatest. At home, I’ve dialed it in with Les Mills On Demand Pump and Combat. At the gym, it’s traditional weight-training and the treadmill. Re-establishing my fitness routine, dedicating time and care to my physical fitness has been – I mean, it’s been absolute sorcery, what it’s done for my spirits. A recent double loss plus a harrowing time for another loved one has amounted to too much tragedy in too short a span of time, and my fitness discipline has helped immensely.

But sleep, now. Sleep is the final piece of the wellness puzzle. It’s the most challenging for me, and I should finish this post on that note. It’s time to focus on sleep and really make an effort, and I should start this very second! I wish you all a good-night (or day… or whatever it is for you).

Until next time, my friends. Take care and stay safe out there!

Confessions of a (former) Gym Snob: I joined Planet Fitness, and I love it. (Fitness updates!)

I went to the gym today. And yesterday, and the day before, and four days last week. I’m hanging on to my Les Mills On Demand subscription for home workouts, but recently I’ve added an actual gym component back into my fitness routine. I’ve returned to my old habits, my friends, and I feel so much better! I’m eating 98% high-vibration foods and lifting weights and doing cardio and feeling strong and energetic and good in my body again.

In my car in the gym parking lot before heading in to my workout.

I can feel my renewed commitment to my physical well-being benefiting my mental health, as well. I experienced two losses last month that both cut deeply, pretty much back-to-back. My cat has been sick. A close family member has been struggling in ongoing crisis. It’s been stressful, and I very much needed to return to gym therapy. When I finally did, I joined… Planet Fitness.

Now, fellow gym rats, I know what you’re thinking. I know because I used to be right there with you, mocking and ridiculing Planet Fitness. It’s the gym notorious for kicking people out for wearing spaghetti straps, for sounding a “Lunk Alarm” when someone commits the crime of grunting while lifting heavy weights, and for lacking an Olympic barbell.

Lies. Lies, my friends.

Well, the 45lb Olympic barbell part is true. There isn’t one at Planet Fitness. But that doesn’t seem to discourage seasoned strength athletes and career gym rats from working out there.

I mean, even two weeks in, I go to the gym and look around in bewilderment, because I still don’t recognize the place. I know that I’m in a Planet Fitness, but… am I?

I don’t recognize the women in the short, tight gym shorts and sexy sports bras and nothing else, because those women in those outfits aren’t supposed to be there… yet they are, and no one says anything.

I don’t recognize the guys in bodybuilding muscle shirts and the kind of tanks that have wispy straps of fabric looped over their shoulders and armholes so long, the guys might as well be unclothed completely. Those guys aren’t supposed to be there, either, according to Planet Fitness lore. But they are there, and no one cares.

Neither do I recognize the super built, ripped folk walking around in skin-tight microfiber t-shirts and weighted vests, because Planet Fitness is a “beginner’s gym” – so advanced athletes aren’t supposed to be there, either.

Or any of the serious strength athletes – of all ages and genders – focusing intently on their training.

Oh, there is indeed a “Lunk Alarm” warning banner up on the wall in the free weight area, but it seems to be there for entertainment purposes, because the Lunk Alarm isn’t sounded when people audibly exert physical effort. My trainer said that they only time the Lunk Alarm is used is at the end of days that have closing times, as a way to alert people that the gym is going to be closing soon. (The gym is open 24/5 and has closing hours on the other two days.) Even in that case, he’s only seen it done once or twice.

What else? Little pleasant surprises, like the electronica music they’ve got playing overhead. I guess I was expecting standard pop music fare. Silly me!

I wasn’t expecting the gym to feature a spa with cutting-edge equipment. Apparently, some people join Planet Fitness just for the Black Card spa. They don’t go to work out. They go for the Total Body Enhancement red light therapy capsule booth, the HydroMassage lounge seats and beds, the various tanning technologies, and the massage chairs.

I certainly wasn’t expecting unlimited free personal training with my $10.00/month no-commitment membership! That’s right… personal trainers are included in your classic membership, which sets you back TEN DOLLARS each month.

It’s solid good training, too. My trainer sat me down to discuss my goals, and the next time I went in, I found he’d created a custom workout for me based on a four days/week schedule… and he trains me during the workouts. I still can’t believe that a custom workout plan and unlimited personal training is included in the Planet Fitness Classic membership. Ten dollars a month, friends.

(I called EOS, my former gym, to compare. At EOS, one 30-minute personal training session costs $36.00 on top of your membership fees.)

You do have to pay more if you want access to that Black Card spa, though. In order to use that spa, you have to spring for the pricey Black Card membership, which is… $25.00/month.

Looks like the whole time I was laughing at Planet Fitness, the joke was on me.

On that note, have a wonderful day, friends!

Let’s try this again, shall we, 2023? (Fitness post!)

Here’s how 2023’s gone down so far in terms of working out:

On the Monday of the second week of January – the 9th – I did an hour of Body Pump (Les Mills On Demand), and it was swell. I felt the effort intensely over the next few days, of course, because my muscles had pretty much atrophied after so long of not working out. And that was great! I felt awesome getting back to my fitness routine.

Three days later, I overworked my forearms at work to the point where I aggravated my old tennis elbow weakness on the right side, and I knew that I had to avoid using that arm as much as possible until it was healed… and, somewhere in that same time-frame, I managed to aggravate my chronic lower back weakness to the point where the pain became nearly incapacitating on some days. I actually had to leave work a few hours early one day because the pain was so bad, I could barely stand, walk, or sit. The only position I could be in without excruciating pain was lying down on my side.

As well – this was the most frustrating one, because it wasn’t an old injury acting up, it was just plain stupidity – I found myself dealing with pain in my ribs on my left side on account of my slamming myself into the edge of a wall of boxes in order to grab one that was lying just out of reach. There was no reason that this had to happen. I 100% did it to myself in a moment of foolish over-zealousness, which was why I was too embarrassed to mention it to anyone. I did my best to work through the terrible pain of breathing while hiding it from everyone over the two weeks it took to heal. (I probably just separated a rib rather than fractured it, I’m guessing).

So I spent all of January Week Three and most of Week Four recovering from these shenanigans; e.g. I did not work out.

At the very end of January Week Four, on Saturday the 28th, I did 30 push-ups in three sets of ten over the course of five hours, and it was hard, and I wept inside.

February Week One? Zilch.

February Week Two? That would be this week, and I this morning, I did – because I was off today due to medical appointments at the V.A. – the same one-hour Body Pump workout I did on January 9th. Despite my right forearm (less than 100% recovered). Despite my lower back (better, but threatening revenge if I dared to make it work in any way). My ribs have completely recovered, which is the main reason why I felt good about venturing back into my gym shoes.

Here’s the deal: The separated rib thing was a consequence of something I did, but the aggravated forearm and lower back injuries were a consequence of something I didn’t do. I didn’t keep myself in shape. I’m convinced that those injuries only resurfaced because my fitness was poor. On a daily basis I was doing as much as I usually do, except my body wasn’t equipped to do it thanks to my negligence over the last six or so months. I unloaded a shipment with my mind and dragged my body along with it, and my body said fuck you, and I deserved it, and here we are.

So today, my friends, my ass was home in the morning, and I told my forearms and lower back to just let me know if I needed to adjust anything during the one-hour workout, because I was determined to do it, and they had to meet me halfway, at least. And they did.

I didn’t film the workout for a living-room gym post, but I did take a post-workout selfie:

Post-workout [7 Feb. 2023]

The thought behind this expression: HA. I DID IT. I lifted light weights for an hour (no more than 10-lb dumbbells), and I feel damn good.

The End, but the beginning, I hope.

p.s. It’s Tuesday. I plan to attempt a Thursday post at a reasonable time, and also I would love to make a Tuesday/Thursday posting schedule happen again, so we’ll see how that plays out. Things are settling and getting back to normal! I have stuff to share. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed you. I’ll be back! Take care, friends.

All hail Gluteus Maximus. (Living room gym post!)

My friend and I were talking the other day about each other’s physiques, and he noted that I have “a big butt for my frame.” I replied that my glutes are simply developed from working out, which prompted him to ask what I was talking about, to which I explained about the muscles that comprise the butt: Gluteus (glutei?) Maximus, Medius, and Minimus. When he opined that those are ridiculous names, I informed him that they’re Latin words, and don’t they sound like Roman names? And he couldn’t argue with that. “Yeah it sounds like a Roman emperor.” And I concluded, “Roman emperor Gluteus Maximus. He was an ass.”

Which brings me to this workout that I did a couple of weeks ago, as it’s lower-body intensive. We’re talking Les Mills Body Pump 118 Metabolic Blast, my friends. This particular workout is my current favorite way to hit my major muscle groups in a mere half-hour. It’s also great because it’s a rare Body Pump workout that doesn’t require a bench, as there are no chest presses in the routine. You don’t need more than standing space with just a few feet around to step one foot back for lunges – or you could opt to do the exercises as squats rather than as lunges. You can live in a closet and do this workout. No excuses.

I set up my phone to film the 30-minute workout, then did the usual screenshot snapping, cropping, and resizing to end up with some (bad) pics to share with you who are here for fitness posts. Also – I’ve said this before, and this will always be the case – posting pics of myself working out is just a solid way for me to critique my own form so I can know what needs improvement.

As always, I must plug Les Mills On Demand+, as without Les Mills’s awesome streaming workout service, I wouldn’t be working out at all. For Body Pump I’m still using the dumbbells that I had pre-pandemic, rather than springing for a barbell set. Barbells are fun, but it’s not necessary to have one to do LM Body Pump classes. In fact, you don’t even need weights at all, as everything in LM Body Pump workouts can be done isometrically.

Without further ado:

Getting started.

All the time spent in a wide squat stance at the bottom of the movement contributes to glute work. This workout has a lot of that.

Bottom of the squat.
Squat, wider stance.
Squat, top of a pulse.
Suffering through squat pulses.

For the posterior/athletic chain portion of the workout, the routine incorporates single-arm rows, dead lifts, and clean-and-presses.

Stance for single-arm row.

(If it looks like I’m knock-knee’d, it’s because I am.)

Single-arm row – you straighten back up to a standing position after each rep.
Stance for dead lifts.
Dumbbell dead lift.

The dead lift prepares your body for the clean-and-presses.

Dumbbell clean.
Dumbbell press.
High pulls.
Stretching: child’s pose.
Stretching: cat.
Stretching legs.
Stretching legs, focus on quads.

These pics are poor in quality, I know, but hopefully they can give you an idea of the effectiveness of the workout. Les Mills is my jam, and you may find that it’s yours, too. Regardless of the type of fitness program/non-program you do, happy working-out to those of you who commit to keeping your bodies in shape!

On that note, I wish you all a happy Friday/weekend eve, my friends. Rock on.

