May 31st - Workout 1

So last nights workout was a hell of a first day. I call it my first day because I plan to start on the EA Active Personal Trainer's "30 Day Challenge." It is a challenge based on doing about 20 exercises per day, alternating between rest days and workout days, and changing up the types of workouts on a regular basis. Some days might work on cardio with a lot of running and boxing, others might involve things like lunges and squat jumps.

I started off the workout late at night, probably around midnight, something I shouldn't do, but I'm a night owl, so you'll likely see late starts like this a lot. To warm up, I started up the Wii Fit and my fiancee, Maria, joined me for some balance board fun. We like to do Wii Fit together because we can challenge each other and compare scores. We tried and unlocked many exercises. We usually stick to Yoga, but today we did more fat burning workouts. We tried the Hula Hoop game quite a few times, the tight rope walk, some step aerobics (basic step,) and moved on to some Yoga as well with the newly unlocked "Sun Salutation" pose. It was definitely a nice warmup and dished out some good stretching with the newly discovered Yoga pose.

Next up, I moved on to EA Active. Usually I do EA Active without the Balance Board, but I thought I'd try it this time with the board to see what kind of changes would come of it. Most of the workouts were as expected, lots of cardio, lots of sweating. I set the default training plan on Day 1 of the 30 day challenge. Started with a short walk, then a 2 minute run. I haven't ran in a while, and this one (embarrassingly) kind of got to me. The 2 minute run felt much longer, but I was happy to complete it in full. I took a short break and turned on the fan, knowing I had a ways to go. Next up, I did some squats, then some punching bag and heavy bag training. THis is one part where the Balance Board came into play. It was interesting to switch to the heavy bag and do side kicks and knees to the bag, then alternating to the punch targets. I really liked the fact that target punching makes you punch hard and precise, and heavy bag punches makes you throw a flurry of hard hits really fast. It's nice to alternate the intensity and made me feel good at the end of the workout when the heavy bag broke off of its hinges. It almost made me do a victory dance, Rocky style. haha. After a bunch of other general workouts and another short run, it was about 2:15am or so, and I figured it was getting a bit late and I had to call it quits. I was about 60% through the days workouts, but I felt that it was enough of a workout to start me off. It did get me quite a few in-game trophies after all. I have not been working out much, so I really didn't want to over-do it, though if it was earlier in the day, I think I would have.

Before I went to bed, I went to my barbells/dumbbells and got ready for a quick pre-bed workout. I really want to gain more muscle in my arms, so I always try to push out a bit of weight lifting into my workout. I also try to get my sit-ups done, since my belly is the main focus point right now. Since I had already been working out pretty hard, I did about 35lbs of weight on each arm, 2 sets of about 20 reps each. Not as much as I usually do, but again, I had just finished up a pretty hardy workout. I also got in about 20-30 sit-ups before going to sleep, not as much as usual (I hit my goal of being able to do far over 50 sit-ups at once a few days ago, yay me) but it was enough to make my stomach burn a little after those Wii Fit exercises.

That was it. I was done. And today, I feel the burn. I worked a little bit too hard yesterday, as this morning, I felt almost hung over. Unfortunately, I also ended up throwing up this morning. I don't like throwing up. It sucks. Really bad. Perhaps today I won't work as hard, but you know what they say, no pain, no gain. I'm taking today's reaction as good news however, that I managed to push myself above and beyond where I had hoped to, and I proved to myself if I put my mind to it, I can push myself to do a really good workout. I need to find my sweet spot to where I really feel the burn, but don't end up praying to the porcelain gods the next day. Wish me luck!