My 'Cave'

I love our house. Each room has something special about it. One of my favourite rooms is my 'Cave'. Technically it is not a room. It is really just a bit of space on the second level of our house that was too low to do anything with. I made my library in the cave. I get to my cave via a door in our walk in wardrobe. There is also a 'sub-cave' that you get to from the main cave but that is another story for another day.

I have a bean bag and a big red cushion in my cave and all my books, magazines and special things. Spiders love my cave and so do my two cats. My husband very rarely enters this space. I love my cave. It is so quiet. Sometimes when I go in there to find something (which takes awhile as my cave is messy) I just sit for awhile and listen... to nothing. I look around in awe at all the knowledge that is living in this tiny space. There are several hundred books, old tapes that I listened to... well when tapes were what you listened to music on, my art and design portfolios, paints and brushes, magazines, my old journals... it is a room full of 'me'.

I love my cave.

Pre-challenge

Only five days to go until I start the next challenge! Who would have thought that I would be so looking forward to spending another 12 weeks working my butt off, eating clean healthy food and hanging out with a great bunch of cyber friends!

I started the Turbulence Training 2K3 workout today and loved it! I had to get up earlier than usual because of work stuff but I still leapt out of bed and was really excited about doing my workout. It certainly wasn't like this a few months ago so the workout habit definitely coming back and I am feeling heaps stronger and fitter. Yay. I did the upper body part of the workout this morning and even though I took it reasonably easy I can feel it this evening.

Some background on my workout habits

1. I generally always workout in the morning as I have found from past experience I am more likely to skip workouts scheduled for the afternoon because I am tired or working late etc.

2. Because I have sustained a number of injuries in the past from over doing it with heavy weights I now keep things on the lighter side... the really lighter side! An example is that I am currently bench pressing a whole 5kgs (on each dumbell)! I tried going up to 7.5kg a few of weeks ago and sure enough. Hurt my shoulder and had to have some time off.

3. I try to maintain conscious awareness of my technique and form (the way I do each exercise) to ensure I am doing them properly. I do this for two reasons a) to avoid injury and b) to gain maximum benefit. There are times when it is tempting to rush through the exercises when I am running late or just tired and want the workout to finish. Mostly I resist this temptation.

4. I don't generally have anything to eat before I do my workouts and often don't get a chance to eat after them for an hour or so. Ideally I should have something to eat post workout. I need to work on this.

5. I alternate between an elliptical and a spin bike for my cardio and listen to loud music on my computer!

6. My workout partner is my husband. We support and encourage each other... most of the time. It is a great time to 'address' concerns which can lead to some rather vigorous discussions! A couple of our workouts have taken much longer than they should have!

7. I wake by radio alarm and usually listen to a couple of songs before I get up. To help me in the motivation department I try to think about and visualise my workout the night before and think about it a bit when I first wake up. This really does help.

8. I record every excercise, number of reps, weight and any additional comments that may be helpful in the future. I might mention that I only did a 1/2 full press-up or that my shoulder was a bit sore or that I need to put my weight up on an exercise for the next workout.

8. And... probably the most important and valuable thing of all, I discuss my workouts and how I am feeling with other TT members and keep up to date with what they are up to to help me keep on track.

Right. I am off to get some sleep.

What I've been up to this week

Throughout the day all sorts of funny and interesting things I could say on my blog pop into my head. As soon as I sit down each night... blank brain syndrome!

This week is suppose to be the first week in my mini six week challenge that I have given myself to keep me on track until the next TT challenge. My headspace is just not where it should be with regard to nutrition. It hasn't been for a couple of weeks now and my progress has slowed so I have decided that from next Monday I am going back to tracking my food on Sparkpeople.

My Turbulence Training workouts have been going really well. I tried to be a mini Arnold (Swartzniger) a couple of weeks ago and upped my weights for bench press (from a HUGE 5kgs for each dumbbell to 7.5kg!) and injured myself. As someone said on my TT challenge journal - it is the first time they had heard of a person hurting their butt doing bench press! My reply was that I am very clever.