Another Brain Dump

Many thoughts, but not much time. Here, in no particular order, is what's going on in my world:

Somersaults with Stacy

My friend Stacy works at a gymnastics and trampoline gym, and she helped me to do a somersault last week. I was nervous and fairly certain I didn't have the spinal flexibility to do it. But with her encouragement, it happened. So now that I can do a somersault, a no-wall handstand is closer than ever!

Gymnastics, Part 2

So it was back to San Francisco on Sunday for the Gandy's. Tucker did great, taking 5th all around, and medaling in 5 of 6 events. The bigger deal is that he's IN for the state championships. And in a turn of events that has us feeling a little whiplash-ey, both kids are considering staying with gymnastics. I'm just going to pray for wisdom for my kids and know that there are benefits either way.

The Tornado that is my Brain

I spend a LOT of time learning more about my oh-so-new profession. Sitting on the bleachers in San Francisco, I was reading about combining kettlebell training, anaerobic drills, and standard lower body exercises to help women lose fat. Last night I was watching kettlebell training videos. This morning I was reading from recent CrossFit journals about techniques for teaching deadlifts and Turkish get-ups.

Part of what's hard is there's SO MUCH I need to know, and knowing what to spend time, attention, and money on is tricky. Right now I'm researching getting a BodyBugg, and how that would work for my clients. I'm also looking at Apex certification (nutrition and fitness). I'm reading a book on motivation (fantastic book, by the way -- it's called "This Year I Will..." by M.J. Ryan, and it covers the science and the psychology of how we can work to make the changes we want to make). With Tim's help, I'm setting up a system to track expenses and income (thank you, Tim -- you excel at what stresses me out, and I'm so grateful!). And over the years I've torn pages out of magazines with exercises for virtually everything, and I'm trying to get those organized in a way that allows me to use them to help keep client workouts fresh and interesting.

(Hope that didn't sound like a complaint -- it's just that seeing it on paper helps me to understand why my brain feels so full sometimes!)

Yesterday's Workout

This was from CrossFit, and I think it should be titled "Pain Storm!" So here's the workout:

20 pullups
30 pushups
40 crunches
50 squats

And you did this progression 5 times, with 3 minutes of rest between each round. Oh. My. Tim and I did this late in the day and it was amazingly hard. I still can't do full pullups, so I did negatives for most of my reps. (Tim did all 100 -- !!!) Pushups got better, though, and I did all 150 of them on the bench (until now, when I've done high numbers, I've had to do them on my knees).

What I Want to Master

I'm really fascinated with kettlebells right now. I want to get to where I can do 10 continuous minutes of kettlebell swings. And I'm bothered by burpees, cuz I feel like they own me. I can do 10 with ok form, and probably 15 if I have to. But I want to be able to do 25 burpees with no rest. Hmmmm -- I may have just come up with a personal challenge. :)