Day 44

DVD - Max Interval Circuit

I can measure the days in teens now. 19 to go!

I had another bout of "don't really want to do this" today after the warm-up stretch. Because it was Max Interval Circuit it meant I had 43 minutes to go before the whole workout would be over, and just about 40 minutes before the cool down stretch. There were no physical ailments today, just some angst. A man jumped out a window to his death from the building next to my office around 3:30 pm this afternoon. One of my co-workers saw it from the street as she was leaving the building; a couple others heard the noise from below and looked out to see the body just after he landed, and the blood. I only saw the body after it had been covered by the police, but the whole thing brought back a memory I generally do pretty well keeping out of my mind: back in the mid '90s a man fell to his death about 15 feet in front of me. I feel for my co-worker who had the same experience today, and for the couple them who saw the grotesque aftermath immediately after.

All of that was a lot to process mentally, and that made it harder to follow a workout DVD. It's hard to pay attention to something external when your mind is that preoccupied. I think perhaps something like running or swimming would be a better physical activity on a day like today: something to tax you physically but during which your attention can be focused more inward.

So I had a hard time getting into it, with my will flagging again right after the warm-up stretch. This, if you'll remember, is the longest workout, so after the stretch I still had 44 minutes to go. But like yesterday, I reached within and found the will to just go ahead and do it anyway. And like yesterday, I was watching the clock until suddenly I wasn't.

I am doing pretty well with my progress through this workout. The Floor Switch Kicks are probably the hardest on me. It's really hard for me to hold myself up on my arms in the position required for this exercise when my legs are switching back and forth. I can only go for a few seconds at a time before I have to rest because it feels like my arms are going to give out, especially around my elbow area. I keep at it and sometimes slow down so that my legs aren't exactly switch kicking, but doing something more like leg lifts - some of the crew do it this way too, so I don't feel like such a feeb, but it doesn't feel like it has much of an effect when I do it more slowly. I also fall out a little bit during the frog jumps of this interval segment. Partly my hip joints start to hurt and need a break, but also I sometimes get a little dizzy from the up and down movements.

I notice that a lot of the moves in this latter set of DVDs are similar to the Fit Test exercises, and I expect to see some improvement on some of the harder-to-do-fast moves when I do the Fit Test again this coming Sunday. I'll be foregoing the rest day again to take the Fit Test, because I just can't fathom doing the Fit Test and then following it with this 1 hour workout like the suggest on a Monday after a day spent at the office.