Sunday, Day 24 - Yesterday was a great reminder that morning workouts really are the best for feeling smug the whole day, and being able to enjoy the whole of your evening, so I got up and threw my clothes on before I could think about it. We wanted to get out and see the Black Forest a bit more today so I knew I didn’t have long, so I got on with the circuit session from Week 11 of my programme. Again this progressive programme is moving towards more complex exercises that combine to give a harder work session than in the first few weeks, now with the 45 secs on/10 secs off set up.
As always for me, the technique and the way your body is moving throughout is the most important thing, there’s no point spending 45 secs doing some rubbish press ups, your body won't get the benefit so everything is about modifying or setting up in a way to squeeze the most out of every movement. That’s where the connection with pilates comes in - pilates helps you to feel and understand the way your own body moves and become much more conscious of more efficient movements, by doing both pilates and strength/fitness work alongside each other you get so much more out of yourself - brain and body working together.
Once we got going we walked around an area in the Black Forest called Bad Wildebad which is beautiful and very dense with trees, exactly as you’d imagine from the fairy tales from this area. The kids were miserable the whole time - tired maybe? Ready to go home now maybe? Who knows but they were a gigantic pain in the arse the whole day and it was a massive struggle to find positives to talk to them and not just be telling them off all day! Thank goodness for the marvellous Roald Dahl CD’s we bought for this journey, as we are currently listening to Danny the Champion of the World which gave us much needed peace in the car on the way home!
Exercises in this circuit were:
1) Side lunge to curtsy - step out for a side lunge, then same leg curtsies out behind, then swap legs to go with the other side.
2) Press up to rotation - do a press up (modified for your ability), then rotate one arm out to the side and up keeping hips in line as in press up
3) Duck under lunge - like a boxers move ducking away from a punch, starting squatting in centre, swivel to one side then straighten up, extending the outside leg to drive the rotation and standing, drop down, swivel through the centre and out to other side.
4) Russian twist arms in a circle - roll back into a curved spine positions and maintain this all the way through the exercise, arms in a circle in front of you and then twist to each side holding the curve in the spine the whole time.
5) Feet up hip thrusters - feet on a bench or log, drive hips up to a bridge position, and then just come back down again
