PiYo Round Two

I had hoped to keep up with weekly posting, but oops! So here's how the rest of September went down...

If you've been following along at home (Hellooooo! Anyone out there? No worries, I don't mind talking to myself...), you'll know that PIYO Core and I did not get along. Specifically, the side planks and roll ups. Core work does tend to be my least favourite thing to do, so even though I know it's important, it tends to be the first thing I skip. While I feel that PiYo has been doing good things for me, I feel like I need to do some other Core workouts to hopefully get to the point where the PiYo Core workout does not seem like an exercise in frustration.

To that end, I have decided to dig out some of my old school Pilates DVDs, work them into the PiYo Schedule, and see what that does for me. If it feels like that's not working for me, I'll...try to figure out something. :)

So this is how I've started out:

Pick Your Level Pilates - with Ellen Barrett.  I love Ellen Barret workouts. She makes me feel tall and graceful, adjectives which are not in any way descriptive of my 5' awkward self. This DVD has 3 levels - beginner, intermediate and advance. As you do the workout, you can pick any of those levels for each move. I normally do all intermediate (except for roll ups...always beginner with the  roll ups), but after PiYo I decided to give the advanced a try, and most of it is doable (you know, except for the roll ups). Not sure if it is due to increased ability, or just lack of confidence in the past...Possibly a bit of both.

Pilates for Dummies - Was my very first foray into Pilates. Definitely identified some areas where I need to work on flexibility, but not as hard as I expected. Also, kind of boring; now I remember why I stopped doing this one.

Crunch Super SlimDown Pilates Yoga Blend - another old favourite from Ellen Barrett, which I had not done in a long time. This is a longer workout; again, I would say not as difficult as I remember from the last time, but definitely some challenging moves in this  one.

Week 1 - starting from Sept 8 - I skipped the intro workout this time, replacing it with a Pilates DVD. I doubled up on the Define workouts, doing both Lower & Upper in one session, and throwing in Pilates DVDs on the other days.

Week 2 - I was actually noticing a bit of strain in my hands & wrists, so decided to back off a bit and go back to splitting up the Define workouts for this week.

Week 3 - Was just one of those weeks. Things kept coming up. I did one workout. I was still in a good frame of mind though, because I feel like I'm back on my game. A bad week is not going to derail me; I will just start over the next week...

Then Sunday night, going down the stairs I somehow missed the last step, or possibly 2 steps...all I know is I ended up on the floor at the bottom and, along with a few scrapes and bruises, I've hurt my foot and I'm hobbling around. So there will be a short break in the workout schedule.

Could have been worse, no serious damage done, just trying to stay off my feet for now and let things heal.

September Workouts

01: PIYO Drench
02: PIYO Buns
03: PIYO Sweat
04: PIYO Core
06: PIYO Sculpt
08: PYL Pilates
09: PIYO Define: Lower + Upper
10: Pilates for Dummies
13: PIYO Sweat
14: PIYO Define: Lower + Upper
15: PIYO Sweat
16: PIYO Define Lower
17: PYL Pilates
18: WAlk[20 min]
19: PIYO Define: Upper
20: PIYO Sweat
21: Crunch Pilates/Yoga Blend
23: PIYO Buns

The weather was seriously beautiful last weekend. I spent some time sitting out in the yard with a book, which is something I did not do enough of this summer. It's been a bit of a weird summer, actually, and I'm not even sure how to explain why. It was definitely not a good year for my garden, just finally getting some tomatoes now, and not many of them. Peppers are just starting, I doubt they will get a chance to mature. I got a late start, for sure, but it also seemed like things were just really slow.




Hopefully we can still look forward to some good weather, though it yesterday cooled off considerably.