Exercise

When I first started this journey, I started slow.  I've done exercise before but you try lugging round 130 kg's it's hard friggin work! :D

A lot people complain that they don't have time for exercise, but if you have time to watch more than an hour of TV each night then you have time!  My excuse was that I was just lazy!  Do you know that if you tell yourself something often enough you'll believe it!  Even if it isn't true.  I knew though that if I tried to go hard 6 times a week I probably wouldn't even make it through the first week.  So started slow.

I bought one of those vibration machines, you know they basically do the work for you all you have to do is stand or sit on them.  They feel like a massage.  Ten minutes a day you didn't even need to put on work out gear or sneakers, pyjamas and slippers worked just as well.  After a week I felt a bit better about myself, on the way to the car at work there's escalators, with stairs in the middle.  I started with those.  Just walk up those stairs instead of taking the escalator, do it each evening for a week.  So I did.  Look at me go I thought, the next week I did those stairs and in the carpark I got out of the lift one flight earlier and walked those stairs, so it took me 5 weeks to get to all the stairs and even to today I still walk those stairs, at the time it was the beginning of exercise for me, today it's called Incidental Exercise and it's just as important as any other exercise you do, like food, every little bit counts!

I slowly progressed through from walking 2 times a week to adding in a boot camp.  Now this was pretty scary at the time I was still over 120 kg, but I wanted to do more, I wanted to try.  I found a girl's only boot camp that ran in cycles of 6 weeks, however they had already started but I was able to join for 4 weeks, I figured sheesh 4 weeks is a commitment I can make to myself and if I really hate it I don't go back I go looking at gyms or something.  Needless to say for those of you that know me, I'm still here at Boot Camp, I think like in my 8th cycle, I don't know I've lost count, I just keep coming back!

So when I started Trainer Luke was the trainer, he pushed quietly, no yelling at this boot camp, and he gauged my fitness levels or lack of pretty quickly, I felt he built me up quite well over the months, till suddenly I was surprised at what I could do especially when I thought I couldn't.  Trainer Luke recently moved on to new horizons and now we have Trainer Nate.  Trainer Nate is different, but not in a bad way.  He's excited by my enthusiasm and pushes me on, I think he will be a great trainer for pushing me onto the next level.

So today I spoke to him about adding some proper weights to my program and he has agreed to help me with this.

Lastly though (so you know all the game players) is Trainer Christian, he's my sister's trainer and he is HARD CORE!  I've trained with him a few times, starting just before Christmas and was blown away but what I was able to do.  I've agreed to spend the night at my sister's once a month to train with Trainer Christian even though it means double training on that particular day each month.  I feel this adds another twist to my exercise, and keeps me on my toes.

It's important to keep changing your exercise program, your body adapts quickly and if you aren't really pushing yourself on a regular basis you may simply be in what is known as maintenance mode.  So if you exercise often but don't find that you are achieving the changes in your body you want and you are sure your eating habits are on point, then you need to look at how and what you are training.

That's not to say that some days you shouldn't simply just go for a walk!  Of course, you just need to include different intensities of training to achieve peak results.

One of the things I discovered in training is that I'm starting to like running.  I've worked on building it up through different endurance and interval sessions.  At the beginning of this year I achieved a goal I'd only ever thought about before, and that was to complete a fun run.  I wanted to start doing them to train for the City to Surf in August, but now I'm finding I am enjoying the challenge of each one simply for that the challenge.  I've joined a group that do a 3.4km run once a month last month my aim was to simply run all of it which I somehow managed!  Now my aim is simply to continue beating my time and increasing my speed.  The next big one I have planned is the Mother's Day Classic which is another 8km one.  So keep an eye out as I'll be reporting on when I achieve these goals and how I do with them.

So today Trainer Nate was late, naughty boy, but the majority of us went for a light jog to warm up so when he arrived we were ready to go, you know how he rewarded us, but making us do a nasty hill run in the middle of the session! hehehehe Next week we will be spending the whole session on this hill.  Some of the group (the returnees, not the new girls) have done some hill work with Trainer Luke but Trainer Nate's hill is steeper!  I have to admit to hating it at the time, but feeling a great sense of accomplishment when the session is over.

So today I've covered a bit on exercise I wanted people to see that you can start off with little things and build up on it.  Tomorrow I'll talk abit about healthy eating habits, notice I don't use that dirty term diet!  Because as I'll discuss tomorrow, diets don't work!

Happy Tuesday folks!