I love a challenge??

Who needs bikram yoga when you can sweat to death in your own living room? Okay, so I'm not really sweating to death. But I manage to get quite a workout. My yoga classes definitely improve my home practice. And I'm not sure why people get the impression that yoga is just stretching. If it were just stretching, then it would be called stretching. And I've never experienced muscle soreness from just stretching. Nowadays, my yoga sessions feel more like strength training workouts. My goal is to practice more at home, especially on days I feel like doing nothing at all. There are many people who get into yoga and eventually cut out everything else. If you can support your body weight with just arm strength, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you really don't need to do anything else. No, I don't plan to give up everything else. I just want to do more yoga. It's just good for you. It makes me feel stronger and stand taller. I'm trying my best to make 5'5 1/2" look as tall as possible :) By the way, I spent most of my life thinking I was an inch shorter. Then I measured myself a couple months ago. So I grew a bit after high school. Who knew?

Now that I'm doing this yoga thing more, I find myself wanting more of a challenge. Some people like to workout within an inch of their lives. They wanna feel like they've just had their asses handed to them. That is so not me. I'm totally okay with not feeling the burn. Sweating is a good enough indication that I'm working hard enough. Yes, I'm a wuss when it comes to working out. No challenge? No problem. But I find myself doing more intermediate yoga routines. Heck, I actually want to do the arm strengthening exercises. What? That is unheard of. My upper body is my weakness. And I hate working on my weakness. What's going on with me?

That brings me to swimming. I found myself in the pool on Friday because I wanted an upper body workout. What in the world? But I skipped chisel class this week. Mind you, this is the class I hate. I call it torture. Different muscle groups are burning in every class. And all the sudden, I find myself missing it. I felt like something was lacking. So to the pool I went. I got my fill with the breaststroke. I felt every bit of that. Front crawl didn't bother my arms as much. After 2 swim free weeks, I decided to throw in some 5 stroke bilateral breathing too. What was I thinking? At times, my lungs wanted to kill me. And other times, I felt like I was breathing normally. My goal is to get up to 7 stroke bilateral breathing, but I'm a ways off. And eventually, I want to practice with the Masters Swim team. But my cardio is not ready for all that. I don't want to die a watery death. In the meantime, I will practice, practice, practice.

Maybe this whole challenge thing is about measuring my improvement. I love, Love, LOVE seeing results in the activities I do. I guess that's why I have a love-hate relationship with chisel class. It hurts, but I get fast results. I went from feeling sore and broke down to feeling normal the next day. My arms look great and I'm a lot stronger. Heck, I'm halfway tempted to do pushups again with someone standing on my back. Okay, I'm not gonna take it that far, but you get what I'm saying. The more I improve, the more I want to do. It's funny how that works. So here's to putting my wussy ways behind me!

Oh, and here's a recap of my week in case you care...

1/5 - Elliptical (50min - 5.38mi)

1/6 - Yoga Class (1hr)
Elliptical (50min - 5.42mi)

1/7 - Yoga: Fire in the Belly (42min)
Dancing

1/8 - Yoga: Going with the Flow of Life (40min)
Swim (53:31 - 1800yd)
Dancing!

1/9 - More Dancing! (Is there a contraption to measure the calorie burn?)