Day 2: Strength and Force Upper + Abs

Hi everyone!

Day two and I'm still alive. :-) I am, however, feeling this workout big time!

I got off to a strong start yesterday and was sore by days end. Little faster than normal. I knew this program would be tough. It's lived up to my expectation! I can say that after today's dual workouts, I am feeling some muscle agony that I haven't felt before. I dig it, despite being a little wiped out!

Here are the headlines:

Workout #1:  Strength and Force

Headlines

1. I still love Mike. That's a good sign.

2. I shouldn't still love Mike. He worked my tail off today!
3. I whimpered a bit for the first time mid-workout. Yep, out loud.
4. One move up with bands, one move down on the mat... alternating is fun.
5. My 48 year old body is feeling the get up, get down, get up the most. Ha!

The Scoop

This workout is a combination of upper body moves: curls and punches to work your arms and shoulders, pushups to work the whole upper body, raises and rows to pop the shoulders. I liked the mix of moves and there's no question that my entire upper body got a torching workout. Even my legs got some action with the lunges included in some upper body moves. Nice! 55+ minutes of pushing it hard!

Memorable Moves

I loved a few of the moves. Believe it or not, Superman Power Ups were awesome. (Turns out, it's the banana part of Superman/Banana moves that I hate. :-D) This move takes you from Superman to powering up into a pushup stance. Kick ass and fun. I liked the pushup moves, although I did most of them in girl form for now. The number of pushups is pretty intense, so this workout isn't for sissies, for sure. Lots of variety - narrow, wide, tricep, octagon, spiderman. The variety makes it fun.

Two of them were too hard for me to do. Or I was too lazy. Hard to say which. <grin> Side-to-side hover pushups were killer... with two rounds, one hovering side to side down low and one hovering side to side up top mid-pushup. Ye-ikes. The second killer for me was pushups with a foot slap. Mid-pushup you bring your foot in and tap it with your hand. Really? Must. Work. On. Coordination.

Workout #2: Ultimate Abs

The second workout was the Ultimate Abs that I'll mix in a few days per week. I will just say this. Within one minute of starting, I was cracking up at my performance and the words "What the..." were said more than once. My nephew Jackson hit this workout with me and he was also laughing within the first minute or so. It's, um, hard. Very.

Headlines

1. My abs may be pretty flat, but they were torched in just a couple of minutes.
2. Laughing does not make for easy ab workouts.
3. My coordination, er, lack of coordination was definitely in play.
4. Using your hands to push yourself up in ab workouts works. Oops. Cheated a bit.
5. I know now why everyone on the program has killer abs. This workout is the bomb.

The Scoop

I will get better at this over time. Today kind of blew me away, although I tried to power through the full workout today. If I keep this up, my abs are gonna pop big time. That's good incentive. So is watching all the fit people on this workout killing it, working hard.

Overall 

Strength and Force Upper is great. I look forward to getting back to dude style pushups. Ultimate Abs is also great, although a big push for me right now. I will push hard on this one because a strong core is so important to support everything else. It may kill me. But I will chase it hard. Beach trip in August = good incentive!

Quote of the day from Mike: "Let's go. It's called a water break. Not a water stoppage." Ha!

Wish me luck tomorrow!
Lis

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