Nancy’s boot camp adventure

It all started way back in high school. I took one of those career/skills tests and my results came back:

Your ideal career would be
a. Accountant
b. Physical Education teacher
c. Army Drill Sergeant.

Ever since then I have been fascinated by boot camp workouts. If you ask Mr. Ken, he may also say that I have a personality of an Army Drill Sergeant, especially when I am nagging, er talking to him about his exercise and food.

My dear friend Susan, in Ireland, gave me Tony Horton’s Hard Corps workouts. And yes, they are as hard as the name sounds! I am loving them!

Not only do they challenge me physically and mentally, the workout crew is all very fit, muscular ex-military types. Ah, very easy on the eyes. But, yet I digress, back to the exercises.

1. The so-called warm up.

The warm up is brief and is only 10 minutes. It takes me that long to get psyched to start moving, so I need to do a very gentle 45 minute warm up before then. Miss Jessica and Peanut walking workouts are just the thing!

2. Yelling helps.

Like true boot camp workouts, Tony encourages, well “screams at you” to count down the reps. Interestingly enough, yelling does help get through the torture, er I mean workout. I think because you are distracted from everything.

3. Keeping up.

The first time I did one of these workouts, I was feeling pretty good. We were told to do core work very fast. I was on my third rep and feeling very strong, until I heard Tony say. Okay, that’s 25 reps done, it’s time to move on to the next exercise. What? 25 reps. If I went as fast as the workout crew, my heart would give out and I would be dead.

4. The privacy of your own home.

I decided to leave my ego be and just do the best I can. One day, I’m in my zone and I hear this muffled snorting behind me. Unbeknownst to me, Mr. Ken had entered my workout space and was watching me. I could tell he wanted to say something, something like, “How come you aren’t doing what the workout crew is doing?” But, he knows better and tried to keep quiet.

I was so breathless that I couldn’t even yell at him to go away.

Luckily these workouts are only about 30 minutes long, including warm up, so they are over before you know it. And at the end, I felt great. Except it takes me two days to recover from them so I have a few days to go before I torture myself, er try these workouts again.

What about you? How have you challenged yourself lately?