It’s Friday, and you know what that means!

Today is the final day of the June Yoga Challenge created and “hosted” by Courtney over at Sweet Tooth, Sweet Life. I’m so glad I stumbled upon her blog and therefore this challenge!

This week was a bit different for me: I tried out a program called mybarre3, and loved it! The link I put up will take you to their FAQ page, but in general, I’d call it a combination of yoga, pilates, ballet (maybe?), and other core strenghtening/lengthening exercises. At first I just expected it to be an easy, relaxing workout, but at the end of my second day, 30-minute workout, I was sweating like crazy. I love it when a workout can surprise you. 🙂

So all in all this week, I completed two yoga-esque workouts. It’s not as much yoga as I would have liked, but at least I tried something new – and loved it!

To refresh my memory, I just looked back at my goals to see if I succeeded in meeting each one:

– Do at least one yoga session per week (check!)
– Relax and de-stress my mind and body even more than I already do (check! mybarre3 was great for this one!)
– Attempt to do “crane” pose for more than .5 seconds (and not kill myself doing it) (check! I forgot to mention this last week, but I did manage to do it for a couple of seconds. I’m still terrified I’ll hurt myself while doing it, but I will always keep trying!)
– Try not to look at my 90-minute session as a chore. I love it, but an hour and a half is a long time. I just need to remember that I owe it to myself. 🙂 (check! Even during the weeks that I only managed one yoga session, I realized how much I really do love it. It is a great workout and provides a great time to just take care of myself.)

And that’s that!

Also on the exercise/workout front, my mom and I tried a class at our gym today called Cardio Kick. Umm…this workout totally kicked my butt. I have never had a workout (at home, at the gym, outside, or anywhere) tire me out this much or make me sweat as much as I did! The class was a combination of karate/kenpo (punches and kicks), plyometrics (plenty of jumping around – we were on our toes or in the air almost the entire time), and various other cardio exercises (I’ll get to those in a minute), all to upbeat, loud music.

At first, it seemed like it wouldn’t be too hard of a workout..yeah, that thought lasted for about 10 minutes. The first 3/4 of the class were what I described above: lots of punches, kicks, jumping, and running in place. At the 45-minute mark, our instructor turned off the music and instructed us to do:
– 15 burpees
– 15 push-ups
– 15 plié squats
– and repeat!!!
I was really excited to get started, as I have never done a burpee before. I felt pretty confident. During the first round, I did 13 burpees, 15 push-ups, and 15 plié squats. When I started the next round, I literally could not move my body after 3 burpees. It was the craziest feeling! I was just kind of laying on the floor for a while before managing to get up and do half of the push-ups and the squats! 😛

I just found this picture today…quite fitting!

After that section, I was pretty much toast. But then, of course, after a few more songs, she had a section for abs:
– 35 sit-ups
– 15 assisted abdominal leg pushes (described at the bottom of this page)

The class was finished after the ab exercises and stretching, but it really was an awesome, fun, crazy workout. I’m definitely going again!

Well, for the rest of the day, I’m baking, cooking, and wrapping some things for my friend’s baby shower tomorrow! Have a great day, and Happy Friday! 🙂