Found my fuel. (Living room gym post: workout therapy!)

When a shadowy face of evil looms ahead of someone you love, littering their path with the equivalent of mental nuclear waste fallout every step into the future until their last breath, there’s only one thing to do: join the fight.

A person I love has been compromised as such. They fell through the trap door laid before them, experienced the false nirvana within, and eventually found escape to be impossible. Now they are infected with demons, and I am livid.

Thus, I threw down a particularly intense workout on Monday in the late afternoon. Les Mills Body Combat, my friends. I’ve been raving about Les Mills since 2014, as some of you may know, and I will always rave about them. Les Mills is fantastic, and Body Combat was my first Les Mills workout love. It’s more than cardio kickboxing. It’s cardio kickboxing, cardio Karate, cardio Muay Thai, cardio capoeira, cardio Tae Kwan Do, cardio Brazilian Ju-Jitsu, and cardio Kung Fu.

For you who’ve been wronged: Your fight is my fight.

So on Monday after work, I hit “play” to begin 55 minutes of Les Mills Body Combat.

And I had the above-mentioned person in mind for my target. A name, only. A face I’d seen in photos, only. A willfully duplicitous person whose trespasses on the innocence of someone I love (and others, no doubt) feel unforgivable because of the havoc they’ve wreaked.

Fury in unflattering light is the best kind.

Fitness updates on my end:
I’ve just started up with my workouts again since my long hiatus pre- and post- hand surgery. So far, so good.

The last time I worked out with weights (dumbbells) was on December 11; after that point, the pain in my hand became too extreme to tolerate it, and it just got worse and worse up to my surgery on February 14. I’m well past surgery recovery and feeling normal again, but I still haven’t gotten back to weight-training. It’s been over four months. Literally the only thing keeping me in shape is my job.

So it’s back to regular Body Pump. Back to regular Body Combat. Monday was great. I kicked serious ass with the image of the evildoer’s face emblazoned behind my mind’s eye. I mean, I was feeling the fury in any case, so it was just as well that I also had a workout to do.

Happy Friday Eve, my friends. Blessings to you on your fitness journeys!

Street clothes workout! (First living-room gym post of 2022!)

Hello there, my friends. I thought I’d start out the new year with a fitness-related post, as I did last year, so today I’ve got a living-room workout post for any of you who are here for it!

Monday’s workout was the first of 2022. At the last minute, I decided to do it without changing my clothes – as in, I came home from work and stayed in my work attire. My daily winter work uniform consists of jeans, three layers on top (tank top, turtleneck, t-shirt), a thick, oversize gray hoodie I found in the men’s section at Ross, long thick socks, and winter hiking boots. (I work in a warehouse, which, like many warehouses, is not heated.)

And as you know if you’re along for this ride, I’ve now somehow (inexplicably) committed to keeping my house cold this winter. I turn on the new electric fireplace in my office only when I’m in here at night. The rest of the time, it’s in the low-60’s throughout the house.

So the house was 62 degrees F when I got home on Monday, and I didn’t want to get undressed to change into gym clothes. Then I thought, but who says I have to? The workout on the agenda was, of course, Les Mills Body Combat. It’s a cardio workout, but the way I’ve always seen it, it’s a fighting-arts training session, an opportunity to practice my technique. It would be good to train in my street clothes, went my thinking. After all, if I were to find myself in a situation, it would be on the street, and I almost certainly wouldn’t be wearing workout gear.

Also, I had to pee, but I didn’t, for the same reason. In a real-life situation, I’m not going to tell my attacker to hold off while I run to the bathroom. And again for that same reason, I didn’t drink water before the workout, even though I was thirsty.

I’ve always been like this. I get random ideas in my head, test the proverbial waters, and then go all-out with the ideas until they’re strange. Challenge: See how long I can wait before turning on the heat. Plot twist: Don’t turn on the heat at all! Challenge: Work out in street clothes rather than in gym clothes. Plot twist: Don’t use the bathroom or drink water beforehand, either!

I love simulations of real-life scenarios as a method of skill-testing. My first memory of such a test comes from the day I graduated from swim lessons, when Hank-the-instructor threw me into the far end of the pool with all of my clothes on, including my shoes, without warning. I found out that swimming the length of an Olympic-size pool wearing clothes and shoes is not the same thing as swimming across in a bathing suit. Clothes and shoes in the water are heavy and restrictive. There was this new, foreign resistance in the water, and it was trying to hold me back. I was totally blindsided when Hank threw me in, but I thought it was hilarious. I was six.

So it was like that on Monday. I jumped into the workout fully dressed in my street clothes, hair down and everything. I was glad that I did it, because yeah, throwing kicks and knee strikes and all other strikes in jeans and multiple layers is not the same thing as throwing them in gym clothes. My jeans were soft and worn and had some stretch to them, but still, they were restrictive compared to workout gear. I’m grateful to the cold house for prompting this new, realistic angle in my fight training.

I did change into my indoor gym shoes, though. I drew the line at messing up my floor with my dirty warehouse boots! I also put on my gel-padded gloves, reason being that I needed to protect my mangled left hand in the event of push-ups, mountain-climbers, or burpees (indeed, I did all of the above in the workout).

[Aside: I don’t believe I’ve spoken of my mangled left hand. I swear, so much in the way of medical crap happened in 2021, it would’ve been boring and repetitive to tell you about all of it. More on this to come, as I’ve got surgery in my near future!]

When I did the same workout again after work on Wednesday, once again in my street clothes, I filmed it so that I could get screenshots for this post.

Without further ado, then!

Let’s go.
Let’s GO.
In it to win it
Call it a fist bump, because I’m not in any kind of a fight stance, so I’m not sure where this was coming from, haha
Duck

Weird angle, but here’s the bottom of my shoe
Punch
Hook
Uppercut
Something.
Making friends…?
TF haha

And that’s a wrap for this gym post, my friends. One of the benefits of home workouts is that you can wear whatever you want, right? Whatever you want, for whatever reason.

Here’s to all of you and to fitness year 2022!

Bringing it inside, keeping it inside. (Living Room Gym WORKOUT! Les Mills BodyCombat!)

Hello! I’d originally planned to write about our upcoming total lunar eclipse, but I figured it would make more sense to offer that post closer to the event, as in, the night before. Look for that post on Tuesday night!

Today, I’ve got a workout post that’s long overdue. I’d intended to do this about a year ago. I believe that I did post some sort of living-room workout before that, but I can’t find it now! As I recall, the notion was “this is to give you an idea of it, but I’ll come back with a real living-room workout post soon.” By “real,” I was thinking “with five thousand pics.” So here, finally, is that workout post.

We have NutritionalDirect to thank for this, as they featured one of my garage gym posts on their site last week. It was the nudge that I needed. I was reminded that many of you are here because of the garage gym/fitness/martial arts aspect of my blog, and I apologize for my neglect in this vein, my friends. This post is for you, as well as for anyone else who may be interested.

I got right to it. I saw my post on NutritionalDirect on Monday, and on Wednesday, I set up my phone to record my Les Mills BodyCombat workout.

The thing I’m happiest to show with this post is the sort of workout that can be done in a small space. BodyCombat is a dynamic, varied, and fast-paced workout, and it requires no equipment other than a yoga mat (if you have a hard floor). I do the full one-hour version in this little space between furniture and the window wall – we’re talking a 9′ x 8′ space, roughly.* I do have to make modifications when advancing in any direction, but that’s totally inconsequential. Anything that involves advancing to cover space can be done just as effectively in place!

*Granted, I’m 5′, 4″. A taller person would have a harder time in this small space, to be sure.

Please pay no mind to the wild fluctuations in lighting throughout the hour. I do not have an actual camera or lights for filming, so I’m working with daylight and my overhead light. Light fades in and out. The lower I am to the floor, the darker it gets.

Let’s get into it!

shoots (MMA)

knee strikes

(between strikes)

side kick (Why do I never pivot my standing foot enough?!)

squats

running – high knees

some kind of plyo – I think this is just leaping up from a shoot

sprints – impossible to capture in a still from a video, but for what it’s worth!

jump kick in process – limited by space overhead (ceiling fan) and in front (wall), but still.

ginga (Capoeira)
Muay Thai

Muay Thai

Muay Thai

still Muay Thai, I think

elbow strike (Muay Thai)

[NOTE: my guard in all of the above Muay Thai pics is WRONG! I know better. It’s good to review my form like this every once in a while]

running man knees (lame-ass pic, I know, but that’s what was happening here.)

push kick (still Muay Thai!)

more running

push-ups
C-crunches

back lifts/raises/supermans/whatever they’re called

Jumping in to switch legs during the stretching

cool-down kata

quad stretch

OG readers, remember “walking-off” pics at the end of garage gym workout posts? This is the living-room version, I guess. I didn’t have far to walk!

If you’re interested in doing this Les Mills BodyCombat workout (this one was release #64) or any of the other hundreds offered by Les Mills, click here to explore Les Mills On Demand. Les Mills’ workouts are world-class. They are amazing. Every workout I do is on this app!

Happy new week to you, my friends!

Workout motivation 2021! (Music and a thought to self-motivate.)

Working out is for fitness and optimal health and mental wellness and (yes) fun. It’s also for when the world makes even less sense than usual and events form around alien shapes that are pure menace and hatred and lunacy and have no names and the shock and magnitude of it all defies articulation and you just want to throw your whole being into the next universe over to escape for a little while so your mind can recover after having been blown to smithereens. (I had an epic one-hour Body Combat workout this evening, my friends. January 6, 2021.)

But all I really wanted to say tonight is that I come bearing a gift, which is a lofty way of announcing that I put together my current workout fuel music playlist on Spotify, and now I’m going to share it with you. Because some of you might find this music to be as mood-setting as I do. You might be an athlete or a gym rat or a general workout and fitness junky. You might be a resolutioner (having made a New Year’s resolution to get into shape) or a patient (having had a medical professional issue strong advice to lose weight). Whatever the case, if this music offers anything of use on your journey, I’m honored to contribute in this small way.

As a reminder that I’m not a delicate Asian flower, I’ll mention that this playlist is tough love, which is what works for me when it comes to improving my gym (living room) performance. Achieving levels and goals is a mental endeavor whether you’re aiming to work harder or to walk outside to the mailbox and back (both legit, along with everything in between). It’s even more of a mental endeavor if you’re working out at home. Self-motivation can be tricky! This playlist fires me up. I listen to it to boost my determination before doing my Les Mills workouts, but I would also listen to it while walking or running on the treadmill for an hour, or lifting weights for an hour, or doing whatever (fitness activity) for an hour. Because the playlist is one hour and two minutes long.

So what I did was I took some of my favorite battle cries and alternated them with favorite songs that rely on beats and bass drops rather than vocals. The battle cries are to light a fire under your ass. The instrumentals are to keep it lit. Have at it!

