Pain is the name of this game

After a long, exhausting Wednesday last week, which involved a 5am rise to go to the gym, work all day and then college till late, I realised getting outta bed the next day, all fresh as a daisy was gonna be nigh on impossible [For the record, I’m not fresh anyway, more like a moaning, groaning Paleolithic pot plant, all dragging knuckles and scratching my butt while trying to not fall down the stairs on the way to the loo]

So this week I adjusted my schedule slightly to take my rest day on a Wed and train the rest of the week incl Sunday. Because most of my workouts are quite structured, in the form of a spin, body pump or dance class, for instance, at least 1 or 2 days out of 6 I like to make up my own little circuit in the gym or do my own thing in one of the studios [such as dance about like a demented badger in pink sweats and matching headphones. What?!? It’s fun!!]

I have been looking online, at you tube mostly, for specific workouts and training to incorporate into one of my ‘special McTofu workouts’, today it was resistance band training and sprints. So my workout went like this:

I started off with a 10min hill climb [gradient at 9] on the treadmill to warm up my legs [my effin left hamstring is determined to ping into injury any moment now so needs thorough warming up]

Then onto the mats with a 10kg bar weight to do some weighted squats, I did 2 sets of 15. I used the same bar for another 2 sets of 6 ‘clean and press’ lifts.

And then the resistance band, which, from now on will be referred to as the ‘Spanish Inquisition’. I did 2 sets of each of the exercises demonstrated in these helpful videos and sweet mother of the baby jeebus but my arms and shoulder may go on strike tomorrow, in fact, they are making placards and planning a picket line as we speak.

I then went on to do some ballet type plies [without the plinky plonky piano music or leotard] on the vibrating thingy, what’s it called, the Power Plate, that’s the thing and also did my 3 x sets of the plank on that as well.

As if all this was not torture enough, I decided to take some advice from a few other health and fitness bloggers and try out some sprints on the treadmill. I read that if you do not feel like vomiting right after your sprints, then you aint doing it right. I am pleased to say, I’m pretty sure my green, extremely sweaty face indicated I was indeed doing it right much to the horror of the pretty gym bunny doing a slow jog on the treadmill next to me ☺

So yes, all in all a good hard workout but I suspect my body is gonna shout at me tomorrow, well only long enough for me to drag it to the gym and put it through 45mins of body pump. That’ll teach it!

**Apologies for the numerous cheese-tastic demo videos, once I'm past the 'hippo in spandex' stage, I may create some of my own video demonstrations, for now though, you'll have to suffer it