The Best $20 I Ever Spent

A month ago, I purchased an Amazon Local deal for Heaven and Hell Boot Camp in Lisle - $20 for one month of unlimited classes.

This was the best $20 I ever spent! I am fully addicted to these classes. When I signed up for them, I had a few goals in mind that I hoped the class would help me reach:

1. Become a morning exerciser. I still hate hearing that alarm go off in the morning. I never jump out of bed enthusiastically. But once I'm in the car and on my way to the class, I can't wait. Not once have I regretted the decision of sacrificing an hour of sleep for these classes. Regret for skipping them? Yes, I did feel that when I skipped a class! I haven't missed any since. I thought working out in the morning would make me tired throughout the day, but most days I feel the exact opposite. I have much more energy and focus when I go to class in the morning. Bonus: working out in the morning burns more calories throughout the day than evening workouts!

2. Get past the exercise plateau. I've been doing the same exercise circuit for awhile - stair climber, crossramp, treadmill, outdoor running, etc. I always mix up the intensity, but it gets a bit stale at times. Every boot camp class is comprised of 6 to 8 stations that do a variety of strength training or anaerobic exercise - jumping, kettle bells, squats, push ups, pull ups, so on and so forth. I'm never bored and always challenged. I lost 2 and a half pounds with the classes, and that is with zero changes to my diet and weekly indulgences. 2 and a half may not seem like a lot, but that depends on how much you need (or want) to lose. I've wanted to drop "those last 5 pounds" for a year now. When you reach a certain weight, it gets much more difficult to do that.

3. Do more resistance and strength training. Obviously, this was an easy goal to reach since that's what the class is focused on. When it comes to my regular gym workouts, I am a cardio addict and have a very hard time making myself lift weights or do abs exercises. When I do do them, I often do a set or two and then stop. I've noticed a huge change in my strength and overall fitness by doing more strength training with these classes.

The instructor gave us Amazon Local users a discount membership rate if we joined once our vouchers expired. This rate was still pricey to me at $59.99 for unlimited classes. I contemplated quitting LA Fitness and joining Heaven and Hell only, but I didn't want to give up my cardio equipment access or have to pay initiation fees again if I decided to rejoin LA Fitness at some point. I talked to the instructor this week, and he lowered it again to $39.99. So...I decided to sign up for another month of classes! I know I'm supposed to be saving up for my apartment and all that jazz, but it's really not that much and can definitely be taken from other areas of my budget.

On Thursday, we were introduced to yet another interesting piece of equipment: the power wheel.



As the instructor strapped this on his feet and prepared to demonstrate, I was thinking we were going to have to maneuver it like a unicycle - no thank you!



Turns out that's definitely not what you're supposed to do! More like this:

You started in plank position and then had to pull yourself 1/3 way across the room. Then you stopped and did 5 knee strikes - pulling your knees to your chest. Then you pulled yourself across the room again and did 4 pikes:



Then pulled yourself a little further and held plank position for 30 seconds. WHEW!!! My abs were on FIRE!

The Willis Tower climb is THIS SUNDAY...I can't believe it's here already! The year is flying by.

Double Workouts, Cereal and a Cold

I pretty much always work out on Sunday, but that didn't happen yesterday. I was feeling a bit guilty about that, so I did two workouts today. Kicked off the workweek with boot camp at 6:15 this morning. Now that there are only two weeks left of my promo rate for the class (sadness!!!), I'm trying to write down the circuits we do so that I can try to mix up my workouts on my own later. Of course, I won't be able to do everything we do in the class because there is certain equipment there - like the suspension workouts - that I just don't have access to. But I can definitely do things like jump squats, kettle bells, or military press.

I received an email from the morning instructor today that they if you join before the Amazon Local deal expires, they'll waive the joining fee and offer a discounted rate for the memberships. I currently pay $39.99/month at LA Fitness, so if the rates were comparable, I'd consider dropping my gym and joining the boot camp. The unlimited classes at Heaven and Hell would be $59.99/month. I'm not sure I could justify that, especially with moving into my own place in a few months. As I did 60 minutes of cardio tonight on various machines, I contemplated joining Heaven and Hell Bootcamp because the classes make working out go by quickly and are both challenging and fun. If they were $49.99/month, I'd probably do it. But it looks like I'll have to pass on this one.

