Boot Camp, Day Three

I've never had strong arms.  Ever.

Some might say they're kind of puny.

They would be right.  I'm okay with that.

In high school, I was never able to the one and only pull-up required for the physical fitness tests.  I had a teacher once who let me do push-ups instead.  That was the only year I ever passed the presidential fitness test requirements.

That one stupid pull-up has always kept my ego in check.

And now, Arm Day Monday keeps my ego in check.  Actually, Bootcamp in it's entirety does that.  I'm a wuss.



Here's a little run down of what this morning consisted of:

1.  Woke up late.  Needed to leave the house at 5:30am, woke up at 5:33am.  I forgot that I hit the "dismiss" button on my cell phone's alarm instead of the "snooze".  Oops!

2.  Arrived at St. Joe's University right on time for the warm-up lap. I always feel good about myself during the warm-up lap.  After that, all hell breaks loose.

3.  Before we began the actual arm workout, Jerry, our bootcamp master, wanted to make sure our abdominals were up and running.  This included a few sit-ups of various forms, followed by everyone's favorite leg-lift hold and flutter/pulse.

It looks like this:

Mine do not look like this.  Maybe for the first one second, but after that my legs are higher in the air and bent.  And sometimes just flat out on the ground.  I'm really trying, but my body doesn't like to cooperate usually.

4. Arms....poor little arms.  For the next 45-50 minutes we were running all over this college campus stopping at random benches and bleachers to do dips of all kinds for multiple repetitions.

My dips looked like this:

Okay, so that was a joke.

They didn't even look like the next few pictures.  I don't think anyone would ever take a picture of the way my dips looked.  It's too horrific.

She makes it look easy, but don't let the Ipod fool you.  Locked arms is the easy part.  It's when you actually have to use your triceps that makes your arms, if not your entire body, shake, rattle and roll.

Doesn't this look awful?!  If you can do this and actually enjoy it, I applaud you.

I can't tell you how often my legs were out straight.  They had to be bent slightly or fully most of the time.  And going to a down to a full dip...ha!  I would never be able to get back up.

I can't forget the pushups.  My pushups are ugly.  Modified and ugly.

Normal push-ups look like this:

My push-ups looked similar to this...

...and my face was doing this...the entire time.

I have nightmares about pull-ups.  There is nothing about a pull-up that I like.  Fortunately, the method we used was a little more user friendly.   We weren't hanging from a bar and pulling up our entire bodies in a vertical way, instead we used railing and sat beneath it and pulled ourselves up from a sitting position.

Like this:

Having a bent knee was helpful, but as we went we had to extend our legs further from our bodies.  It was like cupcakes and sunshine.  We did numerous up and down reps and also some holding our bodies in the up position for a certain amount of time.

5.  Cool down, Stretch...the best part of my morning.

Well, I did it...

I mean...

I did it!!!

Here's to day three!  Hip-hip, Hooray!  Hip-hip, Hooray!

Only 15 workouts left.  Next up, Cardio Wednesday.

I'll let you know how it goes.  If you don't hear from me by Friday, someone might have to come find me and scrape me up off of the rubber track.

Keep Posted,

the rave