barre3 Challenge: What I Learned.

barre3

Back at the beginning of January, I posted that I had started taking barre classes at a nearby studio and was signed up to try out their Challenge: 4 studio classes per week, whole foods, lots of water, dry January, no coffee.  I was really excited to get going on this after the post-holiday slump, and for the first two weeks, I did awesome.  If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen my posts of the stickers we'd get to put up after class.  I did 6 classes in a row between the end of the first week and the start of the second.  I was into the third week when I lost a few days because my husband was out of town, and then when I was ready to get back in it, the kid sickness hit.  And it hit me hard.

side note: I don't know why kid germs hit adults so much harder.  I swear these two were both running around like stuffy-nosed little banshees, but when I get it I end up flattened for over a week.

So for the last week and a half of the Challenge I was sidelined, relegated to the couch with tea and Kleenex like they were going out of style.  And I was hungry.  (Is the saying, "Feed a cold, starve a fever"?  Because I fed the cold.)  I just started back to class Monday night, doing two classes and giving myself a break last night, and I already feel like I've lost some ground.  But even though I didn't get to finish strong - I so wanted to have before and after photos to show you - I learned a few valuable thing about myself in the process:

1. I don't eat enough at once to fuel myself through exertion activities.  I like to go to the evening classes, but occasionally I'll go in the morning.  The one time I got up late and scarfed down a banana before class was a disaster.  I've learned that I need to start eating more rounded, more hearty meals at once, and I feel a lot better than grazing on snacky stuff.

2. I don't drink enough water in the day.  Yes, I get a lot of water in with the amount of tea I drink.  But straight water, nope.  If I haven't had enough water I will get a headache after class, so I've been trying to keep my water bottle handy and keep filling it.

3. My body is stronger than I thought it was.  I had this fear of doing two classes in a row in the week because I figured my muscles would be tired.  But the great thing about barre3 is that while you are using your muscles, you don't move the same way from one class to the next.  I realized that my body can take that type of workout and adapt.

4. I need to have a place to go to work out.  With my membership, I also have access to online classes.  Now, yes, I was unable to breathe out of my nose for a week so I wasn't going to be working out at home, but I don't default to trying it when I'm home- I feel like I should be doing some other type of work.  So in having the studio classes, I'm making myself do it.

5. I need to find something else to break up the barre routines.  We just got a new treadmill, having worn out our elliptical machine that we had for years, and while the husband loves it, I have not yet gotten on it.  I feel like a combination of the two types of exercise might help start to streamline this body back to where it should be.  Also, the cold temperatures do not help.

6. I don't move enough in general.  I have been spending a lot of time on the computer lately with various projects and I know that when I do that I have less energy and motivation to do things, and when I go to class, my muscles - especially my shoulders - get fatigued much more easily.

So, if nothing else, I have come to some internal epiphanies that I can apply to the way I run my days now, making sure that I am taking better care of myself the way I need now, not the way I needed five or so years ago.