The 30 day core challenge

A girl at work mentioned that she was going to start the 30 day squat challenge and I was intrigued, so googled it as soon as I got home and found this -

I thought about it and as I do squats in body pump with 17 kg on my shoulders, it seems easy. Though to be fair, to someone who doesn't do squats, I can see this is a challenge.
Today during the class I counted how many squats we did and throughout the whole class (including the warm-up, squat & lunge tracks) it came to 178 'normal squats' and 32 'jumping onto a step' squats (which I hate doing). I do have to say that squats do work and I have seen great improvements in my bum since restarting body pump and am very happy with the results, but felt I wanted to do more than just the squat challenge.

The thing I do want to work on more are my abs and core muscles, as mentioned in previous posts, so out of interest I googled that and found (among others) this

So I'm going to give it a go!

I have taken my hip and waist measurements and did my first session today. I found the planks hard (could only mange 45 seconds on each) and was feeling it in some of the other moves - it was difficult to move after the Russian twists, so it will be interesting to see how it goes. 

As my motivation is a bikini in July, I decided to add the squats as well, as I would like to get back up to 20 kg on the bar for those, - and just for fun, there is a press up challenge too! My press ups are not my strong point, I am quite good when doing 3/4 length ones but am reluctant to get up on my toes, so this will help with that!  The idea seems to be to do the exercises for 3 days then have a rest day. I will also be doing my usual gym stuff and think this will be a good way of upping things a bit. 

If anyone wants to join me on any of the challenges, then please let me know and we can help motivate each other to continue and celebrate our achievements! 

Bon courage! 

Why?

Why, why, why, why, oh why did I think it was a good idea to raise the weights for the squat track in body pump today.........

The Staff 1

Time to introduce to some of the staff at the gym, so here goes.

First up are some of the gym instructors.

They do the weekend shifts on rotation, so today we had Cute Guy. Please feel free to blame one of my friends for the naming of the gym guys. She used to do Ju Jitsu here in Lyon and practically all her conversations would start 'So there was this hot guy at the gym...' We used to have code names for them all, in fact it was quite a surprise to occasionally meet one and find out they had a proper name. So this habit continued when I joined my gym and I was finally able to start conversations with 'So when I saw hot guy at the gym...'

Back to Cute Guy. He really is very sweet, has a lovely personality and you do just want to pick him up and put him in your pocket. He is one of the better instructors and is good at explaining correct movements etc and keeping an eye on everyone in the class. I regularly go to his body balance class on a Monday night. He is also honest if he can't do something (unlike one of the other instructors), for instance some of the advanced moves in body balance are a wee bit challenging and he can't make all of them. He moaned bitterly about the Crow Pose saying that on the training videos all the instructors would just pop up into it and he really couldn't do it. It makes the class slightly refreshing.
Cute Guy has also been known to shake things up a bit, like the other week when he changed the order of the body pump to make it more challenging, but I think I moaned commented about that in a previous post, so won't go about that now.
I think he's been on a Stretch course recently as today he had us doing some strange shoulder and arm stretches that I have never come across before and the other week he had us all lying on the floor with our legs up the walls doing bizarre moves to lengthen our hamstrings and glutes.
He does have a reasonable English accent and doesn't sound too bad when singing along to the lyrics of the songs. He does get the correct lyrics too, which is not always the case. I also like him as he will go and switch the aircon on when necessary and not have a great debate with everyone about it. The French seem to have some mortal fear of the aircon and really don't like having it on, but believe you me, when you have 30 people in a small room, all sweating - you need it!

There is also Petite Girly who was on duty last weekend. I only ever do her classes when she has the weekend shift, so don't really see her that often. She is tiny. I also am not sure if she is boarder line anorexic as she doesn't have an ounce of fat on her. She does have a set of abs to die for. She is very quiet and just comes into the studio, does the class and thats that. No chatting and interacting, just does her stuff. In some ways it can be refreshing, in other ways I don't find it very motivating.
She does have the annoying habit of dictating what weights you should be using in body pump and will, for example, frequently say that the women should use a small and medium weight as a maximum for the triceps, as I'm putting on the large weights on the bar (as encouraged to by the other instructors.)
I do feel a little sorry for her, as she has to do the body pump training but she only takes one class every 4 weeks, so the Sunday Morning Regulars always know the routine better than she does. Last Sunday she gave up the pretense and did one of the older releases and actually it was fun to be having a bit of variety, so I hope she does that again.

That's it for now, I'll introduce some more instructors another time! 

Friday weigh-in!

Standing on the scales went well this morning and I've released another half kilo.

At first I was a teensy bit disappointed but then realised that back in my weightwatchers days I would be pleased with half lb and this is a whole lb and a teeny bit.

It's interesting the psychology of having a different unit of measurement. When I was in the UK using units of stones and lbs seemed normal but in terms of a goal weight everyone seemed to be focused on a round number of a stone or half stone.
In the US people again seem to want a round number - a coaching colleague was talking about reaching 180lbs as his goal.
Now I'm in kilos I'm not sure where I'll end up, will the psychology of whole numbers apply? 65 seems to heavy for me and I think I'd have to stave myself to get to 60, so do I end up with a number in the middle?

I am hoping that I get to a point when I look at myself and think 'Yep, that's great!' and decide that that will be my ideal weight. the scales are important to help give me the motivation to get there, but I don't want them to be the be all and end all. My muscle mass is greater than last time I lost weight, so it's a whole new experience this time.