I've been meaning to give a review of this new Kashi cereal I bought a couple weeks ago called Golden Goodness.


I'm generally a fan of Kashi's tasty, high protein cereals, but I'm not a fan of this one. The main reason is because I like crunchy cereal, and these thin flakes get soggy awfully quick. They also don't have much variety or flavor. I'll be sticking with regular GoLean and GoLean Crisp!

Finally...I have a cold creeping on, damn it! My throat is super scratchy and sore, and I'm starting to have a cough. My head isn't feeling too great either. I really hope this clears up for the weekend, I wanna go out and have fun for Halloween!

Evening Boot Camp and Cat Drama

Tuesday night was my first evening boot camp class. The class size was about 10 people, so you still get personalized attention. Mike is the evening instructor, and like Damon, he was very nice - no drill sergeant type attitudes at these classes! However, I didn't like 2 or 3 of the stations, as they were kind of "eh" to me. One station required you to do one-legged crab walks across the room and I couldn't understand what I was working out or trying to accomplish through those. Another station was just push-ups, which I'm probably complaining about simply based on the fact that I don't like doing push-ups :)

The rest of the stations were great, though. We did some more work with kettlebells, including squats and swings. Then we also did some new stuff with the harnesses - suspension planks!



You can do a lot of variations on these for your abs - LOVE IT! You can swing your legs out to the side to work your obliques, or pull your knees to your chest to better engage your core. I did a mix since we do three sets of these. By the third one I was pretty worn down so I just held the plank position and still felt the burn!

I decided to skip Wednesday morning's class for a couple reasons. The first was that I felt my muscles need a day of rest to recoup and get stronger. I will still be going to classes Thursday and Friday, so that's 4 days of boot camp; plus I did a regular workout on Sunday and plan to do stairs this Saturday and Sunday. I feel I'll be able to finish the week out strong if I give my muscles a day to repair.

Beyond that, there was a more important reason to me for missing - my cat, Lucas. Some of you may remember he was really sick earlier in the year. We noticed on Tuesday that he was squatting and trying to pee in strange places all over the house, but nothing was happening. We put him in the litter box and he would try to go, but couldn't. My aunt, a vet tech, told us that we should take him to the emergency animal hospital, but we were told that it was going to cost $600 - $800. We love Lucas and want to do anything for him, but how are you supposed to scrape up that kind of money at 11 o'clock at night? Especially after I just had to shell out $1,000 for my car accident. All we could do was pray that he would make it until the morning so we could take him to the vet.

Since I was up late, I was already concerned about waking up the class, but I woke up a couple minutes before my alarm went off at 5:30 AM. That's when I knew I wasn't going to go - Lucas was laying next to me and I thought to myself, "If he's really sick and this is the last morning I get to cuddle next to my cat, I'm going to do that." So I stayed with my baby.

Just look at that face. How can you not fall in love?!

THANKFULLY...this little mischief maker is going to be OK. He had a very bad bladder infection, they helped him clear out at the animal hospital and gave him some antibiotics to get him well again. There aren't enough words for how much I love this cat!

Kettlebell Khaos

Whew, what a day! Hope you all had a good start to the workweek! Today was my second boot camp class, bright and early at 6:15 AM. Errrr...maybe I should say dark and early, since the sun wasn't out yet! My hamstrings were still sore from Friday morning's class, but that was no excuse for ditching. Today's workout circuit included a lot of things I haven't tried before, one of which involved an exercise harness. Using the form below (except knees straight, not bent), you pulled yourself forward, working your arms and back.


The exercises at each station were completely different from the ones we did in Friday's class, even used different equipment. I like that the class size is not big, there were about 7 of us in the class this time. Tomorrow will be my first evening class (doing those Tuesdays & Thursdays), so I'm interested to see if the class size will be bigger.

