Boxing and Pump

I absolutely love it when we do boxing for personal training. It is such fun hitting things. We don't do boxing all that often, so it's always a great way to measure my progress. For example, when I did my first boxing session I wasn't able to skip. I couldn't manage to coordinate the rope and my feet. Eventually I could skip for about 20 skips, and the last time I did a session I managed 60 before I had to rest.

Today, I skipped for 2 minutes - 220 skips - without stopping. It took me a while to recover, but I was thrilled with myself. I managed to stay at a high intensity for the whole session, which is also an improvement. Mind you, my HRM is definitely giving up the ghost. It seemed to think I'd burned 75 calories in half an hour. It also had intervals of thinking I'm heartless, so it's clearly not working.

After that, I headed off to Body Pump. There was a slight break between the two sessions, so I hit the treadmill for a brisk walk. I don't understand those people who sit in the breakfast area for half an hour, chatting while they wait for a class. If you're at the gym, exercise! And while you're at it, sweat a little.

I'm getting much better at Pump. My squats and lunges are so much better and I can follow the instructions better. Earlier, I was still setting myself for the exercise when everyone else was on their second rep. Now I'm almost with the program.

I didn't go the gym this morning. I decided that I'd made it to the gym every morning I was in Canberra for the last 12 weeks, and most days I was in Melbourne, and that today I was going to have the morning off. Mind you, I'll be there tomorrow, as I find it hard to fit exercise in on a Tuesday evening.

I had thought about doing my weights session tomorrow, but I think it's too close to the pump class. I will have to work out a schedule so that I'm resting my muscles properly. It looks like I'll be doing some sort of running - all I have to do is decide whether I'm running outside or inside.

I've decided that I have to keep up my level of exercise to some degree. I'm trying to lose weight but I really like to eat. That means I have to burn off the extra calories. I'm going to aim for a calorie burn of between 500 and 600 calories a day. That will let me have my snacks during the day and lose half a kilo a week.

During my p/t session Leanne and I were chatting about the progress I've made during the challenge. Well, Leanne was chatting and I was gasping out comments occasionally (slight exaggeration). I was already doing a lot of this stuff, but the challenge just seemed to compress time for me, which meant I improved more quickly. Clearly, challenging myself and setting goals works for me. I've got the walking challenge coming up at the end of May, and running is going to help me with that, so I've decided that I'm going to work on my running.

As a secondary goal, I'm going to try to overcome my reluctance to ride a bike. I hope Celeste keeps posting all her cheery stories, as I find this quite encouraging. It didn't manage to encourage me out onto the bike yesterday, but I am sure I'll get there eventually.