 

 

While I’m at it and before I sign off, I’ll also share a thought that motivates me greatly during my home workouts. It’s just five words:

Work out like someone’s watching.

With this thought in mind, I go harder, and I make maximum effort to perfect my form. I empty the tank. Because I wouldn’t dig someone watching while I merely go through the motions with sloppy form. Would you? Putting someone in the room even when there’s no one works for me, anyway.

That’s all I’ve got for now, my friends. I’m wiped out. Until the weekend, then!

 

 

Cicadas are rad, and other random thoughts. (Plus a mini gym update!)

Sorry again about Tuesday’s late-night post, guys. Today is a new and better day, because today, I’m not operating in crisis mode. All is well, and I have a few thoughts to share. I also have gym updates.

Thing 1: It was 112 degrees today, and it’s been thereabouts for weeks now. This kind of heat ushers us into the cicada season part of summer in the desert. Cicadas hold a special place in my heart because I associate them with life in Arizona; to me, they’re emblematic in that way. I find them enchanting with their beautiful, diaphanous wings, their benignly short antennae, and their large, round, wide-set eyes that give them those adorable little faces. I’m delighted by the way they rattle their songs without care or concern that they sound like loudly malfunctioning electronics. Cicadas are nature’s industrial music artists, and as appropriate, they crank it! I love them.

Thing 2: I crawled out from under my rock to find that Jake Gyllenhaal is in the new Spider Man movie. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Thing 3: Netflix drops Money Heist Part 3 on July 19 – next week Friday!!! Money Heist (La Casa de Papel) is my second-favorite series (the first being The Americans). If you enjoy the crime thriller/action genre and haven’t yet seen Money Heist, I highly recommend it. Watch it in its original Spanish with whatever subtitles you need. This series is abjectly brilliant.

I enjoyed the season 3 trailer this morning:

 

 

Thing 3: I keep thinking that today’s Friday because I didn’t need to be anywhere, and I went to Body Pump yesterday morning. It feels odd, switching up a gym schedule I’d had for so long. It’s invigorating. Change is ultimately good, even if I balk at the idea of it sometimes.

Tomorrow is Friday, so it’s Body Combat. The next morning will be Saturday-morning Body Pump, as usual. This works well. I’d rather do Pump the day after Combat than the day before.

I’m so grateful to be able to incorporate such a schedule preference.

(Cue gym updates)

It’s been a good gym week! Monday, we had a sub who challenged us to go up one weight increment on the all-dumbbell biceps track she’d chosen, and I did, and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t have to drop down to my regular weights. I suppose this means that I should always use the higher weights…? I know that’s what it means. I’m just a bit daunted. I’m doubtful that I can maintain that weight through every biceps track, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t start out with it.

For Body Pump yesterday morning, I went to a location I’d never visited before. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was that its floors are gorgeous, which seems like a weird thing to admire in a gym. The Body Pump instructor had his unique personality and teaching style, which I thought was interesting. It was a good work-out. I’m glad, because that’s going to be my regular Wednesday morning class.

I took a selfie in the locker room beforehand:

 

Body Pump at a new-to-me gym location

 

Everything isn’t different, though! I’m fortunate to be able to keep my former-gym Tuesday/Thursday Pump instructor, as she teaches my Monday class at the new gym!

I like to stick with professionals with whom I click in both formal and friendly ways. A hairstylist who knows how to cut my hair. A tax preparer who knows how to make filing taxes painless and fun. A realtor who’s always, unequivocally the best. And inspirational, authoritative group fitness instructors who set challenges.

Happy Friday Eve, all!

 

 

Posting on the 4th of July. (Gym updates, because.)

First things first: Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans!

Trivial things second: gym updates, to duly relay how it went when I did the back-to-back Combat/Pump class thing again last weekend. How it went was, it didn’t. I got real with myself at the last minute and admitted that I’ll never have 200% to give in two hours, so it wouldn’t make sense to waste my time and stress my body.

This morning’s workout rocked. Our instructor put together a 4th of July-themed tracklist, and somehow, she motivated me to increase certain upper-body weights yet again. On my way out, I CANCELLED my membership at that gym. My second gym is now my only gym! I’m not sad about it. It was a great five years overall. I won’t have to miss anyone, either… I may have cancelled my gym membership, but I didn’t cancel my gym friends. Most of us have migrated to the same new gym. ALSO, I get to continue taking Body Pump with the aforementioned badass instructor, because she teaches at my new gym, too!

Starting next week, my new workout schedule is going to be M-W-F and either Saturday or Sunday. Two of the classes will fall on consecutive days, but it’ll be better than the three days in a row I’d done for so long.

For our pic today, here’s Yours Truly using a wall as a headrest and repping a favorite metal band. I live in jeans and oversize t-shirts.

 

In my natural habitat

 

That is all. Have a safe and fun weekend, my friends.

 

 

Fitness Updates check-in, because I am a rocket scientist.

Consider this to be Part 2 of last Thursday’s post. I didn’t think I’d have much to report, but here we are!

I went ahead with my crazy idea to do Body Pump immediately after Body Combat, and now I’ve got documentation for myself (which I’m sharing with you) regarding how that went: it was really, really, really hard. End of documentation. Not exactly the notes you’d find in a rocket scientist’s journal.

Conclusion: Sunday’s double-class combo was a learning experience.

Body Combat was the first class. I threw myself into it, as usual. I always feel like I have energy to spare after a workout, but now I know that whatever’s left is not enough to fuel another 50 minutes with the same drive I applied to the first class. It was a struggle to get through Body Pump without decreasing my weights, and I was amazed that I did it! I’d just never felt so tired during a workout. Even more disconcerting, I was hungry during the workout. How does one deal with hunger during a workout?! It was a strange sensation. It made me feel weaker.

On the way home from the gym, I stopped by the water store to refill six five-gallon jugs of water. It probably wasn’t the brightest idea to haul 30 gallons of water home at that point, but I really thought it would be okay. My mind insisted, the classes are over! You’re not at the gym anymore! You can do the usual stuff! One of those three statements was a lie. My mind lied. It was not a good idea to do “the usual stuff.”

I shuffled slowly through the rest of the day, stopping to rest between steps. I had to gather energy for the next few steps. I had to take a few breaths to overcome dizziness. Oh, and the pain! Weirdly, all of my lower-body joints flared at once.

I felt like I was going to pass out as I did the laundry and some minor household tasks, yet somehow I managed to assist Callaghan in moving some Very Heavy Things in the house. It had to be done, and again, my mind said, Drive ON, Soldier. Since my week at the War-Related Illness and Injury Study Center, I’m now very aware of how my mind does this… but I don’t think of it until after the fact.

The next day was yesterday. I felt that I had energy, but the day ended with no alleviation of the joint pain. Muscle soreness also became a factor. I finally took some Advil and flopped onto the bed with my phone. I had a feeling I would report on my experiment in today’s post, so I took a selfie there in the moment of grade-7 pain.

 

Joint pain everywhere from the waist down. Just lying here waiting for the Advil to kick in.

 

I do pride myself on how well I can flop on the bed and stay there when I’m in pain. Haha!

I took more Advil the next morning – this morning, that is – and I went back to Body Pump and I smashed my workout, because today is a NEW DAY. Last night’s pain? Ancient history, thanks to sleep and ibuprofen! Today’s Body Pump workout went well. It was kind of awesome to note the difference in how strong I felt this morning compared to how I felt in Sunday’s class post-Body Combat.

This leads me to my spin-off experiment plan, which is to do the double classes again this Sunday with just one change: I’ll skip the last track in Body Combat (core, aka ab-work), and I’ll take that time to sit and eat a protein/energy bar. I’m hoping that a little break for rest and food between classes will be restorative enough! I don’t see a need to do TWO core tracks, anyway. The one at the end of Body Pump will suffice. I do Combat for the cardio; why work abs twice in two hours?

 

 

Dreaming of a greener day (Fitness updates!)

I’ve had this glute/hamstring issue on my left side for months now. It’s still there, even after taking two weeks off. In fact, it’s getting worse! I finally said to myself, Self, wouldn’t it be great to get in your four workouts per week without doing consecutive days?

The only way to do four workouts per week with a day of recovery between workout days is to double up classes.

Thus, I got the insane idea to do what a lot of people do and slip a day of back-to-back Combat (cardio kickboxing) and Pump (weight-training) into my schedule. This is a scenario I’ve avoided for years. IT JUST SO HAPPENS that my schedule needed re-vamping, anyway. My “primary” gym (whose name rhymes with LA HOT MESS) finally dumped Body Pump from their schedules. Hoards of Body Pump orphans flooded out into the streets in search of new classes, bloating the available ones at the OTHER gym’s various locations. (I haven’t gone to a weekend Pump class since the last one on June 1st, but I’ve heard reports of the over-crowding at these other gyms.)

So I looked at those gyms’ schedules to see where weekend back-to-back Combat/Pump classes are offered, and I decided on one to try. It’s a bit further away going south, but that means that I can skirt around the construction zone that is my entire neighborhood here in NW Tempe. I’m fine trekking out to a south Tempe class! I was specifically looking to go either north or south; I found both, and they’re both on Sunday mornings, which is also fine.

I chose the south location because its first class, Combat, starts at 9am, which is what I’m used to. I’m looking forward to it. The instructor (easily findable in the local Les Mills crowds on FB) looks to be a complete badass, also in keeping with what I’m used to.

So that’s the main fitness update this time. It’s more a gym update than a fitness update, but it’s a big change and a big deal for me to try the back-to-back class thing. I’m dropping my recently adopted Friday morning Combat class so I can take a rest day after Thursday’s Pump. Maybe this will help the situation in my left glute/hamstring. I don’t think that doing Combat and Pump one after the other will aggravate the problem, but we shall see.

As for last week in Palo Alto, I didn’t get to work out, after all, because the on-site gym was closed the whole week. (I found out when I got to its doors.) There was a lot of walking and stair-climbing in my day-to-day, though, so I did get to get moving!

 

 

L’amour est bleu. (Fitness updates!)

Today’s post is brought to you by a “fitness updates” request. It’s been a month since my last one, anyway!

In short and in summary, I’ll just say this: If you’re looking to start working out, consider trying a Les Mills group fitness class, if you can get to a gym that offers Les Mills classes. I’ve seen people of all ages and levels of fitness in those classes!

For the at-length, actual “fitness updates” version, I’ll start with…

Les Mills Body Pump (strength-training with weights): How about I think back on today’s class, just for fun? Our leg track was set to a song that’s also used in Body Combat, which is why I thought of Body Combat while doing squats this morning. It also came back to me how in the On Demand video, the male lead announces that his female co-lead is “the only monster on the stage,” and how I thought this to be an odd thing to proclaim. It’s definitely a strange remark to hear if you’re oblivious to the fact that the song’s refrain begins with “She’s a monster.” I don’t pay much attention to lyrics in these classes. Context is everything, right?

