Oh My, Where Have I Been?

After spending an hour and a half this morning sweating to the sounds of Lady Gaga and peddling through an episode of some terrible sitcom starring Billy Ray Cyrus and his daughter Miley, it occurred to me that I've been forgetting to update the blog with my workout shenanigans over the past week.  Life has suddenly been turned up to the "Spin" cycle, and although there hasn't been a lot of time to keep up with this blog I have been able to find the time to continue working out.

We're enjoying the last rays of sunshine for the season here in Portland, and in an attempt to soak up as much UV light as possible before the clouds of winter roll in I spent an hour each on Wednesday and Thursday walking with M and K for an emotional and metabolic boost.  A deep cleaning of my cat-dwelling laundry room helped me to burn a couple hundred calories yesterday, and my whole house smells all the better for it.

Today, M and I spent the morning at 24 Hour Fitness playing basketball, working out with weights, did the Fat Burn program on the stationary bikes and tried out the gyms climbing machines.  It was 90 minutes of progress; with both of us adding more weight, more reps and more new exercise machines than ever before.

The 24 day free pass that M gifted me at the gym has proven that three weeks of focused time at the gym really does make a difference.  Both of us are trimmer (M has almost lost another pant size and I have had to go down a notch on my belt), stronger and faster then we were on October 1st.  It's great to look in the mirror and notice changes that seem to have appeared overnight!

Pull Ups Are A Dream Come True

All my life, I've wanted to be able to do a pull-up.  On movies, tv shows and out on the playground, the people who are fit are always doing pull-ups and making them look like a piece of cake.  Well, today for the first time ever I discovered a machine at 24 Hour Fitness that helps you to do pull ups on your own terms.  You set the resistance level, step up on a platform, and the machine helps you to reach your chin over the handle-bars with relative ease.

I was able to do 10 pull-ups with resistance set at 190 lbs (so the machine was holding 190 pounds of me, and I was pulling up roughly 11 pounds of body mass & gym clothes).  Even though I know it's technically not a true pull up because I wasn't able to do it on my own, I'm still taking this as a win.  It's the closest to a pull-up that I've ever gotten, and hopefully with continued use of the machine I will be able to conquer this feat of athleticism sometime in the future.

Everybody has to have fitness goals to work towards, lest we get stagnant in our workouts.  What's your next big fitness goal?

Denise Kawaii Is... Active

What a great day for working out!  At 7:30am (just shy of the butt-crack-of-dawn) I met up with K for an early morning walk around the track, and before the school's 1st period P.E. class took the field we had completed 2 miles.  Getting out in the early morning air really helped me to jump-start my day, and by the time I had to actually be somewhere (10am) I was all kinds of revved up and ready to go.

At noon I met up with M at the gym for even more workout fun!  We were chased out of the gym by a bunch of really big, sweaty men who were playing a full-court game of basketball so instead we hit the elliptical trainers for 10 minutes and then tried out all kinds of new weight machines.  Trying to figure out how to use each of the machines turned out to be pretty comical, and once we did sort through what to do they resulted in working out muscles that neither of us even knew we had.  We finished the workout on the rowing machines, another cool workout that neither of us had ever tried before, and I think that they are now my most favorite thing to do at the gym!

Now that I'm home, it's time to take a quick break before diving into house-cleaning and working in the kitchen.  Tomorrow will be a little bit of a slower day, I think, but hopefully the calories I burned today will make up for it!

Around the World

M and I headed back out to 24 Hour Fitness this morning for another trip around the gym.  Both of us were feeling a little tired/sore/achy/unmotivated/wishing we were still snuggled beneath the soft warmth of bed, and so it took all the strength and pep-talking we could muster to get to it.

Luckily, once M STOMPED ME at a game of Around the World in 24 Hour Fitness's full-sized basketball court, she suddenly picked up steam and away we went!  We tried out some new machines today that even M hadn't tried before, working out our backs, deltoids, biceps and the back sides of our thighs.  We managed the strange "I'm-going-to-fold-you-in-half-and-eat-you" ab machine, and then I tried the crunch station with a 10lb weight (I'm not now sure why I thought that was a good idea... but it sounded good at the time).  We also made it over 10 minutes on the stationary bike, which is roughly 10 minutes longer than any bike ride I might have taken in the last year!

Now I'm less sleepy but physically tired, sore in more places than I was this morning, not as achy, slightly more motivated to tackle the rest of my to-do list and somehow have managed to talk myself out of going back to bed.  Working out with M is both more fun, and more intensive than the workouts I sampled at Curves and I'm glad that I'm getting the opportunity to try out some new machines and routines because I was starting to get bored with the 30 minute circuit.

Now it's just a matter of time before my body starts changing some more.  *News Flash* This week I had to tighten my belt a notch when I noticed my pants were starting to sag!

24 Hours to Fitness

This morning began 24 free days at 24 Hour Fitness.  I met up with M this morning and she took me on a tour through the gym, one machine at a time.  It was great seeing her in the role of "teacher" since she's been working out there for a few weeks now, and I'm really proud of how far she's come in her fitness and self-confidence.

We spent about a half hour playing Around the World on the basketball court (I'm not as good at shooting hoops as I used to be!) and then headed out on the floor to work our legs, abs and then spend some time spinning on the exercise bikes and walking on the elliptical machines.  By the end of the two hour visit, I was sweaty, tired and already looking forward to when we meet up again on Thursday for round 2.