Power, Strength, and Determination

Week five of Body Back! I can’t believe how fast these weeks have gone by. After last weeks’ disappointing weight loss, or lack thereof, I was a little nervous to see what the scale said tonight. Low and behold, a four pound loss! Woohoo!! That puts me more than half way to my weight loss goal. Which is good, considering we’re in week five of eight. Now I just have to believe that the loss is real and keep the momentum going. I hope next week that four pounds stays off!

This will be another week of back-to-back workouts, and we’re not doing upper body one day, lower body the next. I don’t have a clue what Bethany has planned for us, but I’m hoping I don’t die doing it! Tonight we did something new to all of us, I think. Tabata Training. Ever heard of it? Me neither, so I Googled it. ; ) Basically what I found out (before class), was that it is a four minute session, broken up in to eight 20 second sets of high intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? But of course, we didn’t do just one.

After a nice jog to warm up, we were on to our Tabatas. Our first set was jumping rope. No big deal - jump for 20 seconds, and then you get a nice little break. But then, by the second or third set, mommy bladder hits. I really don’t want to take a bathroom break, seeing as we just started, and this will be over in like two minutes. But then I think, the next one might be even worse – I may not make it to the bathroom if I wait! Mommy bladder wins. I chunk the rope, and sprint to the ladies’ room.

Feeling much better, I’m back in time to start our second Tabata. Upper cuts using our resistance bands. These were tough! Around the 6th set, it was really hard to push to finish those 20 seconds. My arms were weak and burning. Oh, I almost forgot our mantra for the night. Bethany would call out, "Power!" We responded with, "Strength! Determination!" We did this throughout our workout, regardless of the soccer games going on around us. :) Once, we even got a "Hoorah!" from someone in the building. 

With just a short break between exercises, we moved on to frog leg planks, then jump lunges. Jump lunges are fun, but I can't do them long. 20 seconds doesn't seem like a long time to do something, but after several sets, I was exhausted! Not to mention dripping in sweat by the time we were done. We finished our Tabatas with mountain climbers, scissor crunches, and finally plank jacks. The scissor crunches were unusually difficult for me. Back to my lack of coordination, I just couldn't figure it out with out feeling terribly wrong and awkward. I ended up modifying it just a bit - I figured it's better to do something hardcore, than do another thing halfway. 

So that was Monday: intense cardio. And it was great! I really enjoyed the workout. (Shocking! I know.) It was nice to know how long I had to push myself before I got a break. I hope we'll get a chance to try Tabata Training again.