Fitness Challenge: Week Two

I hit a speed bump this past week in my fitness challenge. I was doing my Asylum workout one morning, the "Strength" one with weights and lots of push ups. At the beginning of the workout my left shoulder was making a grinding noise, but I chalked it up to my typical tension that I hold in my shoulders. (Ask any of my masseuses over the years.) Halfway through I heard a little "pop" and was in sudden pain. Sharp, shooting pain, but only with certain movements. This limited the rest of this particular workout enough that I finally stopped it because I wasn't able to do most of it.

I was afraid I had really hurt something, like REALLY hurt something. I mean, who hears a "pop" in their body and it doesn't mean bad news? So I laid off, took ibuprofen throughout the day and iced it morning and night.

Thursday I had to lay off any workout at all -- I couldn't imagine even trying to inline skate with my shoulder giving me that much hurt at every little jostle. Through this experience I learned that we rely on our shoulders for a lot of movements that I had taken for granted. Putting a shirt on. Steering a car. Answering the phone. Closing a door. And you have no idea how much you turn over in your sleep in the night until it hurts to do so and you wake up every time your sleeping body tries to do it.

Don't take your shoulders for granted, that's all I have to say.

On my drives to and from work (which, you may know if you follow my blog, are often quite lengthy), I massaged it as best I could, often pressing to the point where I had to breathe through the pain.

And shockingly, by Friday morning I was back to my workout. They were workouts that did not have as much shoulder work on them, and whenever push-ups or other shoulder intense activities were required I modified the exercise. But I managed through them.

And Saturday I managed to get TWO workouts in, something I previously thought ridiculous. I mean, once you work out, you're done, right? Oh no, this is the program, welcome to it. So I did my "Vertical Plyo" workout in the morning (which currently sucks, by the way, which means when I finally master it I'm going to LOVE it), and in the afternoon joined my coach Gianna at a Fit Club gathering for a 55 minute "Insanity" workout. We moved. We pushed. We encouraged each other. And we were all proud of ourselves afterwards for pushing ourselves as far as we could go.

I'm enjoying my Shakeology lunches as well. I mean really, what's the difference between a tasteless microwave meal that leaves you hungry an hour later, or a chocolate shake (CHOCOLATE, you hear??) that fills you up for the rest of the afternoon? And in these past two weeks I've dropped 4 pounds, and am noticing, some definition in my arms and legs that didn't used to be there.

In a nuthshell, I'm thrilled.

I leave you with a video I posted to our challenge group's wall this past week. Our coach Gianna has designated Friday as "Fun Fit Friday" and asked members to post videos of how we're incorporating fitness into our every day activities. Gianna's example was a video of her doing squats while brushing her teeth.

This video was my reply, which was met with much laughter and smiles.