Boosting The Metabolism And Pushing The Envelope

Last night M and I meet up with K for our customary 2 mile track walk, and I was relieved to discover that they were just as slow-moving and sore as I was.  We still made it the full 2 mile walk, but we inched along it at a snails pace and spent much of the hour that we were at the track comparing notes as to who had the tiredest muscles and where they were located.

Not surprisingly, I slept like the dead last night and got probably the soundest rest that I have had in six months.  This morning after running some errands, M met me in the living room and we hovered over the calendar to see what day 3 of the 10 Pound Slimdown challenge would bring.

Today's focus was a total body workout, and we steered our computer to ExerciseTV.tv to see what 20 minute total body workouts we could find.  After much haggling (and trying to judge by titles and the pose of the exercise trainer in the preview photo how easy the workout might be) we started the Major Metabolism Booster with Jessica Smith.

Jessica takes you through a full body workout that focuses on keeping your heart rate up while working out major muscle groups, and she got us to break a sweat early on in the exercise.  Although we were both sore and tired from the last two days' workouts, we were able to push through the difficult movements and gather our breath and strength during the moves that our bodies are already somewhat used to... marching in place, stretching, and basic lunges and curls.

We opted to do the workout without weights this time so that we could prevent our sore muscles from being injured, but neglecting the weights didn't do anything to prevent us from reaping the benefits of the workout.  The only issue we had with this particular workout was that for some reason the volume of the video was low, even when we turned the sound all the way up on the computer settings, the monitor (we are using a TV as a monitor for these exercises) and the volume controls on ExerciseTV.tv itself.  The low volume ended up helping us to focus more closely on what we were doing though, and kept our side chatter to a minimum as we both were straining to hear her say those magic words... "Just two more!"

One thing is for sure though, following the exercise routines as suggested by the 10 Pound Slimdown workout calendar are working out muscles that I've always had trouble reaching and even though we are only 3 days into the workout every inch of my body is letting me know that the exercises are working.  Adding these simple (but VERY effective) 20-40 minute workouts to our regular exercise routines is going to take all of us up one more level on the fitness chain and I'm looking forward to the increase in strength and flexibility that will come in the next 27 days.