And actually, I'm not sure if I like working out early in the morning (well, at 11:a.m., so technically late in the morning). I was light-headed most of the time, which is bad news for Plyometrics day which involves a lot of jump squats, turning around, bopping this way and that. Also, time management is clearly an issue for me, and while I may wake up at 9:30 which is early for someone who used to go to bed around 5 a.m., I eat breakfast around 10, and therefore can't start a workout until 11, and need to start getting ready for work at noon. So when there are interruptions like the dog hopped the fence on the lead and is now choking, or not choking but is just barking at deer and annoying me and the neighbors, or I need to use the bathroom because the coffee is starting to hit, or anything else, there's no room for the pause button. Sad to say, I think I like working out at 11 p.m. better than 11 a.m.
Most likely it's that my body is more adjusted to working out at night than in the morning, but I'm also on a bad cycle of working out at night and staying up late to cool off, decompress, eat a rice cake or some other small light snack if the workout is intense like Plyometrics and makes me hungry. So I can't wake up early naturally since I'm pretty set on an 8-hour sleep schedule, and even so, like today, my body isn't accustomed to that much work and I get dizzy right off the back.
I think I put in a good effort, though. There were moments, I admit, like the Double Airborne Heisman, where I thought I was putting in a good effort but then Guru Horton says, "you can do it this way too if you're getting tired" and I realize that I probably look more like his alternative version than what I'm aiming to accomplish. The same thing happened with the Circle Run, which coincidentally is in the same segment of the workout as the D.A.H.s.
I did notice progress in the Hot Foot, though, which is typically my most dreaded segment. It's just hopping on one foot for 30 seconds, then switching and hopping on the other foot, and you do that twice. Each time you hop you are making a cross (so 4 hops per cross), which is much more difficult than it sounds, because not only are you using your basic calf muscles, you're also balancing and using your core, plus using weird outer calf muscles and knee muscles to coordinate where the hop is going to land. I found that using the dormant foot to help guide where the hop was doing helped a lot, but even so, it was the first time I made it through the whole segment both times able to make my foot land where I wanted it and not just in some dead spot beneath me. It also went by considerably quicker than the first or second time I did the exercise, which was awesome.
My knee, which is maintaining a persnickety a cycling injury, was bothering me just a little bit but not enough to become a concern. It was less of an issue than my elbow was last night, so I'm not out of commission just yet! I'm actually pretty excited that it's taken this long for my joints to stop bothering me, since my body has been a pain in the ass for a while now, with everything feeling generally broken down.
Oh, right, the mantra. We can easily become our biggest deterrents in reaching our goals, no matter what the goals are. For me, when I have down time, such as in the shower (which is an especially negative space for me anyway, for reasons I won't get into now), my thoughts easily turn to things I've done poorly, people I've mistreated, ways in which I've misstepped. I am overly critical and force myself to remember compulsively the same bad events in my life that I can never relive. It's the human condition. I try to have a mantra every day, something that I can turn to as a constant thought to keep out the negative ones. They are personal, universal, enlightening, grounding. "I am as good as my effort" is one, "Today I am the best version of myself" is another. These are a couple that are cheesy enough to be at the top of my head, and cheesy enough to share. At the very least, Tony Horton offers a couple in P90X, namely, "Bring it!" and "Do your best and forget the rest." Also, every workout begins with a rule, such as "quality over quantity." In my yoga class, we end with Savasana, Corpse Pose, which I've been told is the most important post in the practice. During Savasana, I feel at my most relaxed, most calm, most at peace with myself. After, yogi Jill reads to us a passage from either Rumi or the Bhagavad Gita. In these moments, I don't need a mantra but it's in these moments when the most true mantras come to me, and I sing them for the rest of the day, sometimes the whole weekend is to the tune of a single mantra.
I mention this because emotional and spiritual health are just as important, if not more important, than physical health, and they are all tied together. We need to nurture our higher being so that it will tell us what our inner being needs.
But now, since I have a whole night free without the worry of workout, I'm off to the movies!
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