As I write this, I am in Orlando meeting and masterminding with top fitness trainers in the country. We lock ourselves in a conference room for an entire day and help each other through any hurdles, overcome obstacles, and basically come up with the best strategies to get our message of health and fitness out to as many people as possible.
I am always so inspired by some true “players” in our industry who’s sole mission is to help people live longer, healthier, fitter lives. I truly believe that if you don’t have your health, there’s not much else that matters. Exercising every day, eating foods that are life-giving, and practicing healthy habits are at the grounding base-level of our lives, and everything else builds upon that. If your foundation of health isn’t solid, then everything else (career, relationships, family, etc) are build upon a rickety base.
Wavering from your health and fitness goals can sometimes happen (can you say, “hello holiday season?!”), but eventually, getting refocused (whether it’s your first time or your 100th!) is all part of the process.
This weekend I got a taste of this myself. In Orlando, with all my coaches and other fitness owners (who definitely walk their talk), I was asked if I wanted to participate in the “morning workout” before our meeting, and of course…how could I refuse?
I’ve been slowly building back my strength after spending much of 2010 stressed out, sitting on my butt, and running my business. It’s been slow and steady progress, but I got a taste this weekend of where I am and where I want to go.
The workout was simple:
5 sets of:
-
50 “double unders” (you know…when you jump rope, but instead of doing a “single skip”, you try to get the rope under your feet twice before landing)
-
21 Pull ups.
Yes, that’s right 5 sets.
I need to pre-empt this by saying that pull-ups used to be my favorite upper body exercise. Especially being a woman when upper body strength doesn’t come easy, I relish in being able to do pull ups. But I must admit that lately… I haven’t been doing many pull ups. Okay…who am I kidding. I haven’t done a pull up since I attempted to use my brothers pull-up bar while on my vacation out to visit him in North Carolina this summer! And before that it was probably another 6 months.
The most pull-ups I’ve ever done have probably been 3 sets of 10 or 12 assisted, and maybe 6-8 unassisted.
The workout required that I finish 105 total pull ups.
All I can say is…holy guacamole!!!
After watching my amazing coaches (one of whom is a studette in her late 40’s) and friends breeze through it, I thought to myself, “how bad could it be?”. Hmmm….Lets just say it was bad.
Very bad. : )
By the 2nd set, I was having to jump myself up doing “pretend” pull ups and by the 3rd set, I couldn’t even jump to get to the top. Determined to finish, I did so in the most ungraceful way possible, by doing whatever it took to finish. Ugly? Yes. Did I at least finish? Well I guess you could say that. : )
For three days now, I’ve experiences soreness in my arms like never before, and I’m being dead serious when I say that I still can’t reach my arms over my head or completely straighten them out!
But alas, it always takes an event like this (where I FAIL DESPERATELY) in order to get my butt into shape again. So I am happy to announce to my entire community, that I am planning to practice this exact workout, and by the end of our Annual 10-week Your Best Body Challenge, I will successfully complete the workout above in less than 20 minutes.
If you’ve been off track and need a little “course correction”, then I have two very exciting programs that you might want to check out. My 21-day “CRUSH your New Year’s Resolution” program is just that. It’s about crushing your old habits and creating new ones in the much researched time period of 21-days. This program starts Monday, January 3rd and runs straight through Monday, January 24th.
The other program is a big Challenge, called the 10-week “Your Best Body Challenge”. The challenge is a free event open to the entire community all for a small $20 donation to the Silicon Valley Boys and Girls Club. Both are great programs (dare I say you might want to do both?) that will kick-start your post-holiday “course corrections”. Make sure to check them out.