This morning’s chest track was a Guns N’ Roses song. [-nothing further-]

The back track was one I didn’t remember at all. From the music to the moves, I recognized none of it. It was like doing a new release back track! Loved it.

I’m unable to bring the triceps song back to mind, though I can remember the workout combination.

The biceps track was set to a song by Pink, whose songs in Body Pump challenge the part of my brain that finds the beats. I’m not sure why this is the case with Pink and only with Pink. It’s like her vocals are so powerful and independent, they leave the beats behind. I always pick up on them or sense the timing eventually, though. It happened to be easy today.

I don’t remember this morning’s lunge track song, but the workout involved a little plyometric action, which I enjoy.

And the shoulder track? It was that one with the French vocals, “L’amour est Bleu.” It’d been a while since we’d done that one, and it was interesting to revisit it after my weight increases. I could note how my shoulders have strengthened since the last time we did that track.

This brings me to the update part of the “updates”: I’ve increased some weights since my last fitness updates post a month ago. I’ve gone heavier on legs, back, and shoulders.

Body Pump’s effects are most notable to me in terms of strength, but clearly the workouts change your physique, too. When you turn around and catch someone staring at you as you’re walking away and he gets all flustered and says, “Nice backpack!” you know that there’s something other than your backpack going on back there. (Either that, or the car wash guy just really admires my backpack.)

[I just realized that my account of this morning’s class was more about the music than about the workout. Ah.]

Les Mills Body Combat (cardio kickboxing): I did this class at my (new) second gym for the first time last week. It was cool, literally. Between the superpowered A/C and a huge, noisy fan, the room was so chilled that I hardly broke a sweat! It was a good workout. It was a new release, so that’s always fun, but I must admit that I’m not going to be sad to say allez, au revoir to this release. To me, it’s death by mountain climbers, and that isn’t fun. Of all the moves I’ve done while working out EVER, mountains climbers are my least favorite. They’re great for conditioning, but UN-FUN.

Step + Abs (cardio/aerobic): I haven’t gone. The last step class I did was on March 17. I always intend to go, but there’s always something or other, and now it’s been five weeks since I’ve worked out on a Sunday! I only managed to make up for it once. Life has been happening, as life does.

And that’s okay. I’ll keep trying to get to Sunday morning step.

Even one workout a week would be better than none. 20 minutes of exercise (i.e. brisk walking) would be better than no minutes of exercise. File this in “habits worth developing.” Also, “things that are fun before we know it.”

 

 

What’s new at the gym? (Fitness updates!)

Mercury retrograde ends in two days. I’m getting ready to throw confetti.

[…]

Fitness updates!

Me (one week ago): I’m not joining a second gym for just one class. That wouldn’t make sense. No.

Me (yesterday):

 

Second gym.

 

Who even am I?

Body Combat is leaving our gym for good, so I went looking for a replacement. I wanted to find a Combat class that’s held on a weekday morning… my one requirement. The so-called silver lining to Body Combat’s departure from my gym is that I’m DONE fighting traffic through downtown in the evening, when a 12-minute drive takes 50-55 minutes no matter the route. This is not normal. I do not live in L.A., and I don’t have to play that game, I say!

Not to mention that it’s been a long time since evening classes made sense in my schedule. Body Combat was my one and only.

With this second gym, I have more options than ever all over Phoenix. Hey! Maybe one of the two gyms will open a location specifically in NW Tempe. I figure it’s a matter of time, considering that everything else is being built here.

In Body Pump news, we did the new release (#109) on Saturday, and I’m intrigued. There’s an unusual challenge: a new move with a mysterious timing relationship to the music. I wasn’t able to decode it during that first run-through. How do the beats work with this move? I hope to feel it this Saturday! It’s a great workout, 109. It destroyed my shoulders.

As for Step Plus Abs, I’ve settled into making that class a martial workout, as that’s a surefire way for me to burn up some energy. I quietly go beastmode in there. If she offers a fancy variation to a move, I don’t take it… I stick with the basic version and just do it hardcore. There’s enough footwork happening as it is, and there aren’t too many variations throughout the workout, anyway, so I’m still getting in that agility training.

Them’s my updates! I’ll sign off on a note of fitness motivation (I love this one):

 

 

 

 

I went to a step class. (Fitness updates!)

I did a step class on Sunday morning because I wanted to add another group fitness workout to my workout week. It had to be cardio (preferably kickboxing; definitely not Zumba),* and it had to be on Sunday morning. I combed the schedules for all of my gym’s Phoenix locations and found the Sunday morning “Step Plus Abs” at a location as near to my house as my regular gym. Yay!

Turned out that the class title on the schedule is a misnomer, as there are no Abs in “Step Plus Abs.” It’s just Step Plus. The instructor let me know at the beginning that it was “advanced” step.

I’ve taken step before, but I went to Sunday’s class assuming that I’d forgotten how to do it. I was right. The only familiar moves were “basic right” and “basic left,” so BASICALLY I remembered nothing.

The first person I saw when I walked in was a woman I recognized from Body Pump, who asked whether I’d ever done step, to which I replied, “Yeah, but it was a really long time ago.” She smiled mirthfully and said, “You’ll be fine, then.” I answered with “We’ll see!” while looking into the future and seeing myself clueless. Because when I say I did step “a really long time ago,” I’m talking about 25 years ago, as in, decades ago. 25 years ago, I was 25 years old. 25 years is long enough for me to forget how to do step.

The class was kind of fun. Weirdly enough, I worked up a decent sweat (not Body Combat-level sweat, but enough to roll down the sides of my face), but I still had a full tank of gas at the end of it. I was breathing normally. I was speaking effortlessly. I felt like I’d exerted no energy at all. How is it possible to sweat and also feel fresh and energized after a workout? I didn’t feel anything the next day, either. My muscles gave no indication that I’d moved my body in ways it’s not used to moving. I felt nothing.

It wasn’t a challenging cardio workout for me, but it was still cardio. Any cardio is better than no cardio! I kept going with step-knees and step-kicks when I got totally lost, so I did maintain continuous on-and-off-the-step movement for 50 minutes, or whatever it was.

I’ve decided that I’m going back to that Sunday morning step class because:

  • There’s no regular Sunday morning kickboxing class at any of my gym’s locations
  • Step isn’t high-impact, but it’s a sweat session nonetheless
  • It’s easier getting myself to a group fitness class than onto a treadmill
  • Step class amounts to some crazy-ass agility training

Agility training is an important component of fitness, I feel, and step class is nothing if not that. The instructor had us skittering all around the step bench and up across it every which way with intricate footwork in complicated patterns and switching directions and feet straddling the bench and turning and turning back and up the step and down the step and now do the same thing on the other side and so on and so forth. There’s choreography, and it’s fast. There’s terminology, and you have to know it. Your brain has to be fully engaged in order to keep up.

Step is sweat-inducing physical and mental agility, and totally different from what I normally do.

I’d still like to find a morning kickboxing class somewhere in the week, though! (And not on a Body Pump day!) I’ll keep looking through the group fitness schedules for my gym’s nearby locations, in case anything changes.

In lieu of a pic relevant to this post, please enjoy this ridiculous pic from the day my hair freaked out after I washed it and it ended up complimenting my t-shirt.

 

Basking. [18 Jan 2019]

 

The End.

*I’m not dissing Zumba. It’s just not something I’m interested in trying right now.

 

 

Finding the fury. (Fitness post)

I don’t love cardio, but I need to do more of it – my fitness refrain over the last 12 months or so. Followers of my group fitness endeavors, remember when it was the opposite? When cardio was all I did, and I wanted to add strength-training? Now it’s strength-training (Body Pump) three times per week, and one cardio (Body Combat), the latter being consistently sporadic for one reason or another.

I don’t love cardio, but I do love combat sports training, which happens to be straight-up cardio when you do it as a group fitness class. I made it to Combat this week and realized why the focus there feels so different than my focus in Pump: it’s because my focus in Pump is inward. In Combat, it’s outward. It’s the same degree of focus, but projected in opposite directions.

This realization adds a dimension to my “I need to do more cardio” refrain. The balance of strength-training (Pump) and cardio (Combat) attracts me more in an energetic sense than a physical one. Eastern Philosophy 101.

My mental focus is different in Combat because in combat sports training, I’m focused on an opponent (hence the outwardness of it). This means that I have to first work myself up into a state of anger, or at least strong annoyance. That’s my pre-Combat prep: hone in on an opponent so I can direct my energy at a specific target. Sometimes, I’m mad at more than one entity or situation, and then I’m fighting multiple opponents.

Thus, my best cardio workouts are fueled by rage.

I get the most out of cardio when it’s combat-oriented and I’m fighting to the death. By the time class is over, I’m flying high on victory. I’m a finisher, and I won. It’s a post-workout euphoria that’s different than the post-workout euphoria I experience after a good Pump class; I need equal amounts of this euphoria in my life, and that’s the actual reason “I need to do more cardio.”

Everyone has a fitness epiphany in them somewhere. Find yours… find it to get your fitness journey started, or to refresh your fitness mojo. Whether you need to get off a couch or a plateau, finding what drives you to action can help.

 

[30 Jan. 2019, post-Combat water-guzzling]

 

Happy Friday Eve, everyone!

 

 

Back at the gym again. (Fitness update!)

I worked out over the weekend! It was great. Our Saturday Body Pump instructor happened to choose one of the easier workout releases… one that was awesome to do after being out for a while.

My legs, though!

I expected to feel the workout after having done nothing for a month, but I didn’t expect to feel it only in my legs. I used my warm-up weight for the entire workout, too. Dropping my heaviest bar weight – legs – all the way down to 5 lbs should have benefited my lower body more than anything, but noooooo. (Channeling John Belushi in Saturday Night Live.)

On Sunday, I could hardly walk. Yesterday was the same. This morning, I got up and thought, geez, how could my legs forget completely after just one month of sedentary life?! My legs are acting like they’ve never lifted a thing in their lives. It’s like my legs spent a month chilling on a beach in Rio, and now they’re mad that I yanked them off their lounger and put them back in the gym.

I popped a handful of Advil for the pain before I went to the gym this morning, feeling hopeful because I was walking a little more normally than I had been in the last two days. I was ready for whatever our Tuesday/Thursday instructor would throw at us, which turned out to be release 106.

Then class got underway and I found that I didn’t just yank my legs off a beach lounger in Rio and put them back in the gym on Saturday. I also sent them to an overzealous grocery store butcher who just couldn’t wait to run my quads through their new meat tenderizer.

