Athlete in Rhinestones

Friday-Monday, May 25-28, 2012

Friday

Some movement involved, but pretty sure club dancing doesn’t quite qualify as a fitness activity… I haven’t done this in a loooooong time. Kind of fun, with the right person, but not really fantastic, being bumped into by drunks who do remember the lyrics to “Sweet Home Alabama” but can’t find the beat to save their lives. Well, I can’t do anything too intricate on 5-inch heels, but I’ve still got rhythm!

Saturday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour. Ooof, takes a crazed kind of discipline to get up super early, after only four hours sleep, and go practice alone. Yes, crazed. Yes, me.

*Ballroom dance lesson with M.S. 2 hours. Teacher had a slot open up today, which was good because Friday’s usual lesson didn’t work out. Big concentration on types of sway in Standard. Teacher’s metaphor for depth of sway: the curves in various types of crockery. Deep sway like the sides of a coffee mug. Medium sway like the sides of a bowl. Slight sway like the sides of a pasta dish. At times, partners match direction of sway, sometimes there’s and over-and-under quality to hip connection. Hmmm, kind of hard to describe— I can be in a deep sway, moving backwards, at the end of a pattern like running finish, and my hip is still tucked upward under his, but in the next step my hips need to level out. Too soon with leveling= problem. Too late with leveling = problem. Then some Latin and the key word was “contain.” Contain energy, stride. Inward pressure with all leg muscles. Got a massive bruise on my instep by banging it with the side of the heel cup of the other shoe from being so in. Ouchie! Still, everything looks much more controlled and balanced, and, by contrast, the softness of hip settling stands out a lot and the elaborate arm movements of a rumba look fab-u-lous.

Sunday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour and 30 minutes. Breaking in new practice shoes and new Latin sandals. Good focus today.

Monday, Memorial Day

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour. Used shoulder rack for some of this practice so I could isolate my focus onto lower body. It’s actually a pretty heavy piece of equipment, so didn’t use it the whole time. Also, sometimes you just gotta express yourself with arms and hands for Smooth and Latin!

*P90X: Arms & Shoulders. 1 hour. Killin’ it! Yes, my triceps are “diamonds of gold,” in the words of the inimitable Tony Horton.

Sunday-Monday, May 20-12, 2012

Sunday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour, 50 minutes. Smooth, Standard and Latin. Focus on use of knees in Smooth and Standard, on body isolation in Latin.

*Cardio: Elliptical machine, 40 minutes. 2:1 Interval program at Level 8, with high resistance of 75, low resistance of 45. Covered 1.34 miles. Had to slow down several times to discuss a missing bottle of Advil; tried to push all the harder to make up for the temporary loss of pace. 

Great laughs in the car on the way home, but my abs are sooooo sore it actually hurt to laugh! Guess who has been neglecting her ab workouts for way too long? Mmm-hmmmm. Dance certainly works the core constantly, but it’s also good to isolate those muscles and push them in their own workouts.

Monday

*Yoga: 50 minutes. Warrior Yoga dvd with James d’Silva & Trudie Styler. Challenging workout physically and, unlike a lot of yoga dvd’s, it also addresses spiritual aspects of the practice. Lightly, but, for me, effectively.

*Cardio: Exercise bike, 45 minutes. Rolling hills program, Level 9 for 40 minutes with Level 1 for 5-minute cool-down. (OK mostly Level 9; legs were a bit tired from warrior yoga, so the 7-minute peak for the biggest hill was too hard at 9 and I knocked it back to 8 temporarily.) Covered 12.34 miles.

No dance today. My schedule may be a bit unpredictable the next month to six weeks as I work to complete the internship portion of my personal trainer certification. 

Saturday, May 19, 2012

*Ballroom dance practice: 50 minutes. Directional use of knees in American Smooth. Hip action in Latin rumba and cha cha; upward pushing action in Latin Samba.

*Yoga: 50 minutes. “Serpentine” video with Rachel Brice, renowned tribal bellydancer and accomplished yogi. Section on Yoga for Bellydance.

*Bellydance: 20 minutes. “Bellydance for Beginners” with Leila of Egypt. Hip pushes section. Difficult to keep glutes relaxed while abs do almost all the work of lifting and dropping the hips.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Goodness, a whole MONTH since I posted in this log… oy, life happens! I was indeed dancing most of those missing days, darlings. In fact, I competed in pro-am Standard at the Atlanta Open this past weekend. My other workouts this past month were not as intense as usual because I found my legs constantly fatigued. I eased off my cross-training, suspecting simple overwork, only to find my legs didn’t stop aching, they only got weaker. (May be time to get thyroid blood work done again.) The Atlanta Open went pretty well, but by the final round, I was totally out of steam when I needed it most, so I’m going to re-vamp my training regimen.

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour. Smooth & Standard. Working on vertical lowering and not letting pelvis tip.

