#OwnYourMat Instagram Challenge

There’s a new challenge coming to Instagram!

The other hosts and I are pleased to announce our new IG challenge, starting Sept 1st!

Description:

A yoga mat can be such a unique and personal space. They provide a platform for us to practice, meditate, sweat, grow and challenge ourselves. Join us as we explore how you #OwnYourMat over the next 15 days. We’ll provide a topic to reflect on or an exercise challenge each day and ask you to share your own individual take on it. At the end of the challenge, we’ll be choosing one lucky winner to receive a yoga mat!

Dates:

Sept 1st – 15th

Rules:

If you’d like to join us, please:

1. Repost the above picture
2. Follow all hosts & sponsors
3. Tag 2 friends to join

Also! Don’t forget to use the hashtags #OwnYourMat and #bondiband

If you don’t follow all hosts and tag us in every post, we won’t be able to keep track of your daily posts. If we can’t keep track of your posts, you won’t be in the running as a winner. The same goes for the two hashtags – #OwnYourMat and #bondiband. You won’t be considered for a prize if you don’t have those 2 hashtags. Very important.

List of Hosts to follow:

• @popwithalex
• @emmy.poppe
• @crickethopes
• @insta_jen77
• @kstjshin
• @fithealthyu
• @lexxellins
• @kgriffin21
• @popster_maruska

List of Sponsors to follow:

• @prAna
• @bondi_band

The challenge only lasts 15 days. Only half a month. You can do something for 15 days, right? The challenge is open to everyone. Not all of the moves are exercise moves. We’ll be starting out with a plank (whatever one is your favorite for whatever reason) but then the next day we’ll move on to something entirely different. We’ve got some Yoga in there, POP Pilates, sitting back and thinking, etc. There’s something for everyone and people can make it as hard or as easy as they want!

Join us for the fun starting Sept 1st! We’re really excited about hosting this challenge and we want to see lots of people join so we can have fun with as many people as possible. It’ll be great!

Jooooiiiiiin uuuuuuuuusss.

…..Yeah, I totally just had an Evil Dead moment and I’m laughing my nerdy little butt off right now.

Hopefully Healing

Yay! I found the stock of dumbbells in the cardio room for the Total Body Toning class! So now I can go back to my original plan of using my old Circuit Fusion plans for the class if I ever sub. Very happy.

And in preparation for that day (if it ever comes), I’ve started going to the class. My knee is healing. It had better be anyway considering how much I’ve cossetted it with cardio. It’s so boring doing cardio with a blitzy knee. Today I got to walk intervals – slow and slower. Pfft. There was some power walking in there but it would still be considered slow for real power walkers. In order to mix things up, I slowed waaaaaaay down so I could walk sideways without falling over. Outer hips, inner thighs, and some calf work. And then the real work began in class.

I’ve been taking it easy (completely) on the weekends and have been mixing up my cardio with elliptical, cycling, and walking on the treadmill. During the week I’ve had to ice my knees several times a day. Today I didn’t have to ice them at all! I was so happy. I hope it’s progress and that I’m not being stupid. Maybe I should’ve iced them anyway. The thigh muscles are feeling prickly now – I’m going to have to roll them out before I go to bed. Totally exhausted today.

A lot happened though not much when compared with other people’s lives. Updating my certifications through online classes, exercising, helping my son with his homework and his studies (that took about an hour!!), taking him to his taekwondo class and dealing with his subsequent tantrum there, making dinner, and soon going to bed. Thank goodness the day is done.

Hopefully no more bad dreams tonight. Last night I dreamt I was surrounded by snakes. Most of them were poisonous and I was barefoot! It was terrifying but they were all asleep until the end when I was on my bed with my son and I noticed a snake on the floor at the foot of the bed (our bed sits directly on the floor so the snake was quite close). I freaked because I was scared it would try to bite my son and made the mistake of trying to shoo it away. It attacked me but I threw a blanket at it and just barely saved myself. But it kept thumping against the blanket trying to strike me.

