Day 48

DVD - Core Cardio and Balance

This seems to be the week of needing a lot of extra willpower to talk myself into doing the workouts. The last couple of days that has meant talking myself out of workouts and then talking myself back in. The same thing happened today.

I invited a friend over to watch the first 4 episodes of the new season of America's Best Dance Crew on DVR and offered to cook. My plan was to wake up, eat breakfast, take my stuff to the laundromat and do the shopping while my clothes were in the wash. On the way back from the store I'd stop and put the clothes in the dryer and then bring the groceries home and do the workout before going back to pick up the laundry. After that it would be: clean up the place a bit, shower, and cook.

But as usual on Saturdays, my day got started late. Up a little before 11:00 am, farted around the apartment, talked to a friend on IM while drinking coffee. Around noon I got around to making breakfast. It was after 1:30 by the time I got out of the house and my friend was coming over at 5:30. At this point, I decided I would have to forego laundry until Sunday.

Also as usual, shopping in Berkeley Bowl took me longer than I'd budgeted and as I was standing in line to check out I realized it would be 3:30 by the time I got home. I began to talk myself out of working out in favor of concentrating on cleaning myself and my place, and cooking dinner. Instead I could do Saturday's workout on Sunday instead, after doing the Fit Test. And that wouldn't be "cheating", really, since I was just switching the rest day to Saturday instead of Sunday. And wouldn't that be better still, since I was already not planning to fully rest on Sunday?

But I talked myself out of these rationalizations on the way home. For the record, I think it would have been perfectly valid and reasonable for me to go ahead with the plan above. It's just that, on the way home, I remember what I thought of on Thursday when I was talking myself out of the Recovery workout: how awesome would it be to have completed every workout when I was supposed to?

I've already made two slight exceptions to this program by doing 2 of the Fit Tests on a rest day rather than before an hour-long workout. I think the fact that I choose to do the Fit Test on a day I am not otherwise working out balances the fact that I'm not doing it on a day that includes a long workout.

By the time I'd walked the mile and a quarter back to my place from Berkeley Bowl, I was determined to do Core Cardio and Balance today according to the workout schedule. If I started it by 3:40, I'd be done about 4:20 and have just over an hour to do everything else.

I did have to modify the workout a bit because my knees are still recovering from my workouts earlier this week. I started to do power jacks at one point and my knees said "no". Since that is a Fit Test move I'll have to try to do as many reps of as possible tomorrow, I decided not to push it today. Instead, I did regular jumping jacks. The hip flexor burners and shoulder burners were still both really hard for me, but after 2 weeks of the Max Workouts I am able to push through more of them with fewer instances of needing to drop out of position to give the engaged muscle set a break. This was more true with the hip flexor moves than my shoulders, which as you know have been taxed to my limits over the last two weeks.

I finished the workout around 4:20 as predicted and in the time between that and my friend's arrival at 5:30, I managed to straighten up my place a bit (sweep everything, clean the bathroom, take out garbage and recycling), shower, prepare a bolognese sauce from scratch, prep a small cheese plate, make a small tray of hors d'oeuvres involving mini phyllo cups, goat cheese, diced prosciutto and pesto, a small tray of dessert also using mini phyllo cups and goat cheese, but this time mixed with raisins, roasted pecans, cinnamon, cardamom & honey. By the time 5:30 rolled around, all I had to do was cut up some zucchini & yellow squash for a side dish and slice some bread for the cheese plate.

Sometimes, Martha Stewart's got nuthin' on me.

By the way, phyllo cups make excellent hors d'oeuvres & dessert foundations for people who are attempting to watch what they eat but still want to feel like they are indulging. The Athens brand I bought come 15 to a package, a serving is 2 of the cups. There are 7.5 servings in the package and each serving is only 25 calories. That means the entire package is less than 200 calories. Divide that by two people and as long as you don't go crazy with what you put inside them, you've got yourself a tasty, fairly guilt-free amuse bouche.

The foodie in my highly recommends you try the goat cheese, raisin, pecan, spice & honey combo I mentioned above. It tasted like baklava with a little bit of goat cheese. In case you're wondering, about 1 oz of goat cheese sufficed to fill 7 phyllo cups when mixed with 1/8 cup of raisins and 1/8 cup pecans.

Day 47

DVD - Max Cardio Conditioning
DVD - Cardio Abs

There is supposed to be a Cardio Abs immediately after the Conditioning workout on the same DVD, but as happened with the Cardio Abs after Pure Cardio, it didn't work. So now I guess I'll never know if it is the same Cardio Abs that is on the single disc that I reverted to when the one on Pure Cardio didn't work, or if it is it's very own Cardio Abs.

I cheated a little bit. I decided not to do the cool down stretch at the end of Max Cardio Conditioning. I figure, I'm only foregoing a 4 minute stretch and considering I'm just going to go directly into another workout which has its own cool down stretch, why not just skip it? Even so, the combined workout total is still just over an hour.

My "cheat" during the main workout was, IMHO, overshadowed by the fact that I made it all the way through the Cardio Abs warm-up without a break and without having to modify for the very first time. These max workouts seem to be doing a lot to improve both my endurance and my ability.

Days 19 & 20

Day 19 DVD - Cardio Power & Resistance
Day 20 DVD - Plyometric Cardio Circuit

My ankle is still bothering me, and it affected my ability to do both of these workouts. I pushed through as much as I could, but found that the further into the workout, the harder some specific moves became. The ankle hurts on the inside, above the bone and to the back. The moves that hurt are the ones that involve a quick directional change (like suicides) or pressure on the inner part of the ankle (like football sprints) or jumping from and landing in a squat (like power jumps).

It's not incredibly painful, but I can feel its weakness as I try moves in the families of those I mentioned above. I considered maybe trying to wrap my ankle before the next workout to see if added support would help, but I am worried that might cause me to work it to hard without noticing, to my later detriment. Instead, I think I will continue to make modifcations to the workout so that I am still keeping up the cardio pace. For example, tonight during the power jumps I just did jumping jacks. Still an up and down cardio movement, but without so much pressure on my inner ankle.

Not falling back on my ability with the cardio is important. I'm just about to go into my last week of this first set of DVDs. Next month, the workouts get harder in that they get longer, so I want my endurance to continue to increase. I noticed that as at first I tried to force myself to continue without modification I was struggling more to get through the cardio. Because the cardio is so intense for me still, I think I need to be as close to 100% physically when I start each workout as possible. Any diversion of my focus to some other twinge or ailment makes it harder for me mentally to push myself through the cardio because I rather obviously don't want to hurt myself more.