It was on a whim that I signed up for a 4-week boot camp for women a few days ago. I thought to myself that it was high time I got a personal trainer-esque situation going on and learn the correct technique for all of those strength training exercises. Plus, I've got my half marathon mid-June, the weathers getting warmer (no more living in comfy-but-shapeless sweaters!), and I need a little something extra to spice up my routine and keep me motivated and learning. Hence the quick decision to join a boot camp program from 6:30 to 7:30am, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next month. And the
Running Knitter makes it sound like so much fun, too!
So I woke up to my alarm clock this morning at 5:40am (I got all my things together the night before but I still wanted to give myself enough time to fill up my water bottle etc), and promptly dozed off again. At 6:10 I jerked myself awake, hastily pulling my hair into a ponytail and throwing on some workout clothes before dashing out the door for my very first boot camp session. So much for my careful planning!
Luckily it's only a 10 minute drive from my house (I want to get some saddlebags for my bike so I can ride my bike there... I can just see it, riding all wobbly with my yoga mat sticking out of one side and 8-lbs weights knocking me off balance! It'll be great), so I was only about a minute late. There was only 5 of us there today (2 people were missing), and that was
so nice because that means we'll get even more individual treatment.
It was a little chilly out but we were all dressed for the weather and we did jumping jacks and slow jogging to warm up. Our trainer got us to do a little mini fitness test/assessment in which she marked down how well we did so that we can compare it to our accomplishments at the end of these 4 weeks. I was about average for most of the strength training, but could do the least "correct form" push ups (and I did 17! These women must have
MizFit -style arms). It wasn't until later I learned that I was the only one
not doing the push ups on my knees, so that was kind of cool (and boy can my arms feel it now). The cardio test, which was jogging for about a mile, was something that I did very good at (I should hope so, with training for the half!). I'm pleased with my cardio and endurance but I can improve so much on the strength training, so I'm glad that that's mostly what we'll be focusing on.
Like with my bellydancing class, the people in my bootcamp session are all very friendly and we're at all varying levels of fitness. One woman has done the bootcamp program before, and another one has some problems with her lower back and knees, so our trainer really focused on showing us the regular, modified, and advanced variations of each exercise. Very useful! With such a small group there's a lot of positive attitude and cheerful encouragement among us, and the trainer that we've got pushes us but doesn't expect us to be Olympic athletes. It looks as though this is going to be a really fun and rewarding month! I'm so eager to get stronger and fitter with all of this (and at the rate that I'm signing up for all these fitness classes and such, its a good thing I'm not taking any spring session classes- there goes my paychecks!).
In addition to the classes, the bootcamp organizers have also given us each a "New Recruit Success Journal" for our own reference. I love it; they've got a fitness log and a nutritional log, with space to document cardio, strength, flexibility, overall energy and effort level, reflections, what we eat and what time we eat at, as well as boxes to tick off how many servings we ate from each of the food groups. There's also a "food score" and "activity score", in which you get points for things like drinking so many glasses of water and working out for however many minutes. Most of you are aware of how much I enjoy researching things on health and fitness, and this documenting of what I do is something else that I really enjoy immensely. I like to be able to look it all over afterwards and figure out where I'm lacking and what I'm good at and improve from there. Keeping a record of my fitness and nutrition is also motivation to stick with it. I also particularly like these journals because we don't have to hand in our journals at the end of the boot camp; it's totally for our own reference to help us out.
I'm hoping that with documenting my nutrition I can also try to get more variety in my diet (as usual). I love apples, carrots, and eggs so much that I eat them virtually every day, so I'm thinking that I should probably find alternatives to these staples. At least with my peanut butter obsession, I occasionally mix it up with almond butter! If you've got some ideas as to what I could use to replace apples, carrots and eggs from time to time, please leave a comment. I eat lots of other fruits and veggies too, but I guess I'm slightly concerned that I might go a little overboard on these ones in particular.
Has anyone else tried bootcamp? How did you like it? And what's the verdict on documenting daily fitness/nutrition- is it useful or do you find that it takes up too much time to complete?
So I woke up to my alarm clock this morning at 5:40am (I got all my things together the night before but I still wanted to give myself enough time to fill up my water bottle etc), and promptly dozed off again. At 6:10 I jerked myself awake, hastily pulling my hair into a ponytail and throwing on some workout clothes before dashing out the door for my very first boot camp session. So much for my careful planning!
Luckily it's only a 10 minute drive from my house (I want to get some saddlebags for my bike so I can ride my bike there... I can just see it, riding all wobbly with my yoga mat sticking out of one side and 8-lbs weights knocking me off balance! It'll be great), so I was only about a minute late. There was only 5 of us there today (2 people were missing), and that was so nice because that means we'll get even more individual treatment.
It was a little chilly out but we were all dressed for the weather and we did jumping jacks and slow jogging to warm up. Our trainer got us to do a little mini fitness test/assessment in which she marked down how well we did so that we can compare it to our accomplishments at the end of these 4 weeks. I was about average for most of the strength training, but could do the least "correct form" push ups (and I did 17! These women must have MizFit -style arms). It wasn't until later I learned that I was the only one not doing the push ups on my knees, so that was kind of cool (and boy can my arms feel it now). The cardio test, which was jogging for about a mile, was something that I did very good at (I should hope so, with training for the half!). I'm pleased with my cardio and endurance but I can improve so much on the strength training, so I'm glad that that's mostly what we'll be focusing on.
Like with my bellydancing class, the people in my bootcamp session are all very friendly and we're at all varying levels of fitness. One woman has done the bootcamp program before, and another one has some problems with her lower back and knees, so our trainer really focused on showing us the regular, modified, and advanced variations of each exercise. Very useful! With such a small group there's a lot of positive attitude and cheerful encouragement among us, and the trainer that we've got pushes us but doesn't expect us to be Olympic athletes. It looks as though this is going to be a really fun and rewarding month! I'm so eager to get stronger and fitter with all of this (and at the rate that I'm signing up for all these fitness classes and such, its a good thing I'm not taking any spring session classes- there goes my paychecks!).
In addition to the classes, the bootcamp organizers have also given us each a "New Recruit Success Journal" for our own reference. I love it; they've got a fitness log and a nutritional log, with space to document cardio, strength, flexibility, overall energy and effort level, reflections, what we eat and what time we eat at, as well as boxes to tick off how many servings we ate from each of the food groups. There's also a "food score" and "activity score", in which you get points for things like drinking so many glasses of water and working out for however many minutes. Most of you are aware of how much I enjoy researching things on health and fitness, and this documenting of what I do is something else that I really enjoy immensely. I like to be able to look it all over afterwards and figure out where I'm lacking and what I'm good at and improve from there. Keeping a record of my fitness and nutrition is also motivation to stick with it. I also particularly like these journals because we don't have to hand in our journals at the end of the boot camp; it's totally for our own reference to help us out.
I'm hoping that with documenting my nutrition I can also try to get more variety in my diet (as usual). I love apples, carrots, and eggs so much that I eat them virtually every day, so I'm thinking that I should probably find alternatives to these staples. At least with my peanut butter obsession, I occasionally mix it up with almond butter! If you've got some ideas as to what I could use to replace apples, carrots and eggs from time to time, please leave a comment. I eat lots of other fruits and veggies too, but I guess I'm slightly concerned that I might go a little overboard on these ones in particular.
Has anyone else tried bootcamp? How did you like it? And what's the verdict on documenting daily fitness/nutrition- is it useful or do you find that it takes up too much time to complete?