My muscles burn for team fire.

At the dojo they've started this "clan" thing. It's a competition between three teams (called clans), which involves gaining honor points. Honor points can be gained a number of ways, but the easiest way I've learned is to do extra sit ups (100 per honor point) and pushups (50 per honor point.)

After class last night, my clan, fire, decided we needed a few extra honor points. We did 100 pushups. I decided that I needed an extra point, since I've been slacking in the attendance area, so I proceeded to follow that up with 100 sit ups. Now mind you this is on top of the normal class, with sit ups, push ups, squat thrusts, "dippers" and random other things (like swinging around a six foot wooden pole.)

Today, I am sore. Very, very sore.

The awesome part about today was that today is my "late shift" day, so I got an extra hour of sleep, and had time to take a nice, long, hot shower. That helped the muscles a lot.

Unfortunately, it also means that I did not work out this morning. I'm hoping I get it together when I get out of work to at least pound out a half hour of something, but I'm not optimistic.

This new fitness commitment is not going well.

Slow start

So I exercised last night, kinda. I busted out the resistance bands I got for christmas (and hadn't used, shame on me) and did a couple sets of arm curls, V raises and kick backs. Unfortunately my left wrist has been bothering me, and it decided that this was too much, so I had to stop with that. I did about 25 knees to chest on each side, and about 10 squat/sidekick combos on each side, then settled in on doing my basic kicks, 10 per side per kick. Unfortunately I only got about four kicks in before we had to head to the Soon-to-be-In-laws (SOBIL's!) for dinner.

The other unfortunate thing about dinner, is what I ended up eating. I tried to be good, I tried to eat small portions. But dinner was pasta with chicken garlic and olive oil, bread, Cajun corn, more bread, then apricots, almonds and chocolate for desert. I wasn't terrible, and I resisted the warm brownies that were brought out later, but I still tipped the caloric scale past 1800.

I'm hoping today goes better.

Throwing down the Gauntlet

I havn't been exercising enough.

That's the simple truth. With less than three months until my wedding, fitness seems to somehow have taken a back seat to everything else in my life.

This is no good.

I'm not gaining weight, yet, but I'm not loosing any either. I'm in a kind of stasis, where the exercise I am getting: Walking the dog, getting to the dojo twice a week, is enough to keep me where I am. I signed up for a 5k again in the fall to try to kick my butt into running, but for some reason the deadline isn't enough.

I'm getting married in less than three months. I'm scared that my dress, which is already ordered, won't fit. I'm worried about the jiggly bits under my arms, and the extra size on my back. My dress is strapless, did I mention that?

I'm making a commitment right now, right here, to get at least half an hour of exercise a day.

Exercise that raises my heart rate and makes me sweat. Walking the dog cannot count in this. I need to sweat for this to count. I need muscles to burn.

I think if I can do this, I'll be in good shape.

I'm throwing down the gauntlet with myself today. Drawing that metaphorical line in the sand, and restarting this blog to keep myself accountable.

Even if no ones reading anymore, I know that if I make myself post every day, I will make myself work out every day. Because no one wants to post that they skipped a workout.

Reaching a Goal, Starting back up, and Counting down.

It's funny how the busier I get, and the more I have to write about, the less I seem to post. I really need to work on that.

Yesterday was the last day of a 33 Seigan at my Dojo. A Seigan is a period of time of dedicated training. For this particular Seigan, we dedicated half an hour a day to our martial arts practice for 33 days. There were a whole lot of rough days in there for me, but I made it all 33 days. True some days the half hour consisted of me going slowing through my basic punches over and over, but I did it. Even the couple of days when I was sick enough to contemplate calling in sick to work (I didn't) I got myself up off the couch for that half hour. My rewards for completing the entire 33 day Seigan (besides bragging rites) are going to be the purchase of a new Gi (karate uniform), a new Bo staff and a new awesome sports bra.

To keep myself motivated past the end of the Seigan, I agreed to sign up for another 5k with my Running Buddy. We missed out on doing the Lilac 5k again this year, but we've signed up for the Fleet Feet Summer Fest 5k, which is in September. Plenty of time to get my running chops back.

The other looming date is my wedding in August. August 13th to be exact! I'm DIY'ing a lot of stuff for it, but I'm trying to keep the stress level super low. As far as fitness is concerned, my only real goal is to trim up my arms, since my gown is (gasp) strapless. This shouldn't be an issue, since one of the things we do a lot of at the Dojo are push ups.

101 days to go till the wedding. Plenty of time to firm up these punching machines!
122 days to go till the 5k. More than enough time to get myself used to running again, and try to beat my PR from the Lilac 5k.

Lets do this!