Best day ever at the gym.

Wednesday was pretty normal. I got around 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Got up at 5am to go the gym. Did some cardio on the bike to warm-up, squeezed three sets of ten in on the leg extension(80) and leg curl machines(73). Went to the 15 minute Abs class, followed by intermediate pilates. Pilates was challenging today - and when I commented on that, thinking its because I can't do Mondays anymore, Sandy said that its because we did so much, so fast within the first half. I'm not sure I buy it. I know my body, and I'm quite certain that I need to start practicing three times per week again, with or without classes. After class, I did some lower body, 2 sets of each studio-length: weighted walking lunges, oblique twist walking lunges, traveling squats, traveling plie squats, leg-weighted hip raises.

Now, I rushed through all that because today's workouts were AWESOME. Yeah, capital letter awesome. I mean, I can't say how excited I was today by my classes. To start, Katie totally rocked bootcamp class. We were busting from one thing to another of crappy stuff so much that I've forgotten half of it, let alone the order.

The class started (after my own upright bike warm-up) with pyramid sets of push-ups, crunches and squats, 1 to 10 reps, and since I was the overachiever, Katie told me to start back down again - which I wasn't psyched about so I was slowed down a lot and got some water until the other girls finished up. It then went into these rounds of increasingly advanced/challenging exercises in sets of 20. Push-ups, burpees, plank, mountain climbers, jumping jacks, diamond push-ups, dips, plie squats, side plank, this strange plank-on-step while stepping forward thing I can't describe, and some other stuff. Each of these things then increased in its intensity with each round, like doing uneven push-ups on the step or side planks off the step with leg lifts. And we still managed to finish up "early" with enough time to do the most horrific barbell-weighted lunges off the step in four directions. I just went to work after class. Screw extra working out. I was pooped, but totally revitalized.

The evening was just as awesome-intense. I love Catherine's new exercises and routines. She's seriously kicked it up a notch in muscle conditioning these days. I did 3 sets of assisted pull-ups before class - I'm comfortably using 75lb assistance for 10 reps each now. Next week I hope to drop it down to 70lb. So anyway class: She did these crazy combo moves today (a la Arthur, but less dangerous) where we were doing squats with dumbbells (10lb each) raised vertical over our heads. Or we did the wood chopper move. Lots of balancing on one leg, or stepping out to the side and balancing back, while doing hand weight moves like curls or reaches. We had this crazy tricep kickback which turns into this swinging arm-leg lift, balancing on one leg. They were so much fun!! And freakin' challenging when you're choosing between 8 and 10lb dumbbells. I suspect these moves could have been adapted from kettleball exercises. While we totally burnt out our upperbodies, we at least didn't have push-ups today - I was planning not to do them if we did anyway, since I was push-uped out after the morning.

So after class, I went out to do my tricep-biceps. I pretty much had my ass kicked twice in one day, so I didn't have a lot of faith in my physical capacity to do the rest of the upper body machines. The tricep pushdown on the cable machine is my favorite exercise in the whole world - because I get to stare at my uber-hot muscle flexing in the mirror as I do it - so I decided I'd just do those sets. I always have been uncomfortable with the overhead tricep extensions that we do in class anyway. So I go over to do that.

Joyce and her friend (whose name I totally don't have down yet because its unusual and rarely said) were over there too - they ended up asking me how to do the stuff on the cable machine. I showed them and they really liked it. So we hung out a while trading off and talking. Joyce laughingly said that I was seriously their role model (because of my dedication I assume - or maybe my general knowledge of cable machines, haha). I mean, she's said before that she's impressed when I finish my workout after class - but I mean, I guess I didn't take it very seriously. We've always been on the same strength-level in class. She's pretty buff herself. But today just seemed different, just very sincere. I mean, she's the second person to say something along those lines from my classes in the past few weeks - I bust my ass and people have noticed apparently! It's noticeable! Woah. Anyway, it really made my night. :)