In class this morning, I could bend my knees slightly. That was it. Those were my squats. My range of motion was basically zero, and the pain was intense despite the Advil.

There was a pretty rad bright side, though: I put more weight on the bar for upper body when I realized that my legs were out of the picture. Doing clean and presses and power presses using only upper body strength revealed that my upper body is stronger than I’d thought it was. My thing about overhead shoulder presses with the bar really is psychosomatic. The back track in release 106 involves a lot of overhead shenanegans, and I had no problem doing it without lower body assistance using a heavier bar than I use for shoulders.

Also, I figured out my Saturday mistake right away: I’d gone as deep as I usually do in the leg track. This was apparently the wrong answer for my first time back.

As for my upper body after being out for a month? Nothing. I’ve felt nothing. As far as my upper body is concerned, it never left the gym. Weird, right?!

I’m so glad to be back.

November Favorites post coming on Thursday!

 

 

NO SUMO CAT. (Also, garage gym. And Body Pump.)

We’ve been watching the September Grand Sumo Tournament Highlights, and once again, Nenette spends the first few bouts glaring at us before leaving the room. With this behavior repeated day after day, tournament after tournament, she has formed a clear pattern and sends an undeniable message. Nenette hates sumo.

Does she really hate it, though? Maybe she’s bristling at the volume and frequency of our shouting while watching it. Or maybe she dislikes the Japanese language… we do a lot of our shouting in Japanese, because we shout the  wrestlers’ names, all of which are Japanese – including the wrestlers who aren’t Japanese. We also say the names of the winning moves. And the wrestlers’ ranks. Anyway, it’s hard to say which part of the equation she hates. Maybe she’s bothered by all of the above.

 

No sumo.

 

Speaking of combat sports, the seasons are changing, and the garage gym will soon be usable again. Measures have to be taken first: fall cleaning. The mess in there! Thick layers of dust coat the floor mats and the equipment, and somehow, there are piles of mesquite pods festooning the whole place, even the far inside corners. Monsoon season did a number on the garage this year… with the garage door closed. The mysteries of life, I’m telling you.

Now my thoughts segue into my gym workouts. Of course!

Let’s talk about Body Pump 107. I did this latest workout release for the second time on Saturday, and I have an idea of what not to do. I should not spend the entire back track fixated on the lone dumbbell sitting in the corner in front of the person in front of me. No matter how confused I am that my weights seem to be too light, I should not obsess over the dumbbell in the corner.

Here were the thoughts racing through my mind during the back track:

  • I think I’m doing this right, but how can I be when the dumbbell feels so light?
  • I’m doing something wrong. I’m not working my back at all.
  • Now I’m really not working my back, because I wasn’t focusing on the weird new moves in this weird new routine. Pay attention.
  • Is that dumbbell in the corner Jessica’s? Would she mind if I were to run up and grab it?
  • What is that dumbbell, anyway… is it a 12.5? A 15? It must be one or the other, because the 10 lb one is green.
  • Is it blue, or is it purple?
  • Whatever it is, I should go grab it.
  • No, I should not.
  • Clean and presses. Why is my bar-weight also too easy? I’m back to my original bar-weight, which is an increase from what I’d been using.
  • Maybe it feels light because I missed both Wednesday and Thursday’s workouts.
  • Should I try to increase my back weights next Saturday?
  • Did my back weights feel too light last Saturday?
  • Will I regret increasing my back weights on Saturday if I make it to all of my workouts next week and my muscles aren’t as rested?
  • Ten clean and presses in a row, though. I might regret increasing my weight.
  • But it’s not challenging at all!
  • Maybe it’s not challenging today, but it will be next week at the same weight.
  • I’m thinking in circles.
  • I’m thinking too much.
  • Is anyone else obsessing over their back weights in this release?
  • The back track is over, and I didn’t work my back. The weights felt too light. I kept messing up due to distraction. My mind wasn’t integrated with my muscles.
  • Maybe my weights felt too light because I did everything wrong.
  • I cheated myself out of a decent back workout.

Welcome to my brain.

 

Fitness goal progress… small, but still progress. (+ shorter hair!)

The thing about this Tuesday/Thursday blog schedule is that I go to the gym those mornings, so when I get home and sit down at my desk, I’m still thinking about the workout.

It’s 7pm now and I just got home after being out for a few hours, but this is what I wrote after the gym this morning, for anyone interested:

(Since I wrote about Body Pump last week, I figured, why not?)

The leg track we did in class this morning was a fabulous confidence-booster! It involved just a pulse/single squats combo.* (Everything in the leg track is squats.) Pulses are always easier… unless they’re in sets of 16, that is… but today, I managed to do them deeper than before, proving to myself that I can stay down there at the bottom of the squat for every rep. This felt like a great step toward my goal of conquering the slower bottom-half squats so I can increase my leg-weight. Go me.

Goals, right?!

Thank you to all of you virtual and in-person gym buddies and instructors who inspire and motivate me!

*I’m talking about the leg track from #100, and I’m sorry if this makes no sense because you’re not familiar with Les Mills Body Pump. CliffsNotes version: I was more mindful than usual during my workout this morning, and it was awesome.

In other news, I got my hair cut short:

 

The hair, it had to go. (4 Sept. 2018)

 

On a final note, I’m sorry that this is all I’ve got for today. August Favorites coming Thursday!

 

 

My at-home industrial dance Body Combat experiment! (Cardio updates)

Well guess who finally did something about her cardio game that’s been almost MIA since 2017.

Last week, I went to Body Combat for the first time in seven weeks, guys. Seven weeks. This week was the second time. Remember when I used to go 3x/week? Yeah, so do I.

Let’s review: I’d dropped Mondays for writing schedule reasons. Saturdays because I switched Combat for Pump. That left Wednesdays. Once a week means hit or miss. This year, it’s been more of a miss.

Before last week Wednesday, I only went to Body Combat 11 times in 2018. I did the math (my talents are many – I can plug numbers into an online percentage calculator), and only 10.67% of my group fitness workouts this year were comprised of Body Combat.

Illness/hospital/medical testing. Medicinal side effects. Other scheduling conflicts. Being out of town. Class cancellations. Logistical issues. Holidays. You name it. Missing a Body Pump class here or there isn’t that big of a deal when you go 3x/week, but if you go to Combat only once a week and you miss it, that’s a whole week gone.

With the summer heat, it’s been something like four months since I’ve worked out in the garage.

Updates:

Finally, just this week, I endeavored to start a Body Combat practice at home using our Les Mills On Demand subscription. Thanks to inspiration I took from my friend Jessica (hey girl), I realized that I could do it in our dining room, which has a tile floor. No A/C in the garage, no problem.

How did I do it? The main thing I needed was a motivating factor to get through the workout without someone leading, so put a twist on it: I muted my laptop and did the workout to my own playlist. I’ve been listening to a lot of industrial/industrial dance music lately as I’ve cycled back to my first electronic music passion, so I thought, what if I were to do a Body Combat workout to industrial dance music rather than to Les Mills’ (mostly) trap remixes? (I do like dubstep and trap, by the way, and drum & bass… I’m not dissing Les Mills’ music.)

It was weird. I’m used to listening to what the instructor’s saying. Muting the workout, I could only watch the screen to see what I was supposed to be doing. Unsurprisingly, I missed a lot as I tried to keep up with what they were doing while also trying to adapt the moves to my music. I never stopped moving, though. I worked up a sweat. My triceps were sore the next morning… very sore! Evidently, something got done.

It was fun to experiment with the music. Now that I’ve done it once, I know what to change for next week’s (industrial) Body Combat workout at home.

Meanwhile, last night’s Combat class at the gym was amazing. I’m getting back into it! Here’s a commemorative post-workout, cartoon-filtered selfie:

 

Sweat life (8/29/2018)

 

The cartoon filter reveals how I sweated my eyebrows off! Haha!!

I’m relieved to get back to regular cardio one way or the other. I’ll keep up my home Body Combat workouts, and I’ll get back into the garage as the weather cools down. Onward, then.

 

 

Les Mills Body Pump updates.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a gym post, so this week I’m making up for it: today, I’m going to regale you with my totally unsolicited Les Mills Body Pump self-evaluation.

(Garage gym posts forthcoming after the weather cools down!)

It’s going to seem like this post would only be of interest to anyone who knows, follows, and/or cares about Les Mills Body Pump, but there’s a universal “moral of the story” to it: fitness is a mental sport.

Here’s my progress up to this point:

Legs: I haven’t added weight to my leg bar since my last increase over a year ago, and I don’t know when I will…

because I haven’t been able to get low and stay low for bottom-halves* (as opposed to pulses, which are faster and therefore easier). I can handle bottom-halves when they come in sets of 2. When they come in sets of 4, I’m done after the first two. Then I fake it at mid-range. Sometimes just hearing the instructor say “bottom halves for 4” kills my mental game and I give up before I even begin and end up doing the whole set at mid-range because my mind got there first and said NOPE. NO BOTTOM HALVES. At least 50% of my problem is a mental block, I know. Maybe more.

I want to overcome this and be able to do all of the bottom-halves at the bottom before I increase my leg bar weight. I don’t like to do stuff half-way.

*Bottom-halves: a type of Body Pump evil involving dropping to a deep squat and then coming up only halfway before dropping again for the next rep, and the reps are really slow.

Chest: I haven’t changed my chest weight, either, even though I probably could. My reason for this is ridiculous: theoretically, your back weight should be heavier than your chest weight, and mine is not. Because…

Back: the history of the weight I put on the bar for the back track makes no sense. I actually graphed it out. It looks like the Big Dipper.

 

history of my back weight bar in Body Pump

 

(In case it isn’t obvious, I’m not one for precision when attempting to draw.)

My bar-weight for the back track went up from 7.5 lbs to 12.5 lbs, then dropped back down to 7.5 after a case of tennis elbow during which I did nothing involving upright rows. The broken line connecting the 7.5 to the 10 at the end means that I sometimes venture up to 10 lbs… if I know there won’t be consecutive sets of power presses. If I know there’ll be lots of power presses, I’ll stay at 7.5.

This is another mental block. I used to put 12.5 lbs on each side of that bar, so there’s no reason why I couldn’t do it now. I’m stronger now than I used to be, but at the moment, my back weight is, at the most, the same as my chest weight. For some reason, I’m reluctant to commit to even the 10 lbs. Once again, the only one in the way of my progress is me. (Note to self: get out of my way.)

Triceps: my triceps weights are the same as they’ve been since I last increased them many months ago, and I’m fine with this. There’s more variation from one triceps track to the next, so there’s no telling when my regular triceps weight is going to be almost too challenging. There’s no such thing as a 12.5 lb plate in our group fitness room, anyway, as far as I know. I suppose people will grip a 2.5 lb plate on top of the 10. I also suppose I’ll try this when I feel like the 10 lb plate isn’t enough of a challenge anymore.

