Week #2 Workouts
Tuesday: Jillian Michaels’s Yoga Meltdown
Thursday: Yogalosophy
Sunday: Cathe Friedrich’s Bootcamp
Here we go for Week 2! This week was a major improvement from last week. Maybe it’s because muscle memory is kicking in and they’re not so confused as to WHY I’m using them again! It was easier to make it through the workouts without holding my breath wondering what the heck I’m doing and how it got so hard.
Jillian Michael’s Yoga Meltdown is a 30 minute intense yoga workout with power poses. What are power poses? They are the common yoga poses you’ve seen a hundred times…but you hold it…for 15 seconds and then Jillian makes you do pulses or reps which intensify the pose. That means it BURNS! That burning feeling is our muscles working hard which means they’re changing. The DVD has two workouts to choose from and two lovely ladies in each that show the modifications of the poses. One is an easier version for those of us just starting out and also one for the advanced version of the pose so you can revel in their amazingness and hope to work up to that. I’ll stick with my modifications until I feel strong enough to move on, thank you very much!
I covered Mandy Ingber’s Yogalosophy in Week 1. The more I do it, the better it feels. No, it doesn’t get easier yet but my body is getting familiar with the poses and exercises. It feels so good every time!
Have you ever heard of Cathe Friendrich? She’s been in the biz for a few decades. I first discovered her on FitTV years ago and would record her workouts and do them after work. She offers a lot of variety in DVDs and reminds me of your 90’s aerobics instructor with perfectly bouffant hair, spandex shorts and scrunchy socks. She has since evolved her look but her enthusiasm is the same. And she kicks butt!
Her Bootcamp workout is AMAZING!!! It’s 8 interval cycles – 1 min cardio, 1 min lower body, 1 min upper body and 1 min core. Holy moly it’s a fully body workout and a fat burner! It was hard. It was SO hard! Jumping jacks and burpees?? Hmm, I think I’ll do toe taps and jumps until I don’t pee myself. I modified many of the exercises but I finished…I did it! I could tell that the yoga and pilates workouts really helped to pull in my abs, keep my hips square, and – yep, you guessed it – breathe.
So Week 2 rocked my socks and it felt GREAT! It felt better than Week 1 and I’m encouraged because those first workouts had me convinced it wasn’t going to get any easier. And it’s not that the workouts are necessarily getting easier, it’s more that my muscles are remembering what it is to exercise and do more than hold a new infant or a chase a toddler. Our muscles WILL remember and it WILL get easier!!
