“You may want to skip your workout today. You may want to quit. But there will be others who push forward.

And you will be another day behind. “

Today I didn’t feel like going to boot camp.  I was exhausted. I had been running errands all day, and I was dragging at the last session.  In general, I have found my body less than cooperative lately.  I hate performing at less than my best, so I was dreading another potentially miserable workout.  I knew if I could just haul myself there, that would be glad I came.  Seeing everybody is always an instant mood boost.  Plus, I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I’m finished- even if I feel like I did less than par.  I reminded myself of all these things as I headed out the door.  As an added bonus, I was able to convince Adam to come (a first for this month)!

The workout involved splitting up the exercises with a partner.   The number of exercises was based on the gender of the pair (girl/girl, girl/boy, boy/boy).  Since I was with a guy (not Adam, we were all partnered with new people), we had the medium number of exercises.  We decided just to split them down the middle and kept pretty good pace at keeping up with each other.  The exercises consisted of burpees, dive bombers, low plank obliques, a sadistic low plank exercise involving moving men, and push-ups.  For most of the stations, we had to split 300 reps- including the push-ups.  The most push-ups I had done up to this point was 100– and I had struggled.  When I hit 101 at this session I was excited.  When I finished the 150 (in sets of ten- and then 5 when I was getting tired) I was ecstatic.

Back when I started boot camp I couldn’t do 10 push-ups in a row, let alone 15 times!  I didn’t even feel that tired, so I finished the rest of the work out and then did 150 more with Adam while he finished up (he was in a guy/guy group and had more reps on each station- his excuse for me smoking him 😉 ) That is officially 300 Push-ups! – 3 times my previous max!  It was definitely a victory worth celebrating, so I fixed up some chocolate peanut butter protein shakes when we got home. 🙂

I am so grateful to have an awesome boot camp crew (and instructor/trainer!) to push me to my limits.  Having people around to help motivate you is such a valuable tool in training.  I never would attempt the workouts we do in boot camp on my own!  Every class starts with “I don’t know if I can do that”, and finishes with “WOW, I can’t believe I did that!”  Exercise is my prozac.  It relieves my stress, quiets  my anxiety, and makes me feel like I can take on the world.   I sometimes feel guilty spending money on the classes or training sessions, but then I remind myself that when I tried therapy my co-pay was for $30- for 15 minutes!  Boot camp and training session are a BARGAIN compared to that!!! Plus, therapy could never compete with how good finishing a tough workout makes me feel. 🙂

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