Biceps: I think I need to start using 10 lb dumbbells for single-arm curls, at least at the beginning of the track. Last time I did single-arm curls, I noticed that the 7.5 lbs didn’t feel as challenging as they used to. From now on, I’ll start with 10 lbs and drop to 7.5 when needed. If I can only do half of the first set with the heavier weight, so be it. As for my biceps bar, it’s heavy enough most of the time.

Lunges: I still can’t get my lunge form right, so I haven’t increased my weights at all. If anything, I’ll decrease it (I choose my lunge weight on a case-by-case basis). I think that my problem with form might be structural to some extent. There’s a mental block in there too, I’m sure.

Shoulders: as with triceps, there’s a lot of variation between shoulder tracks, so I’m fine where I am for now. My rear delts are the strongest part of my shoulders, so I’ll sometimes go up a plate weight for those. For the rest, I’d rather stick with my current weights and make sure that my form is as good as I can make it before I increase.

As for the bar, I’m keeping my current weight until I-don’t-know-when. My shoulder bar is too easy when doing upright rows, more of a challenge when doing push presses, and almost too much of a challenge when doing straight presses. Ideally, I’d have two bars for the shoulder track.

Abs: abs are abs. I have nothing to say about them.

That’s how my Body Pump progress looks at this point. My impediments come more from my mind than from anywhere else, I think. I know.

On Thursday, I’ll talk about Body Combat and my nearly non-existent cardio.

Best break for my brain: working out. (“My Morning Routine” – !)

Every once in a while, I go to My Morning Routine to peruse the site and gain some life inspiration. I went there today, and it actually inspired this blog post. I know I’ve shared a daily routine (or two) here before, but I don’t think I’ve filled in a morning routine questionnaire from this site. These questions are pretty much the same across the interviewees, but I’ll see different, additional questions thrown in here and there. I included as many of them as I could find in the few interviews that I read today.

 

1). What is your morning routine?

These days, I wake up anywhere from 5:00 to 6:30am, though most often at 5:30am. I take my morning meds/supplements, pour some coffee, open my laptop, and get into my writing.

 

2). How long have you stuck with this routine so far?

I started dedicating my early-morning brain cells to my writing sometime in the last 12 months. The rest of my routine hasn’t varied in years.

 

3). How has your morning routine changed over recent years?

My “dedicating my early-morning brain cells to my writing” discipline means focusing on my project before filling my mind with anything else of substance. Before, I would multi-task my brain between writing, email, social media, news, and so on. I’ll still scroll through instagram and twitter on my phone while drinking my first cup of coffee, though. I don’t click to read articles on twitter… early in the morning, I’m only there to check for major news headlines and traffic/weather alerts.

 

4). What time do you go to sleep?

Between 11:00 and midnight, usually.

 

5). Do you do anything before going to bed to make your morning easier?

No.

 

6). Do you use an alarm to wake you up in the morning, and if so do you ever hit the snooze button?

I do use an alarm, though my internal clock (aka my bladder) will sometimes wake me up before it goes off. I never use a snooze button.

 

7). How soon after waking up do you have breakfast, and what do you typically have?

If I’m working out that morning, I’ll have breakfast between two and three hours after I wake up. If it’s not a gym morning, I’ll eat four to five hours after waking up. I have the same breakfast every day. Since a month or two ago, it’s been a bowl of plain organic oatmeal (made with water) with light agave syrup and cinnamon. I also have a handful of raw mixed nuts.

 

8). Do you have a morning workout routine?

My morning gym routine is Les Mills Body Pump at the gym. I go three mornings a week.

 

9). Do you have a morning meditation routine, and if so what kind of meditation do you practice?

Working out is my meditation. The 50 or so minutes of continuous physical activity provide the best break for my brain. For the duration of the class, there are no thoughts in my head. There’s music and there’s someone telling me what to do, and I listen and I do it and that’s it. There’s no room for anything else. I try to stay in the workout, where there’s no thinking involved! If distractions enter my mind, I force them out. This is key to any sort of meditation practice.

 

10). Do you answer email first thing in the morning or leave it until later in the day?

I’m bad at checking email. Let’s just leave it at that.

 

11). Do you use any apps or products to enhance your sleep or morning routine?

Other than taking my anti-anxiety med and putting on my Fitbit to track the quality and duration of my sleep, no.

 

12). How soon do you check your phone in the morning?

As I’d mentioned above, I usually check instagram and twitter while drinking my first cup of coffee. That’s about 30 minutes after I wake up.

 

13). What are your most important tasks in the morning?

Cleaning Nenette’s litter box and doing my skin-care routine. I water my plants in the morning once a week.

 

14). What and when is your first drink in the morning?

Water, immediately.

 

15). How does your partner fit into your morning routine?

He usually wakes up at the same time as I do, and we have coffee together in the living room. He makes the bed as a part of his getting ready for work routine, and I make his lunch while he’s doing that. We’re a good team.

 

16). Do you also follow this routine on weekends, or do you change some steps?

Saturday is the day I’ll wake up at 6:30am, as I usually don’t write before going to the gym that morning. Sundays, I’ll try to sleep in until 7:00-7:30am. I write at different times over the weekend. The routine relaxes.

 

17). On days you’re not settled in your home, are you able to adapt your routine to fit in with a different environment?

No. If I’m not in my home, I don’t write first thing in the morning.

 

18). What do you do if you fail to follow your morning routine, and how does this influence the rest of your day?

If I fail to follow my routine, there’s a good reason for it, so it doesn’t impact the rest of my day. Whatever changes occur, my daily task list is always there to guide me through. The important thing is that by the end of the day, I’ve checked off as much of that list as possible.

 

Post-gym, seventh of June, two thousand eighteen.

 

Sorry this pic is so dark! Bad lighting and brownish walls aren’t the best for selfies, or anything else, for that matter.

 

The End.

 

Finding it within. (Fitness update, of sorts.)

We’ve been here before. You’ve heard this from me before, if you’ve been reading my blog for a little while: I want to get more cardio into my life, on different days than my usual workout days. I would love to work out five days per week rather than the four (sometimes three) that I normally do. It’s funny that for all the thinking I’ve done about this, I still haven’t taken action.

I have “reasons,” of course. Time – there’s always something more urgent to do. Transportation – I usually don’t have the car on my “off” gym days, ruling out cardio at the gym. Medical – I’m supposed to avoid the sun as much as possible because of my new medication, ruling out the outdoors (walking, running, hiking). Heat – there’s no A/C in the garage, ruling out jump-roping at home. Space – we have nowhere to put a treadmill, ruling out steady-state cardio in the house.

Being honest with myself, I know that all of these reasons amount to excuses, because there are

Things I COULD do:

1). “No equipment necessary” cardio workouts here in the house.

All I need to do is bypass the thinking about it part and go straight to the GET IT DONE part (favorite motivational motto; thank you, Funk Roberts). My workout subscription (Les Mills On Demand) offers a plethora of workouts along with Body Combat, my cardio workout of choice.

If I didn’t have that subscription, I could go to YouTube and enter “cardio workout” in the space field. My head would spin looking at the list that pops up and trying to decide which workout to try first. There are limited-space workouts, no-equipment-necessary workouts, beginner workouts, advanced workouts, 15-minute workouts, low-impact, high-impact, HIIT, Abs and core, cardio, strength-training, and you name it – all free on YouTube.

When I think about my reasons for not achieving my fitness goal of adding at least one cardio morning to my weekly schedule, I realize that they really are just excuses. I have the tools I need to get it done: Space in a room. A screen. The internet.

The awesome thing is that there are so many different get it done tools. I have one badass friend who incorporated fitness into his week by getting a bike and making a habit of riding it to work.

Maybe you have fitness goals, too, and you’re not meeting them because, like me, (insert your “reasons” here). Your budget doesn’t allow for the expense of a gym membership, for instance. Your life is a huge time-crunch. You feel unwell a lot of the time (I know it’s hard to get motivated when you’re dealing with chronic illnesses or medications that cause nausea, fatigue, pain). You feel overwhelmed by the idea of starting a fitness routine and “failing.” Sidenote: There’s no failing involved when you start a fitness routine. If you miss a day or a week, if you can only do five minutes at a time, if you can only exercise one part of your body, whatever the case may be, you’re still doing something, and that is never a fail.

There really are work-arounds for most obstacles. It’s my belief that if you allow yourself to fall in love with exercise, you’ll find them.

 

I did one of Funk Roberts’ MMA workouts. (Garage gym workout!)

I thought I’d do something different in the garage this week and do one of Funk Roberts’ workouts.

Funk Roberts is a Canadian MMA Conditioning Coach and Certified Personal and Metabolic Trainer who creates and posts workouts on his YouTube channel. I’ve been a subscriber for a couple of years, at least, but I’ve never done one of his workouts. I don’t watch all of his videos… mostly just those that don’t involve gym equipment that I don’t have.

As an MMA conditioning coach, Funk Roberts creates his workouts to get you into fighting condition. I love his tagline: “Get It Done!” I find this to be motivating. I need to get it done. At the moment, I’m nowhere near fighting condition. I think I’m in better-than-average condition, and that’s great, but there’s a ton of room for improvement. Getting back into fighting condition is my main fitness goal these days.

When Funk Roberts posted his recent Ultimate Full Body HIIT Workout (“full body metabolic workout”) video, I thought, that’s one I can do here at home! I knew I had to try it.

I did the workout on Sunday. By the end of the following day (yesterday), it hurt to stand up straight. I went to BodyPump this morning feeling wary of the ab track and anything involving the glutes. My glutes were fine for BodyPump, but my core wanted none of it. I actually stopped in the middle of the crunches at the end and flipped over into plank, instead, because it was less sore that way.

I’ll post some screenshots of me attempting the workout, but take a look at his video, too, so you can see what I was attempting! I appreciate that Funk Roberts keeps his workout videos short. He gets to the point with no filler content and lays out the workouts with clear instruction.

Without further ado:

 

 

Here are stills of me attempting the workout, in order. I went light on the weights because I didn’t know what to expect. In some cases, I didn’t know what I was doing, at all.

1). Dumbbell Burpee Snatches.

 

Dumbbell burpee snatches (1)

 

Dumbbell burpee snatches (2)

 

Dumbbell burpee snatches (3)

 

This one wasn’t difficult for me, but I felt awkward because I’d never done snatches before, and I wasn’t sure I was doing them correctly. I’ll increase my weights when I can perform the technique more smoothly. The weight I used here (8 lbs) was not challenging.

 

2). Plank Side Raise to Forward Raise.

