A couple of years ago, if you'd have asked me 'Would you ever consider exercising regularly?' I would've come back with a definite 'Hell no'. I didn't really care much for diet and fitness, and in some ways this wasn't necessarily a bad thing as I wasn't overweight and I managed to go through life without being overly fit quite well. However, something clicked in my just before my prom a couple of Summer's ago when I suddenly started looking at myself and thought 'Perhaps I could take care of myself a little bit better'. I felt out of shape and sometimes in tight tops my middle area would make me feel a tad self-conscious. I began to overhaul my diet and fitness level completely. I'll perhaps go into the diet thing more in another post, but for now I'll focus primarily on how I got into the fitness thing...
We've had a cross-trainer in our garage for a good few years now (for what reason I do not know) but I'd never really took an interest in it until that time back in mid-2013 when I started to think 'Maybe I could make more use of it'. Some don't have such access to any training equipment in their own home and have to instead sign themselves up for a gym membership, something that whilst may be rewarding, can also be painful every time you check your bank account. It wasn't something I was really up for, as I knew it'd most likely be a complete waste of my hard-earned cash and I just wouldn't be able to motivate myself to leave the burrow of my bed and embarrass myself in front of complete strangers. So I turned to fitness in my garage (classy) and started my programming myself to do 5-minutes at the end of the day before gradually moving that number up as I got more complacent.
I stuck with that until pretty recently (that actually sounds pretty scary writing that down - no way did I think I would last this long) when the predictable New Year YouTube videos from some of my favourite bloggers with a distinct fitness flavour made their way into my subscription box and I started to fancy a change. I started to evaluate my current 'workout' of choice, and began to realise that it just wasn't cutting the mustard anymore. I wasn't really feeling any benefits from doing it (even the normal 'out of breath' feeling was starting to wane) so I started to religiously scan through these videos to see what the latest crazes were to see if any might be my thing. I was still in the market for 'easy, don't have to leave your house' exercise, and saw that many were mentioning using YouTube fitness channels such as 'Pop Sugar Fitness' and 'Fitness Blender', where you can workout in the comfort of your own lounge without in some cases the need for any kind of equipment. Any others that maybe do require equipment stretch (excuse the pun) to little more than a yoga mat and the odd weight here and there. Result. They also have a huge range of different types of videos where you can start at shorter workouts and work your way up to more challenging, longer exercises. Some concentrate on a specific area, others, such as the one I currently do, get the whole body moving.
I picked Pop Sugar Fitness and, upon having a little scan through of their video list, found a good starting point. This video is what I started with last week (on Monday of course) as it only runs for five minutes but at the same time is quite concentrated so you can really feel the burn even after working out for a short period of time. I workout to this once a day every morning before I do anything else (even before eating) and I find it does a good job of easing you in gently (as it is short and doesn't require any equipment) but still leaves me out of breath and with wobbly legs at the end. I still do 'workout' on the cross-trainer, but have relegated that to a once-a-day slot on the weekends, where I used to actually do no exercise at all.
So, what's my plan now? Well, hopefully I want to continue with the my five-minute 'workout' before starting a ten-minute one (I did say easing in gently) at the beginning of next week. Wish me luck...
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