Hi Ladies,
Yesterday I decided to go ahead and do a Muscle Burns Fat workout, since I'm considering doing the program. The first workout is a lower body workout, but since I'm more of a fan of upper body workouts, I decided to start with that one (which is technically the day 3 workout). I enjoyed it, overall, but there were also some things that I didn't like (of course
). You start out with the BOD Rope (cordless/fake jumprope) to warm up and then you do mostly asymmetrical upper body work. Like, you do a chest press for 16 reps, then a chest fly, then a combo all while holding a heavy weight on the right side, then you repeat it on the left side, then you repeat the whole thing again. Between the blocks of lifting weights (there are 4 blocks) you jump rope with the BOD Rope for 1 minute.
I liked sprinkling in the the jump roping/cardio between the weights, though a few times I had to pause so that I could get my bearings before I started jumping. Also, I decided to do the jump roping on my (cheap) rebounder that I have hardly ever used because of my creaky knees (I don't know if I mentioned that I ended up with a tear in the meniscus of my other knee -- I know that I previously mentioned the first one, so now I have meniscal tears in both knees). I don't have the BOD ropes; I just used a 1-lb weight in each hand. If I stick with the program, I might buy knockoff BOD Ropes on Amazon.
I guess my take away is that I don't understand the need for asymmetrical lifting here. The moves are slow, so why not just do both sides at the same time? It felt weird to just do the movements one side, so I used both arms anyway (doing half of a fly felt weird without the other arm also doing the same motion). Granted, I haven't lifted weights in over a year, so I went very light using only 8 and 5 lbs for both of those moves since I didn't want to overdo it or have DOMS too bad today (Megan used 15-lbs), but still, it just didn't feel like an efficient use of time for weight lifting (though the w/o was only 35 mins long). Thinking about it later, this may just be the problem with not being a true beginner weight lifter, but also not wanting to do too much too fast, because I could have definitely handled more, and, of course, I will up my weights in the future; I just didn't want to go too heavy on the first day.
So, I thought that I could just modify and do both sides at the same time in the future with the asymmetrical work, or I could just do something else. So, then I started looking at the other BeachBody weight programs and really, I just don't know. I want to lift heavy-ish (I want my muscles to feel worked out, which I didn't really feel with the first MBF workout. I don't even think that I'm going to have much DOMS today), I don't think that I want to do splits (like LIFFT4), I don't think that I want to workout for more than 40 or 45 minutes on weight days (which eliminates some of the other programs), I don't want the the trainer yelling expletives (which eliminates 2 of the programs
), and I'm not really a fan of Tony Horton's (who has lots of options). All of this to say that I'm not really sure if I'm going to stick with MBF or try something else (I even had another look at JM's Body Revolution). I'm going to think about it more today and try to figure it out.
I also did CH: Trail Ride yesterday and throughout the day did parts of CH Elite: Rope & Ride to make it to over 12,000 steps for the day.
I am also still furious about what happened Friday with work. FURIOUS.
SB - Thanks for your kind words. I, unfortunately, haven't been able to shake off Administrator A's betrayal, mostly because I'm just so stunned that she would do that.
She and I have been in touch about the plan over the last few weeks, so it makes no sense that she would send a message directly to the Language Coordinators (when I am in charge of them and still do some of the coordinating work for Span in conjunction with the actual Span Coordinator), not include me, and ask them to do something else that changes the original plan.
AND, while she didn't mention me my name, there is implied criticism of me in the message and she expressed doubt about elements of the original plan (doubts that she did not express to me the 3 or 4 times that we have been in touch about it), which is why she suggested that they should agree to what she is proposing. The funny thing is that I hadn't told the Lang Coords about the plan yet because 85% of the work will fall to Spanish (which is why I did collaborate with the Coordinator of Spanish, but he is still fairly new in the role and hasn't been trained to do the summer work yet; before I became chair of the dept I was the Coord of Span), so that means that I will likely end up doing or overseeing most of the work. The other coordinators usually defer to me in this situation since they know that I will negotiate the best possible plan for all of us since most of the work will fall to me. So to go behind my back to ask them to agree to something that, really, is an inconvenience to all us (but by default, mostly to me) makes no sense whatsoever. And to think that they would agree without at least one of them being in touch with me first (because even thought I had not shared the plan with all of them, they knew I was working on something) makes even less sense. I'm also stunned because, in general, I get along well with Administrator A and Administrator B. There is a lot of mutual respect there and we (most of us at my job) are not a back-stabbing people. Administrator A did not offer any explanation for why she went behind my back, and I really don't understand her betrayal.
Ok, I'm sorry, I'll stop talking about this.
I'm glad that you were able to get in an after dinner walk with your DD, and hope that you enjoyed your walk yesterday, as well.
Penguin - Wow, sounds like you got in some good workouts.
I hope that everything goes well with the transition to night shift. We're also supposed to get rain over the next few days, but I'm hoping that there will be a window when I can get out and cut the grass in my front yard, which is quickly approaching being overgrown.