something tender

 I am contemplating a small cup of tea before getting on with some more chores viz cleansing my wardrobe and here's the problem! My legs feel like they're cast in cement!

Looks like my HIIT was quite the hit. Ugh!

Here's the thing, after 25 minutes of fast-paced with 15 seconds in between breaks of HIIT I found myself dead on the mat, drenched in the sweat of my own making, hoping to revive and get on with cool down but after about 5 minutes I found myself fully recovered and in fact almost felt like I'd not done any workout whatsoever!

Of course, such tricks as played by the body are not as stealthy anymore as they might have been when I was still new to the ways of workout and so I knew that anything that might be more cardio or HIIT would put me down with fatigue and so I resorted to another 20 minutes of upper body strength. It was after all meant to be since yesterday was a lower body.

So it went, nothing extraordinary. Just a few curls, raises ventral and side, tricep extensions, chest press and dumbbell pullovers. 2 sets of each, each set of 10 and yeah that completed it.

Now I have an entire sore body in cahoots with my craving for tea.

The problems with winters I say..

agony in cramps, happiness bizarre

You know that cautionary voice? One which whispers from within, often from a cognitive part of your brain telling you not do certain things; like a word of Providence, a foresight.. that voice which was singularly amiss today as I decided to crank up my workout and add pilates to HIIT.

The reasoning was simple. That I needed some extra burnout rounds and do lower body workout slightly different from the usual resistance training and so I hopped on to the Pilates parade, because it's the one form of exercise that slowly burns and tires me in that sneaky way that pilates usually tend to, and I love the results it has to offer, so why not?

I included it to my workout in an AB AB format, where the former being pilates followed by the latter HIIT two times over, and dear gods, each time I'd haul myself off the mat to jump or kill myself in similar ways I'd feel the torture.

It came to a point where I'd developed a very special relationship with the mat and I'd to literally speak my self out of sticking to the floor. Like an inner monologue of reproachful cusses.

I've never known 30 seconds to be so long as when you're doing pulses, it feels like this might be it. This will be the day my hip socket will launch a rebellion..and here's the funny thing about exercising. That once you're done with it and finished a long stretch and cool down, you feel like maybe the workout wasn't as strenuous, of course, the soreness that comes after a while and mostly next day is enough to make you feel silly for such overreaching thoughts.

That cautionary voice does tend to take some time off, usually when I'm making bad decisions.
Will I resort to this workout again?
I think I will. It felt much better than the usual HIIT routines and I like to think I added a bit of variation, but perhaps I won't be jumping into it this week, in fact I might not jump at all this week.

hit it right

It could be the cold weather or maybe I'm just going through a sadistic streak, but I have begun including a HIIT routine to almost all my workouts.
When earlier I'd usually stick to HIIT Monday's and make it brutal I ended up doing another 30-minute routine today followed by 30 minutes of pilates, though it became near impossible to do pilates after a strenuous HIIT. It was a burnout round for me but I struggled with my form and have come to the conclusion that if I want to continue with this high-intensity training then perhaps I'll have to reduce its timings when I club it with another routine.

Also noteworthy is the fact that I've eliminated Vinyas from my workouts and I do not like that. I'll have to design a routine proper which can include yoga because I do love how my spine feels after those stretches. I could add it on days I do not properly train and that could be it, but the problem is that when I'm doing something physical it feels almost criminal to not sweat like a pig and thus end up overtraining sometimes, and here's the weird thing about exercising that it works better when you let your body relax as opposed to constantly punishing it.

It's pointless to work on sore muscles, useless to work out on days that you're tired, because not only will your body not harvest any benefits from exercising on tired muscles but it will be impossible to keep a good form.
It's a lot more fun and easier to work out in this weather because you don't start immediately sweating even before a warm up and there's no need for turning on the air conditioner, but I do switch on the fan because exercising makes you feel hot, no matter the weather and that's one of the wonderful benefits of it.

I know it'll come off as completely vain and idiotic if I say it but I'm still struggling with a bit of fat, I mean I have my own problem areas which might not be as such visible but I know of them and unless I don't push myself harder in ways I'm not completely interested I might not see results.
Perhaps if I change my exercises.

I happened to meet a nutritionist sometime back who's combined intermittent fasting with keto. That's like a double suicide pact. I mean how? I mean why?
Watching her pile a mountain of cream on her coffee near about gave me a heart attack and I saw her cringe when she saw me adding sugar to my cup of tea.
I didn't let our conversation steer towards foods and diets because if there are anything people on odd diets like to preach is their odd diets and I can't in my wildest dreams do anything paleo or keto. Restrictive diets are not for me, no sir! But she did teach me how to calculate my macros and for that, I'm thankful though I won't be doing that anytime soon either.

Right, so this is the end of my workout rant for the week.