This was week number 5 (of 8) for Fit League and I have to say I am pretty happy with how it's going.
But before I talk about why I'm happy, I should take a step back to last week. After I wrote that post about how just being there is half the battle I really struggled through that work out. We did our usual warm up of jogging, butt-kicks, high knees, crossovers, jumping jacks, lunges and squats, and then it was on to the workout.
We did some team running drills where we were paired up, one partner would do a series of shuttle runs while the other did push ups and then switched off. We did this 4 times, two of the times instead of push ups we did squats. I'm not a fast runner, so my poor partner did more than his fair share of push ups.
Following that they divided everyone into 3 groups, one group per trainer, and we did a circuit of squats with a jump up, push ups, burpees, lunges, mountain climbers, leg raises each for 1 minute. We went around in the circuit 3 times.
By the point I was feeling a little iffy, I had acid reflux which was made worse by the up and down of the circuit and I was extremely hot. After a short break we started another set of team running drills. This time in teams of 4 we did relay races up and down the soccer field. We did a series where we each went out and back 4 times, in between each series we did push ups. After two different types of these running relays we finished up and they brought us in to do some stretching.
As I stopped moving I realized I was hotter than usual, not nearly as sweaty as I should be, and my acid reflux was flaring and making me feel like I needed to vomit. So I skipped out on the stretching and headed to the locker room. I was able to cool myself down with a cold wet papertowel and by sitting down and getting my breathing under control. I'm not sure what it was that made me feel so sick. Did I not eat enough or eat too much before hand? Did I not drink enough water during the day or too much while I was running around? Did I simply overheat? I'm glad I made it through the workout, but I did not like that feeling.
But this week. This week we started being retested on the things we've already done to see if we've improved. So as usual we started with a warm up where I noticed that for the first time since we started I didn't have to walk part of the time we were jogging, and that I was able to keep up enough to do the full exercises (butt kicks, lunges, etc). And then we retook our push up test. I did 21 push ups in 1 minute compared to the 18 I did the first week. Once again while we waited for others to take their test, we tossed a medicine ball around. And then we retook the 30 yard shuttle run test. I shaved off a full 20 seconds from my time; coming in at 1:49 this week compared to the 2:09 the first time. After that we did some more running relays.
It's nothing earth shattering but it felt good to know I had improved. And to think that was just by doing this once a week. Imagine if I integrated some of these exercises into a workout routine during the rest of the week?
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