My Journey With Health And Fitness – Time To Try Something New

Wow what an awesome week exercise wise. I decided I really wanted to start pushing myself again and so I committed to walking a lot every day. Even on Sunday which is the day I tend to scale back a bit I walked for hours. As of today I have averaged 30,700 steps each day which works out to about 20.5 km (13 miles)/day. It has really been a long time since I pulled this off. On top of the walking I got in 5 fitness classes (I had to skip this morning’s as I was off on an excursion with my husband). Next week’s goal is at least as much walking with 6 classes.

At my strength and mobility class the other day we were doing bench chest presses. I had committed a while ago that I would not use a barbell without weights (remember some of the barbells themselves weigh in at 35lbs) and I have kept that commitment. On round 3 I decided it was time to test myself so I picked a barbell loaded with 40lbs so a total weight of 75lbs. Sadly (to me) I only got through 3 reps though the instructor thought that was great and gave me kudos for at least trying. I, however, had expected better of me at this point.

But an opportunity to improve has popped up. Starting next week I will be doing a 4 week strength gain program. I will be attending at least 2 of 3 classes a week (let’s be honest, you know I will attend all 3) which will be focusing on improving strength and form. Apparently they are also going to be measuring outcomes to track everyone’s improvement. I’m kind of excited about this since it will give me the chance to really try and concentrate on a new area of fitness.

There is 1 downside to this, the class time. Currently I do the 5:30am class Monday – Friday and the 8:00am class on Saturday (it is the earliest class that day). However, the strength classes are at 6:30am on Tuesday/Thursday thought the Saturday time is still 8:00am. Normally I do the class then go for a 2 hour walk and so I needed to rethink how I can do this without seriously messing up my entire day. And so, Tuesday and Thursday I am going to do a walk from 5:00-6:00am, do the strength class then another walk from 8:00-9:00am and that will keep the rest of the day on schedule. I am not too worried about losing any endurance in walking given the fact that the other 5 days I will still be doing at least 1 2 hour walk.

I’m actually kind of looking forward to doing this. For the past 2 years I have focused more on my overall fitness especially my cardio endurance. Now it’s time to try something new and see what results it brings.