We Work The Abs

Yes I am on a semi vacation/semi work trip and I brought along the Insanity discs. Am I that dedicated? Not really. I just like finishing what I start. It's a habit I formed a long long time ago and one I hope to instill in W. Always finish what you start.

We did the pure cardio work out which I think is my favorite. It's not the easiest but it doesn't have the repetition that the others have. You do the warm up three times still, but after that it's stretching and then 20 minutes of different moves. Each one works a muscle group slightly differently so while your heart rate is kept up, your muscles get a slight break from time to time and you can really push hard. Plus I like the moves in it.

But today was the day we added cardio abs afterward. It is killer. Shaun T claims there is not a single crunch or sit up in the work out and while that is technically correct, you are basically doing crunches and sit ups incognito. And it burns. I couldn't even do it all. I did every move but at the end you go from a low plank to a high plank and back again and again and again. I think I did three. And then my lower back started screaming at me, so I think my form was off.

Both the hubs and I agree that the cardio bit should be tacked on way more often. It's the end of week 2 and it's the first we have done it. I think it should be done twice a week.

We will see how my abs feel tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a day off and I'm going to spend it at my Grandma and Grandpa's house. Last time I was in Florida was in 1995 and I'm pretty sure this is a different house. They haven't met W yet either so I'm very very excited to see them.

Then it is our second fit test. Time to see if anything is paying off.

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I Feel Sluggish

Yesterday was recovery, so not much to talk about. I did have a good work meeting over dinner though with m new employee. (I love the sound of that....my new employee).

Tonight was Cardio Power and Resistance which I remember actually enjoying. But not tonight. My head just wasn't in it tonight. I had a great day. A great weekend in fact. Beautiful weather and lots of outdoor time with my boys. I hate to see it end with a Monday looming. But...there is lots to look forward to.

#1 - heading to Orlando for a conference Tuesday-Sunday and my boys are coming with. My grandparents live not too far from there so we get to see them too.

#2 - Last week was my last full week at work. I have taken my vacation time as 1 day off a week until I am done. Woohoo for 4 day work weeks :)

#3 - Moving along with my new business and have a ton of such to accomplish, but hoping to get a lot of it done at the conference.

Back to Insanity. I don't know if my legs were just too tired going into it tonight, if my dinner was sitting too heavy, or if it was just that my head wasn't into it (probably as all that and then some) but I just felt slow. I felt a little off with everything and even pushing as much as I could I still wasn't hitting the same level as in the past.

Oh well. Every workout won't be great. Tomorrow is pure cardio but then adding cardio abs to the end of it. The day after is a day off (great timing since we will be driving to FL that day) and then back at it while on vacation/work trip

More Plyometrics...Blah :(

Poor Josh. He is out there working hard. Pushing through. Hitting it. Digging Deep. And all the other Shaun T-isms. I'm not even sure which person is Josh. I'm assuming he is somewhere in the back. Everyone looks way more fit than I do, so I don't see how anyone could get picked on. But poor Josh. Throughout the entire series so far you hear "Come on....Josh..." or  "Don't have your legs too wide...Josh..." etc... Poor Josh. He gets picked on a lot.

Plyometrics again. I did a ton better this time. Seriously. Any doubters out there. I think it is truly impossible not to improve if you put forth any amount of effort whatsoever. Really. I'm really trying to work hard and go as fast as I can and do as many repetitions as I can, but even if you half butted it I still think you would see improvement. How couldn't you?

I'm noticing it mostly in my abs and thighs. Which is where I wanted to notice it...so yay for me.

But I'm also noticing that I'm able to recover quicker. No..I didn't pause the tape and allow myself to recover before hitting the next interval. A late night phone call from my dad put the kabash on that idea. I did it like Shaun T and while I still needed to take some extra breaks and couldn't do everything perfectly, I did way better than last time.

I even managed some good real push ups. Yay me...again.

Tomorrow is cardio recovery which I think is pretty light which is good because the rest of the week gets a little scary. Plus tomorrow is super busy for me so it will get squeezed in late.

