The FXB Chronicles

Day 8- woohoo, back to something I can at least pretend to be good at. Well, at least until it comes to the standing hip flexion thingy. Lets see, hold a medicine ball in one hand, arm out, and pivot on your hip raising your foot behind you and use your glute/hamstring to lift yourself back to vertical. Oh shit, talk about a balance killer. My poor coach... She saw me struggling and suggested I try using the figure 8 instead of the medicine ball. Oops, that just made it worse now that I'm actively pulling up on my planted foot at the top making me even more unsteady. Ahh well, I just need to activate all those small balance muscles to help keep me on my feet. Just another step in the line of getting fitter overall. Prior to class we planked for 1:40 and I stayed after a bit to do a few side planks and lower back extensions to balance out the ab work we did. Shooting to hit 60 minutes on the bike trainer tonight. It'll be interesting to see how the legs feel. I currently imagi...

Day 7, starting off week 2 with another round of kickboxing. Our coach was teaching class this morning and she kicked our butts once again. Thankfully no new punches or kicks today and we instead focused a bit more on speed work and form. I'm still finding myself lost about every minute or so forgetting what order I'm supposed to be doing stuff in. I did get a little better on my roundhouse today. My hip/waist rotation got a lot better and it felt like I connected with a few good kicks here and there, plus I was starting to get my leg to recoil without just dropping it to the floor. I shared a bag with a FIT member today and she was very complimentary of my efforts and abilities. She gave me some advice to maybe slow down a bit and reset between punches/kicks because I was outpacing a lot of the class. I'm thinking she probably also was concerned I might keel over from a heart attack considering I had my full sweat going and had to pause about every minute or two to kee...

Sunday was (is) supposed to be our cheat day, fun day, whatever you want to call it, but essentially a break from diet and exercise to indulge our desires built up during the week and get them cleared out so we can have productive days the remaining 6 per week. I actually ended up cheating a bit Friday night with a 4 oz pour of beer that I'd been chilling from my stash and then had another 16 oz beer Saturday night. So, Sunday, I opted (and will most like continue) to at least stick pretty closely to the diet plan and I also threw in an hour trainer workout on the bike last night. I was hoping for a 2ish hour ride outside, but a full day of projects around the house trumped that idea. I can definitely tell I'm down about 5-10% off my peak power from earlier this year, but that's also to be expected given my uptick in running and adding FXB which has left a lot less riding time than I'm used to. All in all about the only real struggle from yesterday was trying to get my ...

Day 6, another upper body strength day. I liked today better than the first day's routine. Seems like these variations either weren't quite as taxing or at least I could do a better job of working through the sets even with some banding up. I added a 2:30ish plank and some side planks after the class to keep going with my core work. Overall I felt decent on this workout even with a pretty short sleep night prior. After the workout it was basically on the go for a lot of the day. I did put in a 6.5 mile run between dropping one daughter off at rehearsal and waiting for the other's soccer game to start. Pushed a pretty hard pace the whole time and was definitely tired and finished, but not overly sore when I was done. Oh ya, I also shot some home pics after week 1. I meant to do home pics last week to kick things off, but never got a shot. These are post workout. Its a start... I didn't really notice much of any change this week so probably not going to mat...

Day 5, back to kickboxing. Yeesh, I think I might be getting worse instead of better in my coordination. We added hooks to our jabs and crosses today. When I got it right, they felt good though. Man, I didn't think I could sweat much more than previous days, but according to my coach, I left some "level 10" on the floor around me. Ya think?! Phew, literally soaked from head to toe when I was done. My roundhouse kicks really suck. My balance and kick coordination definitely are hindering me. My coach has helped me a couple times trying to get that right form and snap, but man, my kicks aren't anything like what she can snap the bag at. Strong legs do not equal strong kicks. The ability to carve corners on a bike don't equal the ability to stay upright pivoting on one leg. Learning just how limited my actual fitness is comparative to other dynamic movement needs. Mostly a one trick pony I guess. Today was the day everything started hurting. I woke up and was in ...

Day 4, lower body workout today which I was kind of hoping should be my strength. I got a nice compliment from my coach telling me my lunges were amazing. Heh, at least I have that going for me. At least I saved the nearly falling over until later in the class... I managed to work through most of the exercises pretty easily and can band up at least 1 or 2 in most cases next time. I couldn't really figure out the whole inner thigh exercise so I may need to get some form help on that. Even after my coach tried to show me, it was still a struggle. The only other questionable one was the lower ab exercise where we had a medicine ball between our knees. Something about that particular exercise seemed more prone to hurting than helping, but I'll keep giving it a shot. Made it through the workout in pretty decent shape without too much soreness or fatigue sitting in yet. Added a run tonight while waiting for my youngest in karate. May not have been the smartest thing I've ever...

Day 3, time for another round of kickboxing. After the ridiculousness of basically forgetting any semblance of coordination on day 1, I was hoping to at least get a little better job done of keeping the order of my punches and kicks straight today. Ya, that didn't happen. I felt slightly less like a fish out of water, but sure enough, maybe a 1/3 of the way into the class I was back to trying to figure out which hand was which and why I couldn't seem to connect what I was doing with what the instructor was telling us. On the plus side, I can flail my body around well enough to drive my cardio up to a very high sweat level. Good thing they provide a mop and spray for after class. I have a feeling I'm going to be needing it 3 days a week. Another solid workout and thus far, I haven't been dragging too much butt in the mornings and seem to have found a decent groove. I added a bike ride in tonight to make sure I didn't lose all my cycling fitness. For as little a...