Ripped #2

[Guest guest]

Wow! What a workout and what a day! My kids had their first half day and it went great for both of them. Then we had their open house/curriculum night this evening and in between I was doing a ton of decluttering and helping them get their homework areas in better shape. I had 4 hours to myself this morning and had to do a bunch of household things, including my tradition of baking chocolate chip cookies to welcome them home on their first day (and barely ate any dough for once!) and I still managed to workout for 1.5 hours too! It felt AWESOME! I started with Kari 's warm-up, first workout, cool-down and stretch from Go: Step for Beginners. I wanted to get some cardio in because I didn't work out yesterday. I had forgotten with the wu, cd and stretch it came to almost 30 minutes when I was planning this but just went with it and told myself I'd take a very fast shower, not fool on the computer and just get the cookies done (I made it just in time). It felt great! I have that first routine practically memorized so I do it with both risers and work really hard since I don't have to think about the choreography anymore.

After Go I did Get Ripped again and loved that too! I went up on weights on a few things. Used 12s (my heaviest dumbbells) for the squats and wished I had 15s. I used 5s for the skullcrushers and tricep presses but I might try 7s on Friday. I tried using a 3 lb. dumbbell on my leg while doing the adductors and abductors but couldn't position it comfortably and those still are enough of a challenge towards the end of each set that I really didn't need it (my calves are really strong and my thighs just are not)! I did the dead lifts and rows with 10s but if we were just doing dead lifts I easily could have used my 12s, it's the rows that stop me. By the end I am struggling to keep my form, especially on the singles. I decided not to use weights for the lunges since I struggle to keep my balance even without weights and didn't feel like it was doing anything for me to use them last time. I went up from 7s to 8s on the biceps curls. I might try 10s next time (and go back to 8s if I have to). I felt better about the lateral raises and front raises this time but stuck with 3 lbs. It would be a huge accomplishment for me to be able to go up to 5s on those and finish all of them without my shoulders detaching from my body but I don't see it happening anytime soon. I'm almost tempted to do this workout for another week, like Donna's idea, to see if I progress more. We'll see. I used the ball for the abs and got a little more out of that part. Between this and the cardio I burned about 325 calories, Ripped was 186 of that. I thought it was interesting that Ripped was almost half of the total but it was only 8 more calories than last time even though I did cardio first this time. Not sure what it means, just interesting.

Tomorrow is the kids' first full day of school and I think after my workout (whatever I do, I haven't planned it yet!) I'll run my errands and then continue on my decluttering efforts (almost done with DD's homework/craft area). Friday is supposed to very wet (we FINALLY got rain this afternoon and evening for the first time in I don't know when, everything was brown) so I'm planning to spend the day at home partly just catching my breath and definitely doing Get Ripped again plus possibly do cardio with it again. I felt so energized when I got done today!

I'm behind on email and postings again, hoping to catch up on those tomorrow or Friday too! :-)