USA: Wayne Co., Sam A. Baker State Park, Shut-Ins Trail, under fallen log in dry-mesic igneous upland forest.

It was a horrible dream.

Total Body Toning Class + Playlist

This last Friday I took the Total Body Toning class at my Y to see what it was like.

Class Description: Tone the entire body with use of hand weights, resistance bands, and stability balls.

It sounded similar to the Circuit Fusion class I always took and was eventually trained to do and it turned out it was similar. No cardio though. It was designed to tone the muscles in an anaerobic fashion as opposed to aerobic which is the kind that gets your heart rate up.

Translation: No cardio.

That part was disappointing because I love mixing cardio in with my workouts. It gives a better workout in less time. But sticking with pure strength training isn’t a bad thing and I know tons of people prefer to do that. The day after taking the class, my arms were so sore! I had completely forgotten the triceps section of the class so I wondered for awhile why my triceps were so sore. The move had been a bit awkward because I had never thought to do it before but boy did it work! Two days later and I’m still sore.

Anyway, I got to talking with the teacher after the class was done and I may be able to sub for her if the fitness director gives the thumbs up. Just in case I get the green light, I spent my weekend creating a 45-minute class from scratch. It’s not like my old Circuit Fusion classes though because my equipment of choice was always a mat (mainly for ab work) and dumbbells and I don’t think they have enough dumbbells available. I’ll have to check out the equipment in the room when I go next. They have those long bars that I can use and rubber bands but I’m not all that used to them anymore so it would take more thought to put together a workout with those.

It was surprisingly difficult actually because I’m not used to creating routines anymore, I have to keep it anaerobic, and it’s 15 minutes longer than what I used to do. The warm-up is from POP 6 and many of the moves are from Cassey Ho. I’m hoping parts of it will generate some interest in my POP Pilates class too.

I spent almost as much time making the playlist as I did working on the moves. Each song will have 3 moves repeated and will have a different focus. For example: Shakira’s Waka Waka will have Walnut Crushers, Golf Balls, and Back Behinds to work the upper body and That’s Not My Name by The Ting Tings will focus on the lower body with Lunge Pulses, Sideways Scissors, and Plow & Squat. That last move I’m really not sure about because we’ll have a kind of short, squishy mat but not really a mat and I don’t want it sliding out from under people when they do this so I’ll have to test it first. If it always slides, I’ll have to change it to regular squats or side lunges or something. I love the Plow & Squat though, it’s super fun. And what a workout if you have to completely stand up from that squat to move to the next round of Lunge Pulses!

[Insert Evil Laughter]

Here’s the playlist:

I’m hoping to have loose choreography so I won’t have to count, but I’m not sure if this would work or not. Not a big deal though. Each song would still tell me what to work next. I would just count to keep everything even instead of doing it strictly to the music. However, Waka Waka screams for choreography. I’ve already tested it and it was super easy to fall into the rhythm.

Honestly though, I miss dumbbells. I miss Kelly’s Circuit Fusion class. It’s not the same with me doing it because my routines are way different.

Sore Today Sore Tomorrow

Thank goodness for rest days! Although this is technically my second rest day because I took yesterday off from PIIT28 1.0. I’m tiiiiiiiired! Give me a break! Every muscle in my body is super sore! And, actually, I deemed it wise to take an extra break because the back of my knee was acting up during 1.4: Lean Body. Eep! Definitely don’t want to be hurting my knee right before I start my new job as a POP Pilates instructor. That would…suck. Big time.

“Oh I don’t get sick all that often and when I do I usually power through it.” Great! You’re hired! Day of class. “Oh! Did I mention how often I get injured? And that I’m injured now?”

No! I’m not going to get injured! Not now. I will rest my knee and make sure it doesn’t go buggy on me again. It’ll be totally fine. Minor ouchies I can deal with because I know how to modify.

