Tag Archives: 30 day squat challenge

Another 30 Day Challenge?

11 Feb

The other day I was bored and started searching for 30 Day Challenges. I was actually thinking I’d redo the 30 Day Squat Challenge I did last summer because I liked the results I got from it and well, I know I can do it lol Nothing like going in to a challenge knowing you’ve done it once and can do it again! lol 😛 Also, I’ve gotta get my act in gear and get in shape, these challenges are nice additions to an already existing work out plan but they are also a great motivator. I mean, if you go and do a bunch of squats well, you’ve warmed up your body, you’re revved up and thinking you can handle anything which in turn can quite easily lead to a gym session or a jog (weather permitting) or at least working out to an exercise dvd, right? Right!…well, at least for me…

So I was searching for the 30 Day Squat challenge from last summer and came across this little gem…

30daysquatchallengeSorry it is so blurry, I’ll try to get a better image up but for now this is the best I could find.

In some ways it is the same as any other squat challenge, it gets you up to doing 200 squats in a day within 30 days buuuuut the main difference is that instead of just doing your standard squat you do 5 different squat poses per session. I love it! This way you are getting a more well rounded lower body workout because you are working different parts of your legs by doing the different types of squats! Yay!

To give you an example yesterday I did 6 each of the five different squats:

-narrow squat (feet together)

-narrow squat with a kick back (legs together, do a narrow squat, when you come up lift leg backwards)

-standard squat

-standard squat with side leg lift (do a standard squat, when you come up lift leg to the side)

-sumo squat

For the narrow squats with kick back and the standard squat with side leg lifts one rep is both legs, for example, you do a narrow squat, get to standing position, lift right leg back, then do the same thing but lift the left leg back, that is one set. This way a set of 6 means each leg gets lifted back 6 times. Does that makes sense?

I haven’t done my squats yet today and it is already 1:30am, doesn’t mean I won’t do them once I finish typing this and right before I go to bed but they sure will suck that little bit more because I left them so late lol My own fault though, sigh. 😛

A friend at work saw the print out and asked what it was so I showed her and she asked for a copy, she seemed really gung-ho about it which inspired a sorta brilliant idea in my head. Why not invite the staff at work to take part in the challenge, we can all do it together! I don’t mean we all get together daily and do the squats at the same time, lol, that’d be weird! 😛 Just that if we all know each other is doing the challenge then it might make us more likely to finish, we can encourage each other and we can bitch to each other about how hard it is lol, stuff like that.

I thought it was a great idea, the others? Not so much. sigh. One of the girls said no, her reasons ranged from she is too fat to do squats, to she is too short to do squats to just plain no. Another girl already had a work out plan she follows and doesn’t want to add to it (fair enough). One wants to do it and was all “yeah, I’m in!” but when I asked her today how her squats went yesterday she was all ready with reasons why she couldn’t get them done. The girl who initially was all gung-ho didn’t start yet but said she would today after work so next time we have a shift together I’ll ask her how it is going…at this point I am wondering if any of them will actually do it, sigh.

oh so true

oh so true

I get it, you have to want to work out in order to work out, at least initially. You have to have something inside of you driving you to be uncomfortable, to get sweaty, to force you up off the comfy couch and out the door to the gym or at least to the middle of the room where you then start doing squats which, even if you are in shape are hard work. All sorts of things can be a persons motivation but if you don’t have at least one thing motivating you juuuuust enough you aren’t going to change your habits and actually find the time and energy to do the work. I firmly believe you can always find some time in the day to exercise, it is just a matter of using that time for exercising and not for resting, or reading, or watching tv, or napping, or talking on the phone, or checking facebook or or or. There are a lot of things pulling all of us in a million different directions and almost always the first thing to get dropped when you have a lot  of things to juggle is working out. Like we all forget taking care of ourselves is more important than going on facebook or watching tv.

I used to be good at prioritizing working out, I always found time for it. If my social plans couldn’t be worked around my working out then I changed the social plans, not the work out session. Whereas lately I’ll cut the work out session at the drop of a hat and find a way to make any excuse sound legit. *rolls eyes* Pathetic. 😦

I’m trying to fix this, and I’m hoping this new 30 day challenge will help me. I hate failing and that will help push me to complete the challenge. Also, I am looking at this as work towards training for the 8km I signed up to run, as well as helping me get back in shape for dragon boat season (which starts soon) and just in general helping me feel better about myself. I always feel better about myself when I am living a more active lifestyle but I am a naturally lazy person and have to really fight my lazy nature to get out there and do stuff lol. Since I can do the squats at home I have no excuse to not do them each day and the confidence I will start to feel the farther in to the challenge I get is something to look forward to!…so is the muscle definition! Don’t forget the muscle definition lol Last time I was surprised at how noticeable the change was in my thighs for muscle definition, it’ll be nice to get that back. 🙂

 

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30 of 30

30 May

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!

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!

this deserves a happy dance!

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30 Day Challenge x 2

1 May

I have decided to participate in a two 30 Day Challenges. You’ve seen them floating around facebook and other sites I am sure, there are all kinds of them. The two I have chosen are squats and abs. Yup, that’s right, legs and core, my body is gonna hate me! lol 😉

Here is how they work:

30 Day Squat Challenge:

30 day squat challenge

30 Day Ab Challenge:

30 day ab challenge

Now rest assured I have not dropped in to la-la land and think that at the end of the thirty days I will look as good as the women in the pics buuuuut if I follow the challenges and don’t cheat, and eat well, and keep up with all my other activities I don’t see why I can’t at least look a bit better then I look now…right? *hopeful eyes*

To the Ab Challenge I have added the same amount of push-ups per day as there are sit-ups. Crazy huh? I can totally blame this level of crazy on someone else! lol I posted the Ab Challenge pic on my facebook page and one of my dragon boat team members saw it and said he was gonna do it too, yah for a partner! So I texted him the squat one also and asked if he wanted to join me in both, to which awesome guy that he is, he said yes! 😀 He then texted me that he is gonna do the same amount of push-ups per day as sit-ups and well, not one to be left behind I said I’d do the same thing even though push-ups are one of my main nemesis.  Seriously I suck at them! My only saving grace is I am a girl so at least I can do girl push-ups, not that that’ll help me much when I am on day thirty and need to do 125 of them *scared face* Ah well, that is thirty days away, no reason to freak out about it now! 🙂

I think I will create a Page on my blog for both these challenges, that way it’ll help keep me on track and if anyone is interested they can follow my progress…and yes, I’m aware probably no one will ever look at those pages but whatev! Let me pretend k? 😛 lol

I feel like I need a war chant to end this post with thereby signifying my drive and determination in regards to the challenges but I don’t have one…hmm…any suggestions?

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