You Gotta Know When to Hold 'Em

I've been having great workouts this week. Tuesday in particular was great--Mark led me in a leg workout that made trying to sit or stand a challenge. I love feeling sore--to me it's the true sign that I pushed myself. Today, Savanah was into having me do 12-15 reps of an exercise and then holding the last rep for 20 seconds to a minute, depending on the exercise. Like doing a set of squats with a Swiss ball against the wall, and then holding the last one with my thighs parallell to the floor . I don't remember how long I held that one, but my legs were shaking by the end.

Here are some examples. On the right is a picture of me doing the bench press with dumbbells, holding the last rep until I wanted to drop the weights. It's such a mental challenge--trying to stay present with how I'm actually feeling rather than thinking about the next 20-30 seconds and what they're going to feel like and whether I can make it to the end.

On the left, I'm doing a static lunge with my front foot elevated. My quads were already sore from holding the squat. I don't have pictures of everything, but I did some shoulder exercises, push-ups, tricep extensions, all holding the last rep.






This on was really hard. I had to hold myself in a semi-squat position on the platform on one leg, and the touch the other foot to the floor 12 times. Again, on the last rep, I held my foot off the ground. Believe me, that didn't last long.

I did this exercise after holding a plank forever (ok, maybe 45 seconds to a minute), so my abs were already sore. By the time the hold was over, though, it was my legs that were shaking because of the number of quad exercises I'd already done. All in all, a fun set of exercises.

I had a good week in terms of my weight--I lost a pound and a half, which is really rewarding. I realized yesterday that I'm not turning my food diary into Fitness Together anymore, because I finished the nutrition consulting part of the training. I had my worst eating day in a long time today, and was aware that I wasn't turning in my food diary while I was doing it. I somehow managed to stay below my calorie goal, but I didn't eat a mix of foods designed to make me healthy.

The main problem is that I wasn't home most of the day. I had a good breakfast, and went to workout t 11:15. I was supposed to go get Bennett at 1, and didn't really have time to go home and make lunch after working out and before getting Bennett, so I ate a protein bar. I then spontaneously decided to take Bennett to the movies to see Tangled, which of course involved eating popcorn. Then I was going to the movies tonight with Bob and Diana to see The King's Speech, and the timing was such that I didn't have time to make dinner and had another protein bar. Then it turned out that the movie started a half hour later than we had originally thought, so we went to a restaurant near the theatre and had meat, cheese, and bread. Very tasty, but a lot of carbs and fat. If I keep having the thought that I'm not sending in my food diary, I'm going to talk to Mark about continuing to send it in. I want to make sure I'm in the habit of eating well long enough, that I don't want to do anything else.