Easy Doesn't Get Results

Sometimes when I’m in the middle of a workout, I tend to say things out of habit. The three most common things I say are: “I can’t!”, “Am I doing this right?”, and “This is hard!”. And every time these things come out of my mouth I get the same reply from Michael. When I say “I can’t”, he says “that’s four burpees”. For each time I say the word can’t, I have earned myself four extra burpees. Typically it will slip out only once during the session, but there have been times when it slipped out more than once in a session. And because I want to do everything perfectly, I will ask “Am I doing this right?”, especially on exercises I have not perfected. I don’t know why I ask, because it’s like he has said, he’ll let me know if I’m doing something wrong. But, it’s out of habit. And then when I feel I’m struggling in a workout, or a specific exercise is difficult, I’ll say “this is hard!” And every time he’ll tell me, “it’s not supposed to be easy”.

The last couple weeks I’ve really been pushing myself, not only during my sessions with Michael, but outside of my sessions by going in for extra lunch workouts and extra cardio. There are some days I’m in there three times a day. Michael has also been pushing me harder as well, so over these past couple weeks I’ve been making the comment “it’s hard” more frequent. And so I’ve been thinking about it the past few days, and I remembered one time Michael telling me “easy doesn’t get results”. I have goals to conquer, including an end of year goal I desperately want to meet. The other day I had written myself a very challenging cardio workout and was thinking to myself “this is hard”, and even wondering what the heck I was doing here for the third time that day. I quickly remembered I have goals to meet and I heard Michael’s voice with all his advice. Typically when you tell people you hear voices in your head, they may tend to think you’re crazy; but, in this case I actually think it’s a good thing. I’m constantly hearing the voices of the trainers who have always been there for me and think about what they would say to encourage me, and because of that I’m able to push myself when I feel like giving up, which will get me one step closer to my goals.

So, next time you think something is too hard and you want to give up, I leave you with a couple quotes that help keep me going. One is from one of my favorite baseball movies, A League Of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." And then the second is what Michael has said to me many times, "It's not supposed to be easy. Easy doesn't get results."

Weigh-in Update

I did weigh-in Saturday, but got busy with work afterwards. And then Sunday, I slept in and then spent time with my family Sunday evening at a fall festival.

It wasn't horrible, but did feel a little discouraged only because just a few days prior to my official weigh-in day I was a couple pounds lower. Typically my trainer will weigh me a couple times through the week, but I don't get to look at the scale except on my official weigh-in day. And even though I lost 1.9 pounds in two weeks, knowing I was down a little more than that did frustrate me. But, as he reminded me, that's still a very good number and after sending him my food journal for the week we kind of had an idea of what the issue was. Wednesday I ate Thai food which is very high in sodium so my body may have been hanging on to those extra pounds from that meal. But, because I still lost, and we know that was not a normal meal intake for me, he reminded me I couldn't let it discourage me and that I'm still at my lowest ever. I have now lost 121 pounds and as I mentioned before have seen several non-scale victories over the past few weeks.

So, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, and take any suggestions Michael has and see what happens next week. And even though I'm taking smaller steps to my goals, I have no doubt I'll eventually get there.

Weekend Workout Challenge

Today I was talking to a co-worker about my blog and the things I post. I mentioned in the past I've even posted recipes and various workouts, but haven't done that in awhile and need to start doing that again. There are various cardio workouts you can do, and I really like doing the HIIT style workouts. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. You can click here for a great idea of what a HIIT style workout is and the benefits you can receive from doing them. I tend to get better results on the scale when I incorporate these types of workouts, and typically my trainer will write them for me. But, today I wrote a very challenging HIIT cardio workout for myself. I had a couple people private message me about what exactly I was doing for the workout, so I thought this would be a perfect time to get back into posting a weekly workout that people can do on their own.

Here is the following workout I completed today. I will give variations of the workout so you can choose what would be best for you, especially if you are in beginning stages of working out. It's always important to push yourself beyond your comfort zone, but just as important to know your limitations and be safe. If you have any questions on what a specific exercise is, or how it works, you can search YouTube for examples. Or feel free to shoot me a message on my Facebook page or my e-mail at sherrie_bullock@ymail.com. Also, if you need modified versions of these, you can do the same thing, search YouTube or shoot me a message. I really hope this will give you some motivation to get a workout in and would love to hear your feedback on me posting workouts to challenge you all!

Advanced Complete Version - 4 rounds of the following exercises (total time 42 minutes)
ROUND 1 - 30 seconds work/30 seconds rest
ROUND 2 - 40 seconds work/20 second rest
ROUND 3 - 50 seconds work/10 seconds rest
ROUND 4 - 60 seconds work/0 seconds rest
You get a 2 minute rest between each round

• Boxing - If you don't have access to a heavy bag, do jumping jacks. Important thing is you're moving!
• Body Squats
• Ball Slams - If you don't have access to a ball, do burpees
• Push-ups
• Sit-ups
• Leg Lifts
• V-ups
• Jump Rope - If you don't have access to a jump rope, do quick high knees in place
• Plank

Intermediate Version - 4 rounds of the following exercises (total time 30 minutes)

ROUND 1 - 30 seconds work/30 seconds rest

ROUND 2 - 30 seconds work/30 second rest
ROUND 3 - 40 seconds work/20 seconds rest
ROUND 4 - 40 seconds work/20 seconds rest
You get a 2 minute rest between each round

• Body Squats
• Push-ups
• Sit-ups
• Leg Lifts
• Jump Rope - If you don't have access to a jump rope, do jumping jacks
• Plank

Beginner Version - 4 rounds of the following exercises (total time 22 minutes)

ROUND 1 - 30 seconds work/30 seconds rest

ROUND 2 - 30 seconds work/30 second rest
ROUND 3 - 30 seconds work/30 seconds rest
ROUND 4 - 30 seconds work/30 seconds rest
You get a 2 minute rest between each round

• Body Squats
• Push-ups
• Sit-ups
• Jump Rope - If you don't have access to a jump rope, do jumping jacks