Holy crap I did it! I actually completed both of the 30 Day Challenges! How is that even possible? That is so not a me thing to do, and yet, I did it! Yah!! 😀
shock! complete and utter shock I finished both challenges!
For anybody who has no clue what I am talking about, I did a 30 Day Ab Challenge and a 30 Day Squat Challenge. You can read on the page just above here titled ’30 Day Challenges’ my day-to-day tracking of the past 30 days (if you want, no pressure or anything 😉 lol)
So how do I feel? Honestly right now I feel tired and sore lol and elated and shocked and kinda proud. I know it’s a silly thing to feel pride about, I mean, people do far more amazing things daily, but I don’t care, I am just gonna feel the pride and let it give me a happy boost. 🙂
My knees will be oh so happy the squat challenge is over, they freakin huuuurt! They did so well though, didn’t start giving me trouble till I hit 220 squats. From that point on however they were slightly problematic and have required some pampering. I don’t want to quit doing squats on such a regular basis but I am going to give them a rest for 2-3 days so I can give my knees a break from them. I feel so old complaining about my knees but whatever, I have bad knees, it’s just the way things go. 😛
The ab exercises sucked. I have such a weak core that working it out, while I know is a necessity if I want it to get stronger, is sooooooo hard and I’d rather work on pretty much any other part of my body because working out my core makes me feel really weak. *rolls eyes* Kinda ironic I suppose, the only way to make my core stronger is to work it out but the act of working it out makes me feel even weaker, sigh.
I won’t know until tomorrow if there were any noticeable changes to my body since tomorrow is when I take my ‘after’ pictures…which no, I won’t be posting any of the ‘before’ or ‘after’ pictures to the blog because I took them in a sports bra and underwear and nobody needs to be seeing that!
I had a minor problem with my ab work this evening, and it’s such a weird you’d never guess this problem in a million years kind of thing lol Last night I dropped something very heavy on my right foot, it landed on the top of my foot with the edge of the object and caused a severe amount of pain, deep breathing, squeezed shut eyes and massive effort to not swear at the top of my lungs because it was late and I don’t know how well sound travels but just in case it travels well I didn’t want to disturb the people above me lol I actually worried for a bit I might have broken something the pain was that intense. It immediately started swelling and walking was a special kind of torment. Oh, and sleeping wasn’t that great because the top of the foot couldn’t stand even the light pressure of the blankets buuuuuuut if I put my foot outside of the blankets it got cold, oy! Such a picky foot! lol
I was wearing runners for most of today (was working my second job) and boy oh boy that didn’t go well. Had trouble getting my foot in to the runner because of it being swollen, and once it was in the pain of being confined in the runner made the foot protest quite a bit. Not one to let pain get in my way I did my best to ignore it and go about my day. Thank goodness I dragon boat in flip flops! I was so grateful when I could take the runners off and wear something non-confining *sweet sigh of relief*
It didn’t look all that swollen at practice this evening so I thought it must be getting better, turns out it was the angle I was looking at it from, when I got home and sat on the floor and compared the two feet from a side view I saw the swelling it still quite apparent, go figure, shrug.
Here’s where the minor problem for my ab work came in. I tuck my feet under my living room chair and use the pressure of the chair to help me keep my form while doing sit-ups, like the equivalent of having someone sit on your feet. I got my feet under the chair but once I hit about the 30th sit-up and it became hard my feet started to strain upwards a bit putting pressure on the top of the foot. Oh dear god that was not pleasant! I wiggled the feet out a bit and figured for one night let the pressure hit more on the big toe area…which was when I found out the pain had actually spread down the big toe but I guess I hadn’t noticed because, well, basically, it’s just my whole foot at this point that hurts lol Why bother differentiating between toe and top of foot right?
Obviously I got the ab work done, like I was going to let a sore foot get in the way of that?! Nuh-uh! Gotta say though, I ended this challenge on a weirder note then anticipated lol 😛
I’m hoping my butt is perkier and my abs are a bit less squishy when I compare the pics I will be taking tomorrow to the ones I took at the beginning but I’m not holding my breath, I’m pretty sure I look the same everywhere, sigh. Oh well, it was still good to do the challenges even if I don’t get visible results, right?
I had also hoped that doing this would make my clothes fit a bit better but so far no-go on that, everything has still been fitting the same, double sigh. I think this means that while the exercises were good for me, and I know my thighs got stronger from all those squats, I’m gonna hafta kick it up a notch in the gym and increase my cardio…I may let that wait a day or two though in an effort to give my foot some healing time lol 😛
Final Verdict: Definitely worth it! These challenges provide structure, a plan, a goal, they help create a healthy habit of exercising on a routine of 3 days on 1 day off, and when you finish them, even if your clothes don’t fit better or you see any really obvious results you still feel good about having completed the challenges, and that my friend, is the best result possible. 🙂
this deserves a happy dance!
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 