*Indoor rowing: 15 minutes. 3000 meters or 1.86 miles. A decent pace. I plan to shift a lot of my cardio training to 15-minute, intense bursts now. That’s pretty much how the comp pace goes, all-out for 10 to 15 minutes, then nothing for 20 minutes to an hour, usually, ‘til the next round arrives.

*Bellydancing: 25 minutes. Working to improve isolation skills, fluidity, flexibility and core strength. Started using a new dvd (still no time to take a class unfortunately). This one was recommended on a bellydance website and is called “Love Potion,” oooh la la! There’s a lot of useful, verbal direction about use of knees, but it’s hard to see the instructor’s knees because of her hip scarf and capri leggings. The way she uses her knees seems almost impossible. I look like a stork having a slow seizure when attempting to mimic her. 

A fairly light workout day overall, but purposeful nonetheless. 

Monday-Thursday, April 16- 19

Monday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour and 30 minutes. Inspired to attempt to emulate the “walking on tiptoe” look of the Latin dancers at the Legends of Dance show I attended in NYC on Friday.

*Exercise bike: 45 minutes, 12.38 miles total. Intervals: level 8 for 40 minutes, covering 11.41 miles; plus level 1 for 5 minutes covering .97 miles of cool-down.

*Stretching: 10 minutes.

Tuesday: Teacher cancelled my dance lesson. Sigh…

Wednesday: usual day off. 

Thursday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour and 40 minutes. Should be concentrating on Standard for comp in May. Hard to pull focus together. Easier to warm up body with Smooth, get feet really alive with Latin and then do some Standard.

*Yoga: 20 minutes. Rodney Yee Ultimate Power Yoga dvd: Strengthening Sun Salutations section. Crescent moon pose really helps open up the area in my right hip that is so tight.

*Cardio: Indoor rowing, Waterower, 20 minutes. 3976 meters or 2.47 miles. Not bad, considering the strap on my left foot kept coming loose and I had to keep slowing and trying to jerk it tighter. 

*Bellydance: 20 minutes. Beginner Bellydance with Leila of Egypt dvd. Section on Hip Pushes. Really have to focus on abs to get hip pushes moving. Hip circles are easy by comparison.

Tuesday-Sunday, April 3-8. I intentionally did a slowed-down week of activities because I was losing too much weight. Ribs showing is not good! But, I didn’t realize that I’d gone this many days without logging my activities. That means it’s just mostly a list of basic facts, not lessons learned, goals set, etc. Makes me miss out on reinforcing things that could help me progress more efficiently. Bad blogger, bad!

Tuesday

*Ballroom dance lesson with M.S. 2 hours

Wednesday= Day off. A day of complete rest makes me emotionally squirrely, verklempt. I think I will have to at least stretch or do a brief, gentle yoga session to keep from going off the rails. Or, I dunno, something essentially social like bowling that still lets me move. (No offense to bowlers. I am TERRIBLE at it. In no way could what I do while bowling be considered a sport. Without gutter guards, no pins would ever be in danger from me.)

Thursday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Friday

*Ballroom dance lesson with M.S. 2 hours.

Saturday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Sunday- Easter

*Rowing machine: 6000 meters in 30 minutes 10 seconds. That’s about 3.7 miles. Was at 3000 meters at the split, so I rowed pretty consistently throughout, according to the numbers. I know, however, that I started a bit slow, found my rhythm and then picked up the pace for most of the session, with only a couple of slow flares when I got distracted by stray thoughts.

*Bellydancing: 30 minutes of hip circles. I love this. Need more of this in my life. 

*Yoga: 20 minutes of dvd, Rodney Yee’s Power Yoga, section on power restoration.

Friday-Monday, March 30-April 2, 2012

Friday

*Ballroom dance lesson with M.S. 2 hours

Saturday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Sunday

Oooops. Forgot the month was changing, so I hadn’t booked the dance floor for practice. Sad…

*Cardio: Recumbent bike. 40 minutes. Level 8, Rolling Hills program. Average pace: 3:35 minute mile. Total mileage: 11.16 miles.

*Post-cardio stretching: 10 minutes.

Monday

*Ballroom dance practice: 1 hour and 30 minutes

*Cardio: Elliptical machine. Stepped up the challenge to a 1:1 interval. LOTS of mountains to climb. Level 8. High resistance of 75 — probably the highest I’ve ever done on the elliptical. Low resistance of 45. Covered 1.06 miles, pushing to bust the 1-mile mark. Crazy. But the resistance is the point, not the miles. I keep telling myself…

*Weight-training: Upper body. Haven’t done the machines in forever, but that’s what worked with tonight’s schedule. 

Lats: 40 lbs, 3 sets of 10 reps

High row: 40 lbs, 3 sets of 8 reps

Rear delt: 30 lbs, 3 sets of 8 reps

Seated shoulder press: oh my, did my Smooth & Standard dancing muscles show themselves here! First set: 20 lbs, 12 reps, way too easy. Second and third sets: 25 lbs for 12 reps per set, also pretty easy, but not exactly breezy.

*Stretching: 10 minutes.