Day 23 - true workout = 表尿

haha... so this is really Day 22 post workout, but since I already posted this morning, I'll call it Day 23. Woke up, and did work out this morning; went to sleep feeling particularly excited and energetic last night, and told myself I'd give it a bit of a push today. I got so excited though, that I find it hard to fall asleep, and got up closer to 7 than 6...

No matter! I was still determined to have a good one today. Instead of 1050 jumps, I decided to go for 3x 6mins just to really get myself warmed up. I think on average I skip about 2 skips per second, or perhaps slightly more, so that would put me up for 120x18= +2,000 skips, well within today's limit.

I time myself with my trusty Gymboss timer. It's a good timer, because it not only does time for reps, but also time for rest so you can use it for keeping you honest between sets, but also for things such as plank, where you need to time your rep as well as your rest between.  They're $19.95 and they ship everywhere, well worth the money. Check it out!

Here's a picture of my (black) one, next to Greenie's (hot pink) one. She's still in SG, coming back today, but we couldn't find her timer before she left for the trip, and I found it whilst she was away. Not matter, I'm sure she's keeping herself honest. ;) In the background is my Nike speed rope. It's old school. I bought this rope back when I was in Australia, so would've been about five years ago... I actually had 2 varieties, one was a plastic speed rope with unweighted handles, and then the other was a leather speed rope with 0.5lb weighted handles. I used to skip more with the leather one, until it frayed, and eventually snapped from overskipping one day, and so I unscrewed the handles from the leather one to use on the speed rope. Anyway, it's old but good rope. Gives my arms a workout as well as my legs whilst getting my heart pumping - trifecta!

Two names to never name your sons...
So anyways, back to my blog and why I say "true workout = 表尿". I'm not sure if I'm writing the Chinese characters right, but I imagine this is how it's spelt. One of my ex-colleagues told me once that if you're Cantonese, there's two names that you wouldn't name your children. If you're surname is Wang, you wouldn't call them Ben (笨王 means king of stupid and is a pun on Ben Wang), and if your surname is Liu, you wouldn't call your son Bill/William (表尿 [as I imagine it's written] means to "wet your pants" in Cantonese, and is a pun on Bill Liu). Anyway, as per my previous blogs, I have done some of the later workouts with Yeeman over the past few weeks, so have an idea of how tough it gets, but just because we're only in week 3 doesn't mean the exercises are easy! I've found that using my interval timer to keep a strict time; maintaining form and pressing through the exercises even now, makes for a super tiring workout... to the point where I wet my pants.

Here's a picture of "me" after my second set of bicep curls. Looking down at my curling, I was given a "nice surprise" to see that I'd totally wet myself! haha... well, not literally, but just from all the sweat I had produced, you can see it looks like I've really peed my pants. From the shot you can also see (or perhaps not), that I've had to pull my shorts up super high Steve Urkel style, as the stupid cord from my Sennheiser earphones were too short! The earphones came with a short cable length, and an additional extender, but the problem is that with the extender, the cable becomes way too long, and without it, it's slightly too short to clip on to my shorts, and yet too long to clip onto the collar of my shirt! eurhg... Oh also another thing I've noticed is that my sweat doesn't taste as salty anymore, perhaps from the change in diet, but I suppose we can go more into that next time.

Bicycles vs. Planks...?
Anyways, needless to see I was even more soaked after the completion of that workout. Had a quick check of my new diet, and discovered a nice little Easter egg in the form of a post workout snack. Both GT & I get one. Nice! Downed my egg-white, and again, was keen to try out the ab exercises from the later group, as there was some debate on Shirley's blog as to whether bicycle's were harder or planks. After doing the first 1-2 sets of bicycles, I thought they were definitely harder as I couldn't complete a set without dropping my legs, but then I discovered a little secret during my 3rd set. I have to keep on breathing! As stupid as it sounds, I was struggling to keep my feet moving so much, I forgot about breath, which is what I think made me fail in the first few sets. Whereas with planks, you're not moving, so all you care about IS breathing (and form of course). So in the end, I haven't decided which is harder, bicycles or planks because they're both pretty damn hard! But at least I learnt the secret (for me anyways) of how to better deal with bicycles.

Finally, I've seen that I'm starting to see a bit of definition peek through around my abdominal area...

Here's a picture just before jumping into the shower. Not quite there yet, I know, but at least we're making some progress I suppose. Will take our 360 degree photos tomorrow after GT comes back from SG.