Belated Motivation Monday – Last Week’s Exercise Recap

Hey, my fitness gang!

Happy Motivation Thursday-Monday to you! Time to share my previous week’s workout and motivation quotes/pics with you. Are you ready?

Well then, keep scrolling down 🙂 Slowly! 🙂

First of all, Ms.Lena didn’t do a single spin class last week. (booo me)

Last Monday at the time when I was supposed to be at my regular spin class with Melissa I was eating ice cream pie from Leo’s Ice Cream to celebrate the first day of school with my kids.

I know, this is de-motivating fitness-wise, but hey – the first day of school is once a year and both my kids are great students. They enjoy school and I felt like the fist day was more important. And besides, I am trying to motivate you to live a little every now and then 🙂

On Tuesday I had my usual rest day (I know, I know).

And on Wednesday, oh…that Wednesday! I had another weight lifting and strength training with Jim. Oh, Good Lord, was that hard!

But hey, apart from other great benefits for my body, it gives me the right to post pictures like that:

and like this:

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for yoga with Jim that day. Not sure I would if I could …I was sooooo tired!

On Thursday (which is usually my rest day) I had my first real session of Physical Therapy. Now THAT was a shocker… I have a great doctor, I mean it – he is awesome. But he broke my heart last Thursday… For the pas 10 (or so) years I have been wearing 7.5 size shoes, and I was perfectly comfortable in those. On Thursday I brought him the pair of running shoes I injured myself in and…he said I should be wearing size 9 (even 9.5 in athletic shoes)!!! He laughed at me when I said it was going to give my hubs a heart attack if I went back home and told him I had to through away the kajillion pairs of 7.5’s and buy the same amount of 9’s.

But hey, wait a second, how am I even going to walk in 9’s? I feel like I am swimming in 8’s!!!

Anyway…again – THAT was a shocker…

On Friday I went to TJ Maxx and tried on every size from 8 to 9.5 and I tell you what – this is not going to happen…I can’t walk in anything bigger that 8 and I am having some serious trouble walking in size 8, which I think I can manage if I try long enough…

Back to business – the Doc gave me some stretching exercises to do at home, worked on loosening up my leg muscles and told me to bring more shoes next time so he could make fun of me.

Yes, Dr. House… Will do!

I did burn some calories during my session though. Hey, as long as that happens – I am happy.

On Friday I had my usual yoga class with Jim + walked to and from the YMCA – it was good to be back to my usual routine at least one day of the past crazy week…

Saturday was a new fitness experience day!

I went to a Hot Vinyasa Yoga class at my YMCA with Lisa Oplinger.

I had a pretty good idea of what vinyasa yoga was when I went – it’s the “hot” part that I had my doubts about. I wasn’t’ sure if I’d be able to do yoga in a hot room in the summer time… Well, it wasn’t easy at all! But it felt soooo gooood!

First of all, there was no music playing – it was just Lisa talking us through it. She didn’t demonstrate a lot of  poses – so if there were any newbies in the room, I am sure they had even a harder time than I did! It was a non-stop flow with a lot of downward facing dogs, chaturangas and upward facing dogs.

Also, Lisa would walk around the room and help us adjust a pose – I know a lot of people are not comfortable with the “hands on” approach like that, but I found it very helpful. I’ve been doing yoga for years and nobody actually adjusted my body in a pose and told me if I was not doing it right. I am very thankful for this opportunity because it did help me in my yoga “growth”.

The highlight of the class for me was when Lisa showed us and had us try do the crow pose – I have never been able to get my feet off the floor for that one, but with her guidance and helpful tips I manages to get my feet off for a few seconds!!! I was so excited! It made me feel stronger and I felt that all my hard work with weights and at other yoga classes is paying off!

Loved this class! The Y has it on the regular schedule, but it doesn’t fit into mine very well since it is early in the morning.

Although…it’s been a while now that I have been thinking about switching to exercising in the mornings to have a chance to spend more time with my family in the evenings and get the meal prep load off of my husband’s shoulders a little bit on the week days (yeah, I know, he is awesome and I am lucky 🙂 ), so I might do that and if I do, Vinyasa Yoga class will definitely go on my new exercise schedule.

It was a total sweat fest! My hair was all sweaty, my mat was covered in sweat and I was just a mess after the class was over. But it felt sooooo gooood (repeating myself today).

Anyway, here’s what happens to your body (or at least happened to mine) during the Hot Vinyasa Yoga Class:

Oh yeah! That’s the way I like it!

On Sunday I finally made it to the gym on my own to do the weights and strength training without Jim.

I walked to the Y and back and had a wonderful workout all by myself!

And guess what you get for all that hard work? This!

Yep, you get those awesome badges from Lose it!

Question of the day:

What fun and new fitness experiences have you had lately?

Stay fit, my friends!