Playing with the Big Boys

I have been waiting for 4 hours to blog about my workout today and it has been killing me! This week is one of those crazy weeks that make it very difficult to fit in exercise. I have meetings after school 3 times this week and almost all of my workouts are after school. On Tuesday I got up early to run before school. I hate getting up early, but LOVE being done with my workout before I even get to work. Today (Wednesday) I actually flex my schedule and get to leave work at 2. My meeting today was at 4. I decided to hit the gym and do some cardio before my meeting. Normally my cardio will consist of a 5 minute treadmill warm-up, 15 min on the stairs, 15 min on the elliptical and then a 5 min treadmill cool-down. Here's where the fun starts....

I LOVE my group fitness classes because they are always changing, the music keeps me going, and I am able to go on auto-pilot and do what the instructor tells me to do. I started my normal treadmill warm-up and though,

"Why can't I do my own little class all by myself

instead of doing the usual stairs and elliptical"

After a 2.5 minute warm-up I decided to job over to the empty boxing studio. I had NO IDEA what I was doing, but here's what ended up happening:

- Jumping jacks for 1 minute

- Front kicks for 1 minute

I repeated this 3 times....

Then I did...

- Football drills for 1 minute

- Lunges for 1 minute

I repeated this 3 times...

Holy cow! I was already 6 minutes into my 30 minutes of cardio!!!

Feel all cocky at this point I headed over to the free weight area of the gym. The boys over there were HUGE! I think that any of them could have squished my in their biceps. Guess what I did???

- Mountain climbers for 1 minute

- Biceps curl for 1 minute

Then I repeated the mountain climbers and did tricep kickbacks for the second minute.

The big boys were staring at me. I am pretty sure they were thinking, "I wish I could do cardio like her!". :)

After doing a little bit of weights I went back to the boxing studio and did some plank work (I hate plank!), some more jumping jacks, some wall squats, and side kicks. Finally, I ran upstairs and did some work on the Step mixed in with some ab work (another yuck!). I ended my workout with some great stretching in the sauna!

The entire time I was working out I could hear my amazing fitness instructors calling out the next moves!  I love my group fitness classes, but I love even more that I have learned the skills necessary to get in a good workout even though there isn't someone there telling me what to do. I burned 418 calories in 40 minutes. In a normal group fitness class I burn between 500-600 calories in an hour.

If I would have continued my workout I totally would have met that goal. My success today was not only in the calories that I burned, but in the fact that I was able to push myself in a way that until now I thought was only possible when someone else was telling me what to do.