BodyRockTV - 30 Day Challenge: Week 1

In December I kept seeing images on Pinterest of ridiculously fit women watermarked with a bodyrock.tv logo.  When I clicked on a couple of these pins, the pinners' comments beneath the photos kept saying the site had quick but effective workouts. 

I know that when it comes to exercise you get out what you put in, but I also know that the workouts I was doing from my brother's site focused on quality rather than quantity and rarely took more than 30 minutes (....mind you, I told him anything more than 30 min probably wouldnt' happen so that may be why mine were short!).

As I mentioned in my first post of 2012, I completely fell off the fitness wagon last year and have been feeling pretty blob-ey.  Since my New Year's goal is to focus on doing things that make me feel happy with who I am, getting myself moving and strong again was at the top of my to do list.

After seeing this type of picture over and over while being a Pinterest couch potato, I ended up clicking on a '30 Day Fitness Challenge' pin that came up one day.  I immediately sent a message to my cousin A and asked if she'd be interested in doing it with me.  We both took a closer look and with the promise of short workouts at home with little equipment, we agreed to stick it out for a month together.

One of my cousin's first questions about the commitment was whether we'd have to change what we ate. My response was an emphatic NO. I don't do diets. I had a destructive relationship with food in my late teens & early twenties and the only way to keep that part of my brain healthy is to put zero restrictions on what I eat. Having said that, I have consistently found that when I devote time and effort to exercising, I naturally start choosing more healthy foods for my meals. Plus my munchiest time of day is at night and after sweating up a storm, the only thing I want to do is drink copious amounts of fluids.  

We've now completed week 1 of the fitness challenge and I'm SO glad we're doing it, but MORE glad that A agreed to do it with me.  After the kids go down, getting myself geared up to workout can be challenging, but knowing that A was expecting me to get it done has kept me on track.

Here's what we think so far...  The workouts are really good.  Five days a week (Mon-Fri) are focused on intense cardio for 12 minutes where you complete a series of exercises in 12 sets of 50 seconds with 10 seconds rest between each set.  Mon/Wed/Fri there's also a set of exercises to build strength. 

I've invested around $65 in a door mounted pull-up bar, a dip station that attaches to the pull-up bar and 2 bags of No Name 2kg rice that I've put into a small backpack to replace the sandbags they use.  I have free weights at home that make an appearance for the strength training and I downloaded an interval timer app to my phone.

You do have to spend some time writing out the exercises and studying the videos on the site to see what you're doing.  I enlisted DH's help a couple nights to record the number of times I completed the exercises within a set because some of them were complicated.  Plus that 10 seconds goes by really quickly as you get yourself set-up to do the next set.  I hope that as the weeks continue I'll become more familiar with the terminology and associated movements. 

Both A and I have definitely noticed that we're feeling stronger through our core and in our arms.  It's amazing that after only a week we can feel that change.  I don't see any differences yet, but A says her husband noticed it in her arms.  I've taken before pictures and measurements and will take weekly pictures on Mondays to see if there is in fact a difference in how my body looks.  I *may* post those pics depending on the results.

To be clear, my goal isn't to lose weight.  I don't think I'm overweight in the least, I miss being fit and strong and that's the primary purpose of doing the fitness challenge.  Mind you, if at the end of this I had a hint of the abs on the girls in the pics above...I wouldn't complain!

I'll let you know how week 2 goes.  If you're interested in taking the challenge, here's the first workout!

- Jacs