exercise four times a week

Yesterday a friend had to rush to the emergency room, so I babysat her little girl for about 8 hours. Of course, I skipped my gym appointment and didn’t fill the time with any other exercise. It’s okay, though. Chasing around two babies is exercise enough for one night! :-)

Today we went to the yoga/pilates class. It was nice and I do enjoy the class, but now that I’m getting a pregnant belly, I’m thinking I’ll need to do something else. Yoga in general is fine while pregnant, but our instructor chooses a lot of positions that are getting pretty uncomfortable. There is an indoor cycling class at the same time that I think I’ll start taking.

Yesterday, as soon as we showed up at the gym, everyone was leaving and fire trucks started pulling up! I’m not quite sure what happened, but we stood out in the cold for about 20 minutes waiting for them to clear the building. When we did get inside, we started our zumba class! I had to leave by 6 and it was all ready 5:30, so we’d have to cut it short. We were the only “first-timers” in the class and boy, did it show! The moves were a lot of fun, but everything went so fast and had so much energy, we were always behind/confused hahah! Well, 15 minutes into it we had to stop because Nicole has troublesome knees and all the bouncing around really was painful for her. I didn’t want to continue and leave her alone, so we finished out our night on the elliptical machines. I figure with her bad knees, and my progressing pregnancy, this class probably isn’t the best for us anyway. It was a fun/funny 15 minutes, but we’ll find another good workout for Fridays!

Yesterday we went to the yoga/pilates class and it was tons of fun! It was just my first day, but watching myself in the mirror, compared to all the other people in the class, I felt so awkward and bumbling! And some of the exercises were TOUGH! I’m amazed at some of these people and hope that with practice I’ll someday be able to get through the whole class without having to modify the exercises! I was surprised to find I’m much more flexible than I’d thought, but right now I’m lacking a lot of the strength and balance. It was fun and I’m looking forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays (when the class runs.)

Wednesday is our day off, and Tuesday life stuff interfered and I slacked off. I got some crunches and super-wussy-girl-pushups in to sort of make up for my slacking.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve made it to the gym—actually, since I first was pregnant with my now 11 month-old son! I am pregnant again and determined not to gain quite as much weight as I did last time and to finally start a healthy routine. I am eating well, but I know that’s only half of a healthy lifestyle.

I found a work-out buddy, which I know I need! A friend of mine has been going to the gym’s free yoga/pilates classes and I thought I’d join her. They have multiple classes every day, so we picked four days that we’d like to go during the week. Now I have someone to keep me accountable, to be there for encouragement, and to gab with to make working out more bearable!

Yesterday we just started out and classes weren’t running on the holiday. She has a friend who is seeing a trainer and the friend went with us to show us what she does. We did a cardio warmup (intervals on the elliptical), then a bunch of different exercises with a (1kg only!) medicine ball and some crunches with a weight bar. We got a good, slow-paced 90 minutes in and it felt really great!