I’ve always had trouble motivating myself to exercise. I don’t know, I guess I’ve just always been more of an artistic/intellectual type of person rather than someone who didn’t mind sliding into the mud in order to score that goal. When I was a kid, I was so nonathletic it was almost laughable. I’d be that poor kid scored low on the “pacer test” because they’d be huffing and puffing for air, struggled with swinging a ball off of their bat, and didn’t know what to do with a soccer ball once I had it. By the third grade, it became pretty evident to me that my legs belonged to a snail in a past life. Fortunately, I did not remain a hopeless athlete for ever as a little thing called gymnastics saved my physical sanity. However, after I stopped doing gymnastics at age thirteen, I unfortunately stopped exercising all together. I learned how to become a pretty decent ice skater when I was a freshman in high school so that I could eventually learn how to play ice hockey (my Dad really wanted me to play the sport because he loved it so much). While I was pretty good at ice skating, there were a few problems.
A.) You had to bend at the knees to keep balance for ice hockey which absolutley KILLED my back.
B.) The puck didn’t really like me.
C.) This is probably the number one reason I was bad at ice hockey – I didn’t want to voluntarily crash into someone (a.k.a. I was not the aggressive type – good thing I’m not living in the caveman era)
So therefore, I quit. Ice hockey was just not going to happen. Ever. While I really enjoyed ice skating, I’d always find excuses not to go to the rink (it’s too cold out, I’d rather do something else today, blah, blah, blah) which in turn kept me from exercising.
I was always telling myself that I would get around to doing it, tomorrow would be the start of a new exercise era, etc. But dude, I just did not want to move my body; I was happy being a couch potato.
Recently though, I’ve decided that I am done with excuses. No more Alex, no more! I’m throwing them inside of an invisible trash can right now **gleefully watches them plummet**.
You might be wondering, what inspired me to start working out more and kick this bad habit to the curb? This lovely lady from YouTube named Cassey Ho.
Lots of you have probably have heard of her before, but if you haven’t, she is best known for her YouTube channel Blogilates. Basically, she teaches various Pilate exercises, each of them targeting different areas of the body (some of them total body though). Recently, I decided to follow her beginner’s workout calender to shed some pounds, tone my body, hopefully develop some muscle (I don’t know how effective Pilates is at doing this though), and de-stress.
I have currently completed four days of the calender and haven’t noticed any huge changes yet, but the one thing I did notice is that my lower spine felt less curved (its called lordosis – it’s like scoliosis, except only your lower spine is curved and no brace can fix it 😦 ). And it makes me look bloated and hurts my back sometimes) and after the second workout, I was actually able to press my lower back into the ground. I do know that one of the benefits of Pilates and exercise in general is that you can align your spine better because it can strengthen the muscles. I really hope that Pilates can continue to do this for me :). In addition to this, Pilates has a whole host of other benefits such as improving your flexibility, posture, balance, and can treat back pain. I always try to think of these benefits whenever my thighs or abs are burning, ha-ha :P.
So far I’m really enjoying the workouts and I especially love Cassey’s fun personality. Her energy is just so contagious! Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so enthusiastic about exercising in my life. She has inspired me to make exercise apart of the healthy lifestyle that I currently live. In fact, I’m pretty amazed that I’ve been able to maintain the weight and shape I have thus far, because when I think about it, we were born to move, our ancestors were moving around constantly, and the fact that I have been barely moving at all is pretty scary.
I’m going to continue to blog about my experiences with blogilates and other exercises I might do in the future. I wonder what I’ll be writing six months from now about this??? :O
Have any of you guys done Blogilates before and if not, what exercises do you currently do to stay in shape?
-Alexandra Spund
Antarctica Rose 