Moving the body

I had been exercising kind of regularly when we got the puppies but that kind of stopped once they were in the house. Their pen/crates/other stuff rather took over the games room space where the Xbox and tv are and shifting things around was a rather major undertaking. But I stopped using that excuse a couple of weeks ago and spent half an hour clearing the space, rolling up the cheap piece of linoleum and vacuuming the carpet. This endeavor was made easier by the fact that we extended the space they inhabit as they both could easily jump the pen.

So once I got a bit of a workout making space for a workout, I decided to use the Dance Central program for the first day and that went pretty well. I found I was a bit rusty on some of the movements but improved with a bit of practice. The second day I went back to the Your Shape Evolution program and ended up quite sore for a couple days afterwards. The same thing happened when I first used this program and it put me off returning to it for quite a while. I do find once I have used it once or twice that I am much better unless I overdo my workout.

I have discovered there are quite a few different workouts available on this program although I don’t think it caters to the overweight and extremely unfit users all that well. I am sure many would be totally put off continuing the program after a single workout. Before I got too far into it, I set up the program to connect with my Ubisoft Uplay account so that I can track information from my computer. What’s offered is still rather basic but I’m hoping this will be extended over time. I discovered a new version of this program is being released which includes warm up and cool down routines. I’ve noticed that none of the programs I’ve used so far have included this part of a workout so it’s about time this was included. How irresponsible to do a workout program and leave out some of the most important parts.

I’ve been using the program 3-4 times a week for a couple of weeks now and have started to notice some changes. The workouts I’ve been doing have focused a lot on abdominal and lower body with lots of squat exercises. I usually find the squat exercises really aggravate my knee problems but have gotten through this without any major dramas so far. I’ve already noticed that some of my muscles are getting stronger, which always feels like an accomplishment.

One really good result of the little bit of exercise has been a reduction in my fasting blood glucose levels over the past week. This has been the usual result with exercise most of the time I’ve been checking but I found they weren’t coming down very well earlier this year, whether I was getting regular exercise or not.

Aside from this exercise, the Scientist, his mum and I have been taking a tai chi class at the beach for the past term. The Scientist learned some tai chi when we were in Canada a decade ago but hadn’t returned to practice until now. It’s been an interesting experience to be learning this so far as it’s not something that can be rushed. We learned one move each week for the first eight weeks and the past two weeks have been consolidation of what we learned. But I am still rather unsure of myself and seriously considering repeating the first level of classes next term if I’m still struggling once we start back in a few weeks. I’m hoping practice will get me over a lot of the difficulties I’m having as starting right at the beginning is likely to be quite frustrating.