System Shocker

I have a feeling my posts are going to be fewer and fewer during the nice months because it takes a rainy day like today to get me back at it. Ever since I started having issues with my knee and shins and thus took a break from my running routine, I've felt like my workouts have been extremely sub par. I mean, I've been going to the gym 6-7 days/week still but just not feeling like its really making any difference to my physique and overall fitness. I dunno, maybe its all in my head. Maybe its that I've been talked into getting an afternoon iced cream a few too many times lately while bored at work haha. Whatever the reason though, I know I need to switch things up again to get myself re-energized and shock my muscles into growth mode.

First things first, a major stretch-out of my too tight muscles needed to occur before I could feel like I had a full range of motion again so this morning I rose bright and early and attended the 8am yoga class at World's. I was  delighted to find that the weird face-touching-with-greasy-fingers instructor was no longer there but rather one of the woman who used to take the class was now the instructor. She spent a little too much time with some boring meditation crap at the beginning but once she got going, despite keeping the moves pretty basic, I felt like I got a good overall stretch of my major muscle groups...and no human contact to boot haha! Of course as seems to be the case with many yogis, they are in their own little world of hippie land and pay no attention to schedules so by the time she wrapped up 15 minutes late, my bladder was bursting from the Celcius I had downed pre-class! Anyway, I do feel that it was a successful 75 minutes of my day despite the discomfort toward the end. I ended my gym sesh with incline side crunches on the back extension machine (3 sets of 12 each leg), leg lifts on a bench with a stability ball held between my feet (3 sets of 12), and 15 mins on the elliptical.

I had originally wanted to do spinning class this morning because I'm in desperate need of some good sweaty cardio to rid my body of toxins (which may or may not be imaginary haha), however the 9am class was cancelled and I didn't feel like sticking around until the next one at 11:15.  My plan is now to try to make it to the 10am class tomorrow (this may be difficult since I'm about to go to a BBQ where I know there's going to be lots of alcoholic temptations!). Supposedly spinning is little to no impact on your knees so I'm thinking it may be a good cardio alternative until my knee is back to normal. It probably sounds like I'm a major complainer right now but I seem to have hurt my left ankle as well, probably from the un-supportive sandals I was wearing yesterday, so while I'd like to get back into some group fitness classes in order to add something different to my usual routine they're going to have to wait until this new issue goes away! Anyway, time to go prepare for my rainy-day BBQ. Until next time...keep shocking the system, Gym Rats!

p.s. Whoever wrote the comments to my last post, please send me a private message on Facebook since you obviously know who I am....I've narrowed it down two three people who I think are the only ones knowledgeable enough to write those suggestions :)

p.p.s. If any of you Gym Rats have some good ways you like to shock your system when you are feeling like you're in a workout run, please share them below!