 

Plank Side Raise to Forward Raise (side)

 

I actually felt this one destroying my abs as I was doing it. I used 5 lb weights, and while they were light for the shoulder-work, itself, the fact that you’re stabilizing yourself with your body set up like a lopsided tripod makes it a killer core workout.

 

Plank Side Raise to Forward Raise (front)

 

3). Side to Side Rotational Lunges.

 

Side to Side Rotational Lunges

 

Otherwise known as absolute hell (for me) and not something I’m doing again without shoes. Yes, please laugh. I am! Seriously, though, I felt all kinds of clumsy and wrong doing these plyo twisting side-to-side lunges. I always feel like my lunge form is wrong, anyway. I’m always working on it. This is a great core workout (obliques, especially)!

 

4). Zottman Curls to Hammer Curls.

 

Zottman Curls to Hammer Curls (pronated)

 

I’d never heard the term “Zottman curls” before. As Funk Roberts says in the video, they’re done with a pronated grip (palms down). I’m assuming that this works the forearms. The 10 lb dumbbells I used felt appropriate given the speed component.

 

Zottman Curls to Hammer Curls (hammer)

 

5). Glute Bridge Chest Press Pull-Overs.

 

Glute Bridge Chest Press Pull-Overs (start)

 

I loved this one! This was one of my two favorite exercises in this workout. I used the 10 lb dumbbells this first time, and they weren’t challenging. Next time, I’ll increase the weights to 12.5 lbs, at least.

 

Glute Bridge Chest Press Pull-Overs (press)

 

Glute Bridge Chest Press Pull-Overs (pull-over)

 

6). Predator Hops.

 

Predator Hops

 

This was my other favorite exercise. The technique is fairly easy, so I could go faster and get more out of it. This whole workout is supposed to be done for speed, and I probably only achieved that in half of the exercises. This was one of them.

 

7). Ab Walk-Outs.

 

Ab Walk-Outs (mid)

 

Ab Walk-Outs (extended)

 

I didn’t feel that I was getting anything out of this one. It wasn’t difficult. This says to me that I wasn’t doing it correctly. I’ll study Funk Roberts’ example again to prepare for the next time!

 

8). Kettlebell One Arm Swings to High Swings.

 

Kettlebell One Arm Swings to High Swings (bottom)

 

This one also felt too easy, and in this case, I know it’s because the kettlebell we have is way too light. 8 lbs isn’t enough. I’ll go back to Ross and get one or two heavier ones for next time.

 

Kettlebell One Arm Swings to High Swings (top)

 

As a whole, this workout was hard. I couldn’t go as quickly as I wanted to go, and in some cases, I barely finished the third round. Here’s a walking-back pic, because a picture speaks a thousand words:

 

Dying.

 

This isn’t even at the end of the workout. This is me hauling myself off the floor and lurching toward the timer somewhere in the middle.

Based on this experience, my impression of Funk Roberts’ workouts is that they’re hardcore and well-designed. I’m definitely coming back for more! I can also incorporate some of his techniques into my standard garage gym workouts, alternating rounds of his exercises with bag-work.

I’m loving the Les Mills On Demand, but it’s always good to changes things up in your fitness routine.

 

Back in the gym! (Autoimmune B.S. notwithstanding.)

Today, I feel the need to report that I went to the gym this morning. It felt momentous and amazing, even though I haven’t missed that much… I just missed last week Thursday and this week’s Tuesday and Wednesday. Today felt momentous even though I did what I could in the garage last week, and even though I did make it to the gym on Saturday. There are lulls in the doldrums of agony, and you can bet I’m racing to the gym when they occur!

It just felt like a long time. The thing is, as I was realizing this morning while talking to my BodyPump instructor, I have a lot of physical energy, so I feel like I’m literally jumping out of my skin when I’m grounded by stress-induced autoimmune flares such as the one I’ve been dealing with lately. My body is full of energy at the same time that it’s grounding me with joint pain. It’s like a librarian surrounding me with all the books I want to read, then setting a ring of fire between me and them so I can’t get to them. That would be a sadistic librarian. Autoimmunity makes for a sadistic body.

Maybe I’ll post more in-depth about my current autoimmune situation in a future blog post. Right now, I’m enjoying this almost-100% feeling. Things aren’t completely settled down yet; I have more appointments lined up, and lab-work pending review. I’m taking each day as it comes, doing what I can, when I can. I have a lot of writing catch-up to do, too, as a result of all of this.

I’m just so grateful for the V.A. hospital, which has been treating me very well, and for my rheumatologist there, who’s the best I’ve ever had.

And BodyPump this morning was awesome, as usual! I love seeing my people there as much as I love the workout!

 

So happy to be at the gym this morning! I took this before-workout locker-room selfie thinking “BodyPump in 15!!”

 

The rest of the week’s looking fabulous, too. Callaghan’s birthday is on Saturday, so there’ll be shenanegans of some sort in honor of that. He would love to know what’s involved. He’s not going to know until then. Heheh.

Happy Friday Eve, everyone!

Wrangling with B.O.B. (Garage Gym workout!)

A minor stress-related autoimmune flare has kept me out of the gym these last two days, but the garage saved me from inactivity in the meanwhile. The ironic thing is that working out is my therapy to help reduce stress, but if stress gets to me anyway, I’m sometimes unable to do my normal workouts! I know that those of you with autoimmunity issues know exactly what I’m talking about.

In the garage yesterday late afternoon, I wanted to challenge myself in ways that wouldn’t aggravate my right shoulder. I set B.O.B. to a greater height than usual, thinking I’d try to work with the height differential.

A sampling of screen shots from my workout with a 6-foot, 290 lb. dummy:

 

1). I started with a jump-rope cardio blast to get warm, jumping rope in 3-minute rounds to music from Disturbed’s The Sickness album.

 

Cardio: jumping rope

 

As usual, there’s nothing to see here, really. You can’t see the rope when it’s in motion.

 

The rope.

 

Moving on! Here’s the height differential I had before me:

 

Me vs B.O.B. (height differential)

 

I’m 5′, 4″ and 115 lbs. In this case, B.O.B. is 6′ and 290 lbs (fully filled with water)

 

Me vs B.O.B. (height differential)

 

2). I threw some kicks to see where they’d land on someone who’s six feet tall.

 

Side kick (placed and held)

 

I have short legs and I’m not flexible, so this is as high as it’d get. This is not what would happen in reality. If you’re taller than me, I’m much more likely to blow out your knee or your family jewels.

 

3). I tested my left back fist (leaving my right arm out of it). It was indeed a reach to get 6-foot B.O.B. in the face. In actuality, a person of this height would get throat-punched.

 

Back fist

 

4). I tried out some knee strikes on 6-foot B.O.B.

 

Pulling B.O.B. down for a knee strike

 

Knee strike

 

In my current condition with my right side, I can pull all day long, but pushing overhead or straight-arm lifting/extending are a problem. I did a lot of pulling in this work-out.

For these knee strikes, I jumped in to grab B.O.B. by the base of his skull, jumped back in my stance to pull him down toward me, and then came up to land a rear knee. Unfortunately, it only got to his chest. Haha. Again, in actuality in a street situation, my knee would end up lower. That’s fine. A hard knee to your solar plexus will knock the air out of you.

 

5). I found out right away that a standing rear naked choke was not going to happen on 6-foot B.O.B., so I just grappled him as best as I could, really testing my strength more than anything. In real life, I’d have to get him to the ground in order to choke him.

 

Using B.O.B.’s base to step up and get my arm around his throat

 

Even stepping up, I couldn’t twist my arm around to get a proper grip, so I just did this. (My right shoulder was fine with this.)

 

Pulling him back by the throat from the other side (sorry we went out of frame)

 

This kind of wrangling with B.O.B. made for a pretty good strength-training, pulling workout (so back and biceps, I guess).

I did a little more in the way of conditioning exercises…

 

6). Speed punches for muscle endurance:

 

Speed punches

 

Again, you can’t really see anything, but there was some speed happening in these rounds of speed punches. The goal is to stand close and hit fast, not hard. This is like sprinting in place with your upper body.

 

7). Jumping-in planks:

 

Plank

 

I kept a little bend in my elbows to avoid stressing my right shoulder.

 

Jumping in (then back out, repeat)

 

(I suppose all of this counts as knuckle-conditioning, too, since I’m always on my knuckles.)

 

8). For abs, I just did some crunches.

 

Lying on the floor (doing crunches), ha

 

9). I finished up with some stretching.

 

A few stretches at the end

 

I forgot to take a post-workout selfie, so here’s a screen-shot of one of the times I turned to face the phone:

 

(you get the idea)

 

That was it! This was a fun garage gym session. I got to sweat a little, and the whole thing was pretty instructive, too. I’m not done working with B.O.B. set to this height.

Cancelled plans, but good things, too. (October Favorites!)

In October news, nothing much happened. October was the month of cancelled plans.

We wanted to catch UFC 216 (Demetrius Johnson defending his title again!) at our usual sports bar, but it didn’t work out. We’d planned to go to a Halloween party – I even had a Harry Potter costume! – but we had to cancel. That’s right. We did nothing for Halloween. The closest I came to celebrating Halloween was going to BodyPump looking a little goth. That was it.

At the same time that nothing happened, a lot did happen. We had houseguests in October, you see, for 10 days in the middle of the month… and that was what happened. In the aftermath of their visit, we were wiped out on every level. We were compelled to hibernate.

Enough said.

Let’s get on to the little things I enjoyed in October. OH, here I must insert an apology in advance: these are not great pics. I didn’t have the wherewithal to work on getting super-good shots of anything this time. So it goes.

Starting with entertainment, as usual!

 

1). A Ghost Story

 

 

You may remember the non-review movie review I wrote about A Ghost Story. If so, you know how I feel about it. We were just as happy to watch it a second time.

 

2). Mindhunter (T.V. series)

 

The excellent Mindhunter is not your average T.V. series. It’s unusual. Words that come to mind: Vintage. Stylish. Noir. Not scary. Not glamorous. This series about the beginnings of criminal profiling in the FBI’s fledgling Behavioral Science unit first struck us as a bit awkward in its delivery, but you soon realize that this is deliberate. It works. This is a period piece, after all, and this was how T.V. looked back then.

I’ve heard people say that they had to watch two or three episodes of Mindhunter before they got into it. Our experience was that we were hooked by the end of the first episode.

 

3). Stranger Things 2 (Season 2) (T.V. series)

 

 

Is it even necessary for me to say that we loved Stranger Things 2 and it was fantastic and maybe even better than Season 1 and in our humble opinion everyone should watch it? I think not. If you’re not watching Stranger Things, then I don’t know how to help you.

 

Products!

4). Physician’s Formula Super BB cream SPF 30 (in “Light”).

