Yoga

Yoga isn't a form of exercise I think of doing to be honest. I would always think of it as a really easy workout and not really consider it as an option. But after doing days of strengthening workouts I decided to choose yoga as a fitness choice to give my arms and legs a break. Once we started though I was really surprised. It was WAAAYYY harder than I thought it would be. Doing the yoga excersises required a lot of resistance, strength and flexibility. When we were about half way through I realized I lacked flexibility in parts of my legs. So now I try doing the spilts as far as I can and I do side leg raises when I'm just standing around waiting for something at home to try and improve that. Hold positions like the downward dog required a lot of core strength which I used to really lack before but I found it a lot easier to do now. I really like yoga now and I think I'm gonna pick it as a fitness choice more often. It's a change from the normal fitness we do and it is so livening and relaxing when you're done. I was really sore in my arms and upper legs before we did the yoga and after all the struggling of actually doing yoga was over I felt so loose in all my muscles. It was a good cool down workout, and I really enjoyed it. 

Here's a link to the first yoga workout we did. http://youtu.be/jxLXPj84ILk

I've done it 3 times at home since last week but I find that I can push myself more when I'm in class doing it rather than being alone. Which means I need to be more self motivating and have better mental strength. 

Weight room update

At the beginning of the year my main focus to work out my butt and legs. A couple weeks later I realized that I really lacked upper body strength so that became one of my focuses aswell. I didn't use a specific workout plan when I was in the weight room but I would use workouts that I know and ones that I learned from my peers while in the weight room.

For my legs and butt I went from squatting 10lbs plates to 25lbs plates as the semester progressed. I also did kickbacks and other workouts for my legs and butt on the cable machines. Sajini and Puneets butt workouts were part of what I did in the weight room aswell. I also did jumpsquats squats with leg raises and went from lunging and squating with an empty bar to doing 15lbs plates. I haven't seen too much change in my butt yet because that takes time but my legs have firmed and toned up a lot more than they were at the start of the semester and I'm happy with that.

As for my arms I did workouts like biceps curls 10lbs to 15lbs now at the minimum and lifting that focused on triceps. I used the cable machine and did the workouts that it shows you aswell. I honestly don't know the names of a lot of the workouts that I did I just know how to do them. One achievement I made was the bench that you sit on and lay your arms down ( i don't know what it's called :$) but i wasn't able to even lift the bar at that position and now I can curl it! I also did some pec workouts (again don't know the names). My arms aren't as slim and tones as I want yet but it's an improvement from the start of the year till now for sure. They look and feel more firm and I almost do a proper push-up now! And I can do 25 modified push-ups. I was only able to hold plank for 45 secs max before and now I can hold it for 1min15secs which means my core strength has improved aswell.

I still have a lot of work to do to achieve my goals but I'm pretty happy with the progress I've made so far. I still have to keep working for it though :)