Until tomorrow...stay strong!! :)

In Which I Complain...A Lot

I'm tired. Very, very tired this morning. W has been a very difficult eater as of late. He has always been willing to eat almost anything which was easy in some ways and hard in others. I want him to eat a balanced diet and so we needed to up our cooking game quite a bit to match his appetite. But at least I knew he would eat well. The last week or so all he wants is chicken nuggets. Meals he used to gobble down are being outright refused now. Yesterday I packed chicken slop (roast chicken pulled into pieces with mushroom soup and butter...very yummy) and risotto. He used to gobble that up. He spit it all out. So he got chicken nuggets for dinner. The Tyson frozen ones. He eats 5 at a time. He is 15 months old. He can't live on just chicken nuggets.

Well, anyway...we battled through dinner trying to get him to eat something other than nuggets (I lost by the way) and dosed him with his Robitussin/Benadryl/Augmentin cocktail and put him to bed at 6:30pm. Like usual (well, minus the drugs when he isn't battling an ear infection). He fell right asleep. I threw a new recipe into the crock pot (a very yummy smelling quinoa and veggie dish - I would add chicken to it to make it a complete meal in the future) to cook overnight and we got ready to do our Insanity work out.

Things went ok during the work out. I was a bit sluggish, but ended strong. We went to bed at 9 as usual. Then my dad called and I talked to him for a bit. Then a friend called at 10 and I answered because it was out of the ordinary for him to call me that late and I wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong. We chatted for a half hour or so (he is also a podiatrist and really smart with business and practice management so bouncing ideas off of him is awesome) and then back to sleep I went.

Until 1230 when W woke up screaming bloody murder. If he is very tired he can wake up with night terrors, but usually he falls back to sleep on his own within a few minutes. By 1 am he was still angry sounding and so the hubs went in to check on him. He was fine. Wide awake, but fine. He turned on his sleepy sheep, gave him back all the pacifiers he had chucked at the closed door in his temper tantrum (he is getting a very good arm on him) plus his curious George stuffed animal he threw out of the crib and came back to bed. At 2 am he was still at it, so I went in. He was wide awake. I tried to rock him, but he wasn't having any of it. So I let him play in his bedroom for a bit. At 230 I called it quits, dragged myself off his bedroom floor and put him back to bed. He fell right asleep.

Of course, when the alarm went off at 545 this morning he was still snoozing and he was none too happy about being woke up at 640 to eat breakfast. I hope he sleeps tonight.

On top of that I am trying to muddle my way through health insurances. I need to get my business signed up with any I can find out about. It gets tricky though because I am currently enrolled under them all with m y current employer. I can add my new location, but I first needed a tax number which I got yesterday and a NPI number which I got this morning. The stupid online application is telling me I can't move forward until I enter a manager into the system, but I am the manager. It is only me. Plus a receptionist/medical assistant, but she won't have access to any of that information. But when I put myself in it yells at me. AAAGH!

But....it is Friday. This is my last full week working here. I am off to FL for a conference next week and then I took some of my vacation as a day off a week until I am done to do various things. So it is winding down. I still need to figure out my charting program and billing. I have it narrowed down to two very different programs. So much to do!!

Pure Cardio Take 2

"Pride cometh before a fall"

I think that is from Beowolf. Actually, I'm pretty sure it is. Regardless, that was definitely me tonight. I was so stoked about how well I did yesterday. I pushed hard. I did almost every move (except for the v push ups) and never stopped moving. I felt great throughout. I felt great right after. I felt great today.

Then came Pure Cardio. It is actually a relatively short program. You go through the horrid warm up three times. Each time you push harder and harder. But then you spend 10 or so minutes stretching and the actual pure cardio part of it is only 15 minutes long. Then it is into the cool down.

But man, those 15 minutes are rough. it was my stupid legs again. They just wouldn't work. We had to do football sprints (tiny little sprints from a squat position) and I just couldn't get my feet off the floor fast enough. I felt like I was in quick sand or something. I tried. I really, really, really tried. I didn't quit.

Oh, I think I spent most of my energy cussing at the computer screen, but I pushed. And now I feel like jelly. Very sweaty jelly.

And my least favorite of all the workouts is tomorrow: Plyometrics.

