Last week was the final one in my Nike Training Club “Lean Fit” plan, and I left it feeling quite transformed from the weakling that couldn’t quite get to 10 push-ups in a go. (Now I can, but I still have to do them on my knees.) It also gave me quite a different perspective on how much exercise one needs to get in shape.
I’ve spent years training about an hour or more each day, but in the past few weeks exercising four to five days a week for less than an hour a day, I’ve managed to make myself feel and look good. As the saying goes, there are many ways to skin a cat; so there are also many ways to control weight, many ways to shape the body, and many kinds of fitness to pursue. The time will come when I can regain my endurance and swim, bike, and run long again, but for now I am quite happy dabbling in all sorts of exercise.
core control and upper-body strength
these legs took some hard work, so I’m showing them off
The kinds of exercise will now include swimming during my recovery days. I’ve just gotten a resupply of Dolfin swimsuits and I am loving the Bella ultra low back line. I’m trying to rebuild the tan I’ve lost (just so I don’t look so pale!) and the low back and thin straps allow for minimal tan lines while still keeping everything in place.
poolside wearing my Dolfin Bellas ultra low back
Because I had such a good experience using the Nike Training Club app the past few weeks, I’ve embarked on another training plan with them. This time I’m taking on the Bodyweight Only plan, which will assign workouts that make use just of my body weight or fractions thereof. This is not as easy as it sounds — I weigh 127 pounds on a good day!
The one kink I encountered in using the Nike Training Club app is that if their servers happen to be down, the app won’t allow you to access the workout content, unlike the Nike Running app which you can use even when disconnected from the Internet. This happened to me last Friday so I ended up downloading the Fitbit Fitstar app and the Fitness First CustomFit app. While these two apps give you access to some good workouts, their training plans come as an additional in-app purchase. Bummer! So as long as their servers are up I’ll gladly still keep using the NTC app.
For myself at this point it’s hard to set running and triathlon goals, because I’m “waiting for the other shoe to drop”. I’ve had so many false starts in the past half-year and wasted a race registration or two. I want to make sure my body’s up to the long workouts again, otherwise that vicious cycle will go on and on. A 30-minute hard run still makes me feel really fatigued.
It’s almost as if someone’s hacked into my body’s “fitness bank” and deleted all records of previous deposits… Mr. Robot, is that you? I’m just making new deposits and hopefully I’ll have enough “savings” someday to get back into racing.
yeah I just wanted to work this photo into the blog post 😉
