/ Pushup challenge

[Guest guest]

Oh god I hate mornings like that!  Or when you try 3 or 4 dvd's and none of them " feel right " for the mood/body at the moment. I too need to do the pushup challenge.  Now that I'm not doing the heavy lifting with Noel I need to force myself to challenge myself.  

When do we start?

 

After wrestling with the DVD & the VCR (had a tape stuck in it from last week I'd forgotten to put away) and dealing with a brief power outage, my 20 minute workout ended up taking closer to 45 and now I'm rushing but want to post this quickly. After 3 step workouts, Kathy does a short lower body workout using the step that is mostly squats. After that it is abs on the step. She and the backgrounders show beginner, intermediate and advanced ways to position the step. I started with the advanced configuration (head declined on one riser with feet up on 3) and that was fine for regular crunches. Then we went into something more like an " elevator " crunch where momentum doesn't help much and I was struggling too much so I went to intermediate and that worked well but was a little too easy (guess I should have struggled). Next was lower abs, lifting hips off the step and I had to go to floor to get anywhere near getting my hips up! I've got good overall core strength but apparently not my lower abs! I can't remember what was after that but I did the rest on the step with it in the intermediate position. After abs was upper body, again, all on the step. It started with 2 sets of pushups with hands on the step. I did 8 of 10 on my toes for the first set and 6 out of 10 in the 2nd. I need to do the pushup challenge again, I've become such a wimp (I know I keep saying that but haven't started and am not sure when I will). She said use heavy weights for the next part so I grabbed a 10 for back work and then she defined heavy as, I think 3-5 lbs! You are seated on the step for most of these and I do find that position much harder than standing. My 10 was fine until we did single arm bicep using the same arm... I dropped to a 7 but could have probably gone with 8 and had I known how long the set was I might have forced myself to stick it out with the 10. There were tricep dips too and the shoulders killed me. It was just lateral raises (a lot of them) and I used 5 lbs which are heavy enough standing but I did them all. Ouch. After that there was a stretch (again, using the step) and I was done. Not a bad 20 minute workout but not one I'd probably reach for often (you do have to keep repositioning the step between lower, abs and upper which cuts into the time a little too). Off to work.