Exercise from Home! Blogilates

A real gif of me exercising. Yes, I am both people.

So as I've said ten million times, I have a lot more free time here than I do normally, and for the most part I've been less-than-productive with that time. But one thing I have been doing more of is exercising! Last semester was so busy that I pretty much stopped exercising all together, except for a weekly boot camp group fitness class I went to for 50 minutes every Thursday, and occasional runs around the indoor track on campus.

Since coming here, I've been running more than I did last semester (but not as much as I had been at the beginning of last summer) and doing YouTube exercise videos. But these last three months of trying to get back in shape have shown me how discouraging it can be! One of the most discouraging things is having things that you know you used to be able to do easily suddenly be really hard. When I first started running again here, I died every.single.run. Everything hurt, I would cramp up, my feet and legs would fall asleep...and it's not like I was running particularly fast or particularly far. So while I was feeling discouraged in the running arena, I stumbled across Blogilates on YouTube, and I did the 100 ab challenge, which is where you do 100 ab exercises every day for 30 days. And I did it! I did 3,000 reps of different exercises over the course of a month. The videos are fairly short (between 5-12 minutes) and the woman who does them, Cassey Ho, is so dang cheerful that you can't help but enjoy yourself a little bit while exercising (which, let me tell you, is an EXTREMELY rare thing for me to do). But the hands-down best thing about these exercises is that you need no more than a 5 x 7 carpet space (I know because that's all I have in my room) and NO equipment. PLUS I've never gotten super sweaty doing them (but still feel the burn). So it's basically a combination of the best things anyone could ask for in a workout: easily do-able in a small space, no equipment required, and can be done at any point in the day because it doesn't require showering afterwards. Anyway, I highly recommend Blogilates to anyone who a) doesn't have a lot of time b) isn't ripped (so like, 99.9% of us) c) doesn't want to spend money on a gym membership d) doesn't like sweating and e) wants to work out in the privacy of their home/bedroom.

I've done other YouTube exercise videos before but have always stopped watching them after a few times because the people are so ripped it's discouraging just to watch them...but Cassey is healthy fit, not like..."I only eat salads and chicken and protein shakes and spend 7.5 hours a day in the gym" fit.

To me, exercising has always had more mental benefits than physical. My body looks absolutely no different whether I exercise or not (probably because I refuse to eat less sugar), but I just feel more productive after exercising, even for 10 or 15 minutes, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment. Even if I'm lazy and procrastinating in all other areas of my life, at least I went for a jog and did a few sit ups today! Logic...

Anyway, hope you have a great day/weekend...

-SE Wagner