good afternoon 🙂

all my Sunday good intentions went out of the window when I awoke with calves so tight you could bounce a coin off them a la military well made beds (at least that is what they do in the movies). So tight in fact that I could hardly walk and they were pulling up on my feet muscles and causing both arch pain and heel pain such that standing in bare feet was not fun! I blame the Bonfire societies!

so the first part of Sunday was spent attacking my calves with my spiky massage balls and stretching them… this all proved relatively unsuccessful and I thought I was doomed until I remembered that I had read that compression socks aid recovery…so I dug out the compression socks I bought for such eventualities and put them on! Success…within a few hours no more heal pain and calves that would move…a little bit! So, what with heel pain and freezers breaking down, going out and running or doing a class was off the cards…so I thought it was about time I got on and started the press ups challenge I had promised to do! I started (as always) by warming up in the stepper for 10 mins.

I had downloaded the runtastic pressups app and decided I would use that to track my progress…I discovered that it is very clever and doesn’t let you cheat! You have to touch the phone with your nose for it to register a pressup…which means the phone has to be on the floor under your face…which means that you have to get you face (and body) all the way down there…and up again! It was at this point that I realised that I had only ever really done half press ups if that! So I followed Matt the trainer’s advice (from a few weeks ago) and modified the pressup by putting my hands on something higher than the floor instead of going on my knees. This way similar to doing press ups on the trx, you use the same muscles and core as a full press up on the floor.

Rather embarrassingly I had to modify quite a lot and ended up with my hands on the fourth step up of the stairs! I am hoping this will improve with work…and I suppose it wouldn’t be a challenge if it was easy!

I had discovered and downloaded the runtastic squats and sit up apps too…so I thought I would add them on too…they also don’t let you cheat as you have to hold the phone out and it uses the accelerometer to gauge the amount of movement you do…if it is not enough it doesn’t register!

Thankfully, I found that my squat and sit up abilities are somewhat better than my pressup abilities, and the first level of the app was somewhat easy… so I did it twice!

I then added on some more body weight exercises, (hip bridges, leg raises, pilates roll downs) and then spent a long time stretching…I decided my legs deserved a good stretch out!! and they did feel better afterwards!

Day 107 complete 🙂