The hubby made an interesting point tonight. Plyometrics is based on interval training. I think I've gone on about that before. Push hard and get your heart rate soaring and then fully recover (maybe not back down to 60 bpm, but down to a slightly elevated rate, maybe 100-110) and then go again. But the video only gives you 30 seconds to recover. I don't recover in 30 seconds. My heart rate is still pushing 130-140 when he calls time to do it again.

the hubby thought maybe we should be pausing the video when the rest came. Allow the heart rate to come down to 110 or so and then hit play to do the next bit. that way we are actually doing interval training instead of pushing the heart and keeping it up the entire 45 minute work out. I don't know. Would that be allowed? Would that be cheating?

Interval workouts are supposed to be high reward in regards to weight loss and cardiac conditioning.  Its because each interval you spend pushing yourself to the absolute max you can possibly go knowing you will fully recover before doing it again. It is the complete opposite of marathon or ultra marathon type sports where you go at a pace that will allow you to keep going and going and going.

So, by not recovering we are not able to push it nearly as hard the next time and even less the next. By pausing the video, fully recovering, and then going at it again we wouldn't miss any of the workout, but instead would actually be doing each interval as intended. I don't know....

Week 2 Begins

Cardio Power and Resistance is the worst! Wow. I'm one sweaty beast tonight. Of course it being 68 degrees outside doesn't help matters, but you will never find me complaining about weather like this! It is soooo nice to open the windows and air out the house in February.

I am getting stronger. Both in my heart/lungs and legs. There are definitely some exercises I powered through tonight that I hadn't before. There are still some I stink at. Namely those crappy V push ups. I did them girlie style tonight so my shoulders still got a work out.

I forgot how upper body intense this work out is. Triceps, shoulders and pecs. I did my best, but my upper body isn't so great. I am just about ready to give up the girlie push ups and do real ones. I won't be able to do many, but it is a start.

I think it also helped that we had off yesterday. We will see how my legs are doing tomorrow.

Times Are a Changin

EEEK!! So I've been harboring a secrete for about 1.5 months or so now. A big one. Nope, sorry, it has nothing to do with horses or riding. Well, actually, I can make anything relate back to horses and riding, so lets see...yep. It does have something to do with it. Namely, its the reason all my riding plans have gone caput. All money right now needs to go towards something else, so no paces, no endurance rides for the immediately forseeable future. I am still hoping to do a 50 in September though.

I graduated residency last June and got my current job down here in the South. From day one of work red flags were a flying high and wild. Oh the stories I could tell, but I won't (no, not just to annoy you all) because that would be really unprofessional and in such a small town and such a small profession, I don't need the bad reputation. Lets just say that things kept going from bad to worse to insane. Some people should just never own a business.

My options are limited. The hubs adores his job and moving out of the South isn't really an option because we both love it here so much. I began to make some phone calls to local docs to see if anyone would be possibly interested in adding me to their practice. Nope. Nobody was hiring or looking to in the near future. There are a lot of single or two doc practices and they just weren't looking to expand. Or even entertain the idea.

I made one last phone call to the last remaining area doc. It was a Friday. He told me that he was not looking to hire. Crap. But.....he was looking to close his doors and sell out the building telling his patients to go elsewhere. Would I maybe just want to buy the whole thing??

It was an intriguing idea and the next day the hubs and I went to meet him, look a the place and talk money. It was a really cute building in a nice medical plaza. He built it 30 years ago and the decorations are outdated, but it is functional and minor redecorating would make a big difference. Plus I could (sorta, kinda, maybe) afford it.
Its scary. If I fail I don't know what we will do. I can't fail. We need my income to pay the bills and feed W. Failure isn't an option. The practice already has a part time patient base and while some may leave when he retires and I take over, most will stay. Are they all the types of patients I want my practice to be built around? Probably not. But they are people who need treated and I wont turn anyone away. I may limit certain things as I get busier, but at the beginning all comers are more than welcome.

I signed the paperwork for the financing yesterday. It will be mine in 6 short weeks. I very happily put in my 60 day notice at work as well. Happy days!!!

I'm nervous, excited, scared, worried and all sorts of other things. This is going to be a huge change and I am ready.