Is it just me or does anyone else hear Mater from Cars yelling “Modify!” whenever they hear or say that word? He and other cars say it in the Cars short film, Tokyo Mater, where Mater goes to Tokyo. The lines are going through my head verbatim now. I think my son and I watched those cartoons a few too many times.

In the mean time, I’m SO SORE! It feels good to feel sore again. The second day was hard to push myself to do because I was so sore and wasn’t used to feeling like that anymore. But then the 3rd and 4th days were easier because I was getting used to it again. It’s too bad about my knee but the rest felt good.

Although I took an extra PIIT28 rest day, I haven’t taken a day off from the #adorethecore challenge. Each day (except for the 3rd day when we were planking) has been difficult. I’ve been doing short videos for the most part. The 1st day has been my favorite so far.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BIkn8QDAv1V/?taken-by=kstjshin

If you haven’t started #adorethecore, you can jump in any time. I don’t know if you’ll win anything, but winning something shouldn’t be your main motivation anyway. It’s all about building up core strength. If you’re already doing it, good job with what you’ve done so far and good luck with the rest of the challenge! What’s been your favorite move so far?

Another Round of PIIT28

True to my word, I did my first day of another round of PIIT28.

PIIT28 1.1: Abdomination

Boy were my abs dominated! And my legs for that matter. Although I was out of breath, my legs are no longer strong enough to work me hard enough with these moves to kill my lungs. Hardest moves for me? Same as always – Plank Jacks and Mountain Climbers.

Why are they the hardest moves for me? Out of all the different moves for cardio that I can do without a machine, moves done while in plank are hardest for me. Think about it, how many muscles do you work when you stand and kick your knees up really high? Now how many do you work when you’re in plank and kicking those same legs up so your weight is temporarily held by your arms?

Try it. Stand and do 10 jumping jacks. Now get down on the ground and do 10 plank jacks. You can feel a difference, yes? Yes. And if you can’t, then you should do more and more until you can feel a difference. I can 20 jumping jacks no problem, but I start to feel the strain with plank jacks around the 10th one. My arms are fine when I’m standing and jumping. They want to die when they have to hold my weight on the floor as I jump. That’s not even mentioning how much my core is working keeping my body straight instead of dipping down or piking up.

I had a helluva time getting ready today because I kept getting sidetracked but I finally did it! And before lunch too. I realized before I was even done with the first round that, while I still had muscle to do POP Pilates, PIIT28 was kicking my butt all over again. Must’ve been the cardio aspect. As I said before, I’ve been pretty lazy with cardio since, well, since the last time I did PIIT28 back in March. I had tried to do a second round before but I only made it a couple days in before I got injured or sick or something that made me stop for a bit and then I didn’t start back up.

While I believe my new Before pics haven’t changed since March, my measurements certainly did…for the worse. As much as I hate to do it, I’m going to post the measurements here. I’ll wait on the pics though.

Measurements:

• Arms – L 12 3/4″, R 12 7/8″
• Bust – 41″
• Chest – 32 1/4″
• Waist – 37″
• Lower Belly – 43″
• Hips – 45 1/2″
• Thighs – L/R 24 1/2″
• Weight – 190.4 lbs

Bigger and bigger. You know what this is from? All the freaking carbs I’ve been eating combined with sitting on my butt reading and playing games. While I do POP Pilates to practice, that doesn’t even begin to equal the amount of time I sit around and read. I love reading. It makes me forget how big my ass is getting. I’m oozing out to fill in my recliner.

I’m like the blob…except on a much smaller scale. But all of that’s changing because I don’t like my numbers. I’m fine with how I look for the most part but I don’t like how much muscle definition I’ve lost. I like seeing my muscles. I miss seeing them.

Good luck for tomorrow! I’ll update again at the end of the PIIT28 week.

Click on the above picture to buy the PIIT28 program