Mini goals and rubber bands

I went swimming at lunch time again today – the second time. And I’ve already crossed off my first mini-goal. I did 20 lengths (500 m) in 30 minutes. I did the first 5 lengths without stopping to rest!!! A bit of an improvement over last time. There is such an amazingly steep learning curve with swimming; it’s incredible just how quickly you improve. Of course, it was all downhill from that point on. My swimming mini-goal number 2 was to swim for 30 minutes in minimum 2-length blocks, without having to stop after every length. Who knows, maybe on Friday…? 

On arriving home this evening I even had enough energy to do my scheduled resistance workout. It’s the month 2 workout from the Self 2005 Challenge. 2005 was the year I started collecting Self workouts, so I decided to start at the beginning and I will be working my way through the Self 05, 06, and 07 Challenges over the next year, each Challenge month being interspersed with a 4-week Turbulence Training period. By which time, the 2008 Challenge will be available.  I was hoping to be able to post a link to the workout, but I can’t find it archived anywhere. But for loads of other great workouts, the vast majority of which can be performed anywhere, visit Self magazine’s website.

Anyway, it’s a 10-move resistance band workout, to be done twice a week, once with 2 sets of 15 reps and once with 2 sets of 20 reps and up to 45 seconds rest between sets. You can increase the challenge in different ways over the month, but I’ll write about those as and when I do them. This kind of workout improves your muscle endurance. It uses lower resistance and higher reps than the more hard-core workouts like Turbulence Training.

In other news, I wrote down everything I ate today, and wasn’t even tempted by the birthday chocolates in the communal kitchen at work. Let’s hope this continues in the run up to the Christmas glutton-fest!