 

Physician’s Formula Super BB Cream

 

Did you catch the complete name of this product? The operative words are SPF 30. I wear a broad-spectrum SPF 30 cream every day, so I always have it on under my make-up, but I love a make-up product that also has sun protection. Physician’s Formula BB cream’s sun protection includes zinc oxide, which I look for in a sunscreen above other active ingredients.

It so happens that this cruelty-free product not only works as an extra layer of sunscreen, but it also wears nicely as a foundation. It works for me, at least. The color match is perfect, with the right undertone and everything, and the product is long-wearing, as well. Physician’s Formula is one of the more pricey drugstore make-up brands, but it’s still drugstore… easily accessible and not outrageously expensive. I highly recommend this product if you’re looking for a new foundation.

 

5). The Body Shop Frosted Plum shower gel.

 

The Body Shop Frosted Plum shower gel

 

The Body Shop’s 2017 holiday (limited edition) line is Frosted Plum, and – surprise, surprise! – I love it. I wasn’t expecting its pronounced pine scent; I adore pine fragrance, so this was a pleasant discovery. The vaguely sweet plum scent is detectable beneath the pine. I find this fragrance to be less sweet than the other fruity fragrances I’ve tried from The Body Shop. Callaghan loves this scent, as well. (On me, that is. He doesn’t use it.)

 

Food!

6). Wholesome! Organic Coconut Palm Sugar.

 

Wholesome organic coconut palm sugar

 

I started sweetening my coffee with this coconut palm sugar… it’s an enjoyable change from the stevia-based product I’d been using. Coconut palm sugar is less sweet and more healthy. This was a great discovery!

 

7). Organic Honeycrisp apples.

 

Organic honeycrisp apples

 

Apple season! Honeycrisp apples are my favorites at the moment. They’re ubiquitous around here (we get them from Fry’s, but we’ve seen them everywhere), and they’re so tasty and satisfying. My fruit addiction hasn’t suffered a bit with the end of summer fruits.

 

8). Simple Truth walnut halves and pieces.

 

Simple Truth walnut halves and pieces

 

I’ve been eating walnuts the way they should be eaten, in my opinion: unsalted. My preference is always to crack whole walnuts, but time is of essence, so any brand of shelled walnut meat will do. It so happens that I picked up Simple Truth brand in October.

 

9). Gardein Meatless Meatballs.

 

Gardein Classic Meatless Meatballs

 

Gardein does it again with their meatless meats! We love these “meatballs” of theirs. They’re high in protein, high in flavor, and super fast and easy to prepare.

 

10). Helpful friends at the gym.

I don’t have a pic. I just wanted to note that thanks to friends like Rawn, I’ve been able to do the leg track in BodyPump with my usual weights as I rest my tennis-elbow-compromised forearm. (I’m not doing upright rows right now, or any variation thereof. I’m finding ways to modify in the back and shoulder tracks.) I wouldn’t be able to do legs without assistance in getting the heavy barbell onto my back, and I appreciate having a buddy who’s willing to take time from our quick track-change to offer this.

 

Well, that wraps it up for October. November’s list is already filling up!

BOB’s first time. (Garage Gym workout!)

First garage gym workout of fall 2017!! I tried out our new Body Opponent Bag (BOB) last Friday. We acquired it just when it got too hot for the garage this year, so I’m glad the long delay is over.

Here’s what I found out about BOB: he’s taller than I remember him to be.

Here’s what I found out about me: I’m shorter than I remember myself to be.

Which I knew, actually. That’s right, Surly Measurement Guy. I stand corrected. (Pun not intended.) The V.A. recently confirmed that you were right: I’m 5′,4″ now.

[For reference, I’m 5′,4″/114.2 lbs – weight as of yesterday]

At his shortest setting, BOB’s got a couple of inches on me. I experimented with the height differential as well as with distance.

Punches are no big deal at his height, but because of his wide base, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands to properly train elbow strikes, as they’re mostly inside-fighting techniques. As evident in the pics below, I didn’t do well with elbow strikes just standing in front of him. I’ll modify for this in the future.

The work-out: I mostly practiced upper-body strikes. I worked in a few kicks, but I didn’t really train lower-body this time. For my cardio warm-up, I ran in place, alternating sets of high knees and those jumping toe-taps (?) (whatever they’re called) on BOB’s base.

This was a 45-minute work-out. I didn’t wear shoes because the mats had been cleaned, but my feet still turned black. Eh. Desert dust… a small price to pay for living in paradise!

 

Superman punch

 

First height observation: My superman punch puts me a couple of inches in the air, so my straight-right lands almost perfectly on BOB’s face.

 

Straight right, aka cross (orthodox)

 

Straight-right (aka cross, if you’re right-handed) from standing.

 

Punch to body

 

Going for a punch to the body. Self-critique: I’d drop my stance a little lower to get my head out of the way. Most people like to hit back when you hit them. If BOB could trade punches, he’d clock me pretty easily in this position.

 

(between rounds)

 

See how I’m kind of knock-knee’d? This is why my lunges suck. I’m always trying to modify the position of my feet in order to get my form right and maximize the benefit of the exercise, but I still have a hard time with range of motion in lunges.

 

Spin punch chamber

 

I practiced some spin-strike techniques; this practice makes for a great exercise in judging distance. Here, it looks like I’m taller than BOB. Optical illusion.

 

Up elbow

 

This is ridiculous. I landed these upward elbow strikes, but you can see that I’m open to all kinds of pay-back shenanegans. BOB’s wide base keeps you from getting inside where elbows are the most useful. I’ll find a way to correct for this.

 

Back elbow chamber

 

This is slightly better; with a back elbow, it’s easier to jump in to close the distance. Back elbows are useful when you want to get out of a close situation you’re losing, though. Like when people elbow others out of the way to get through a tight crowd.

 

Standing stretch

 

I used BOB as a stretching apparatus. I stretched on the floor, too.

 

Stretching (and selfie)

 

Multi-tasking: stretching and mugging for the post-workout selfie.

 

Walking back

 

The walking-back pic. I’m still doing them, I guess!

A word about food: I used to include a post-workout food pic at the end of these posts, and once again, I forgot. There will be lots in the way of food pics this Friday, though, as I’m going to do a food-centric post.

 

Is it Monday yet? TGIM! (Writing-Fitness balance: on changing routines.)

This week, I let go of my Monday evening workout. It was hard. I’d been doing that class for over three years… Monday/Wednesday kickboxing, non-negotiable.

You know how I feel about routines, and you know how I feel about kickboxing. This decision was not easy.

But it was a long time coming. I looked at my 2016 planner and saw that I’d been thinking about it since early November… because I’d just tried BodyPump, which is weight-training, which I’d spent a year trying and failing to do on my own. I finally realized that nothing was stopping me from going to a twice-weekly morning Pump class. It was life-changing. It got me thinking about re-vamping my entire workout schedule.

I did it slowly, starting with switching out Saturday morning kickboxing for Saturday morning Pump. I wanted three strength-training workouts per week, rather than two.

Then I had a few Monday evenings off when the Monday kickboxing class was between instructors, and I realized what Monday really is, now: it’s my favorite day of the week. My best workday. The ideal day to stay home all day and get shit done.

Monday has become my “third weekend-day,” my working-weekend day, my relaxed yet productive transition into the week. It’s my bubble of creative energy day. It’s my fresh-start day. I wake up filled with anticipation and ready to get ALL the ideas down. I’m writing before I even get out of bed on Monday mornings. I can multi-task all day on Mondays, no problem.

I realized that it’s TGIM around here, not TGIF. I had to make changes accordingly!

Easier said than done.

Since I’m slow to see things that are right before my eyes, I first had to have this argument with myself. (We all do this, right? Argue with ourselves, weigh pros and cons, etc.?)

Here’s how my argument went:

  • Monday is my best workday now.
  • And?
  • Leaving the house on Monday interrupts my best workday.
  • Why not just stay home on Mondays?
  • Because it’s Monday. I have to go to the gym.
  • Why?
  • Because it’s Monday.
  • Really.
  • I always go to the gym on Monday.
  • Okay, but why?
  • It’s what I do! Kickboxing on Mondays and Wednesdays!! I love it!!!
  • That’s not a real reason.
  • Because… I need at least two cardio workouts per week.
  • Can you find an alternate day for the Monday cardio?
  • Well, yes. Fridays or Sundays would work.
  • Then do it.

End of argument. Why had I been reluctant – even afraid – to give up Monday evening workouts? Because changing a routine is scary when your mental health depends on the stability routines provide. But I was able to work through it.

I’ve had my boxing gloves hanging up in my office, and now that’s metaphorical as well as practical. I hung up my Monday night gloves for writing.

 

Writing-training balance: boxing gloves hanging in my office (along with my hats and kukui nut lei)

 

The process of making this decision turned out to be a good exercise (pun not intended), so I thought I’d share it with you who may also have a hard time making changes to your routines.

I followed this thought-path:

  • Recognize (when something isn’t working anymore.)
  • Think (of how to fix it.)
  • Detach (to make it easier.)
  • Consider solutions/alternatives.
  • Wait for the immediate “obstacles” to come to mind, because they will… then
  • think beyond them.
  • Think creatively.
  • Do this by asking yourself questions and answering honestly.

Some people would call this “Follow your heart.” Others would call it “Adjust your thinking.” I call it “Wake up and realize that you’re the only one stopping yourself from making changes in order to do what you need to do… you can do it.”

Making changes isn’t easy for we who need routine in order to keep ourselves stable; routine is necessary, but it can also be an impediment. It makes it hard to see when change is needed.

Now I just need to discipline myself to get my ass to the gym to do cardio on my own. That shouldn’t be difficult.

 

Looks like it’s officially off-season in the garage.

Here’s that (promised) status update on the garage gym: it’s not happening this summer. A/C installation, I mean.

We’ve had A/C and insulation professionals come to evaluate the situation, and after looking at their estimates – the total cost of the cooling project – we decided to hold off on it this year. We figured we’ve put enough into the house in 2017, and we still have some costly, out-of-the-ordinary agenda items on the books for the summer. For one thing, we’re going to be chasing that eclipse in August, a pursuit that will take us out of state. Surely some moola will be involved there.

So that’s that! It’s fine, of course. Talk about a first-world problem. We have a roof over our heads and A/C in the house. We don’t take that for granted here in the Valley, where it’s already been so hot that numerous flights had to be canceled this week. We live 10 minutes away (if that) from Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, pretty much under the flight path, and it was eerily quiet for a day or two. It was like someone shut off the volume switch in the sky.

There may be a garage gym post yet, though, before October! Certain types of workouts will be safely doable in there if done very early in the morning, workouts that don’t involve much movement. Knuckle-conditioning… I could document a Part 2 of that. Stretching, maybe. We shouldn’t do more than that, even if early. After all, one wall in there is the metal garage door, which transforms the garage into an oven.

Happy Friday, All!