At the end of today's class, we did something called Kettlebell Khaos. Holy WOW, it was tough! It consisted of 6 different kettlebell moves that you did for 30 seconds each. I was wary of the one arm swings and didn't really partake in those to avoid hurting my lower back again, which most of you know about by now. I hate having to stand there and not participate because it makes me feel everyone else is thinking I can't do it, but better to be safe than sorry.

I am really excited about these classes because they're introducing me to new exercise moves, as well as forcing me to get used to some morning workouts. I have to admit that it felt really good to just relax after work this evening knowing that my exercise was done for the day. I wasn't feeling too great last night thanks to a bad migraine, so I didn't get my normal Sunday tasks like grocery shopping and laundry done. One of my favorite things about grocery shopping on weekdays is the 40% off produce deals you often find, like these fruit bowls!



I never buy them regular price, but when they're on sale I pick up 1 or 2 for an easy snack. Good way to keep me away from the Smith's House of Horrors, AKA the Smith's House of Sweets.

Feeling pretty tired at this point and pretty excited about going to sleep at about 9:30! Good night everyone!

Whirlwind Weekend!

This was a crazy busy weekend! Friday night was a surprise party for my mom's 50th birthday. We successfully pulled off the surprise!

*Mom when she first walked in!*

*Me and my family*

I was glad my mom had a great time at her party. Around 8 PM, my legs started feeling pretty sore from Friday morning's boot camp class. I tried to stretch for awhile and hoped it wouldn't be worse in the morning...

Saturday

Ow. OW. OWW!!! I pretty much have not done squats since May, so my legs and butt were not at all used to this and were killing me! Phil and I were meeting up with my friends Lisa, Cheryl and Ingrid and their fiancés and husbands at Scarecrow Fest in St. Charles. The weather was beautiful and the St. Charles area is gorgeous. Finding parking was a nightmare, though! I had been hoping to work out in the morning but given how badly my legs were hurting, I decided to skip, especially because I knew we'd be doing a lot of walking at the fest.

*Phil having a deep conversation at Scarecrow Fest*

*Just one example of the different types of "scarecrows"!*

After the group split up, Phil and I enjoyed some burgers and a pitcher of beer on the rooftop of one of the restaurants nearby. We were pretty tired, so we just stayed in for the evening.

Sunday

Sunday was my mom's actual birthday. She got another surprise in the morning!



I watched some of the Chicago marathon in the morning and saw the first finisher, Moses Mosop, cross the finish line. It was absolutely amazing to watch. I finished my half marathon in 2 hours, 13 minutes; this runner finished the full in 2 hours, 5 minutes! Much of his mile pace was 4 minutes, 40 seconds. So incredible what people can accomplish. I cannot imagine running a single mile that fast, let alone keeping up that pace for a marathon. My legs were still aching just as much on Sunday morning, so I decided to work out to see if that would loosen them up. After watching the marathon, I definitely didn't want to confine myself to an indoor workout on such a beautiful day, so I hit the pavement. I haven't run outdoors in about a month, so I was pleased I ran 4.3 miles. I loved seeing all the beautiful trees and feeling the leaves crunch beneath my feet. While it was a nice run, it didn't do much for my muscles. Still sore and aching!

Then it was off to Phil's second cousin's 2nd birthday. I love Hannah, she is such a little cutie!

*Me and the birthday girl!*

This is where the food overload began. I had a sandwich from Potbelly at about 1 PM. We ate at Hannah's party around 4 - I tried to keep my servings small, food was catered from Qdoba so I just made a mini nacho plate for myself. I wish I could have stayed at the party longer, but it was off to my mom's birthday dinner at Jameson's Charhouse. I had to order something, otherwise me being there was kinda pointless! I got a cheeseburger and ate about 3/4 of it. When we got home, I fell asleep on the couch for a good hour. Food coma!

The amount of sweets in our house right now is pretty awful - may the force be with me this week to avoid these! Look at all this sugar in a house of three people - ridiculous!

Chocolate covered strawberries, Halloween cupcakes,

brownies, Oreos, Chips Ahoy and leftover birthday cake

Well, off to bed - have to be up bright and early for boot camp! I just hope my legs can make it there!