Just call me a Shred Head

Another attempt in my never ending quest to take better care of myself. I need more ENDURANCE! I need to be STRONGER! I want to be able to keep up with the little people in my life.

So, when one of my blog "friends" decided to join a " friend" of hers, Vicki, who was doing the Thirty Day Shred I followed her link.... found a new "friend" and bought the Shred.

In case you haven't heard of The Shred, it is an exercise DVD by Jillian Michaels, the she-devil trainer on The Biggest Looser TV show. She regularly pushes grown men until they cry. She is tuff stuff. Each of the three levels is more difficult that the previous.

I was able to do "most" of level one. The first few mornings after starting level one I awoke with what I thought was a severe cramp in each of my limbs............... Apparently level one is all about arms and legs. I managed to push through and was able to forgot the pain after a week or so. I did a little more every day and suffered a little less each morning.

I followed my new "friend" Vicki's progress online as she told of losing inches and being so energized. So I kept going, losing nothing. But I could feel a difference in my energy level.

After encouragement from the on-liners I moved on to level two........ which was a killer for me. I was great on the warm ups. And the cool downs are always my favs. But all of the in between moves were too much. At first my body just refused to do the jumping jacks and the walking planks.......... I may have some kind of processing problem ....... while I was watching Jillian and thought I understood what she was asking me to do............. the information could not seem to translate into a movement. My heart was willing but my other parts would not move. We lay on the floor in an immovable mass thinking really bad thoughts about Jillian. Her outfit was not even cute and her hair.....PLEASE! She probably doesn't even have friends. But after several tries I managed to do a few moves and finally managed to get through most of the moves following the beginners' path.

After reading several comments that stated that level three was actually easier than level two, I limped on to level three and found that it was more "do-able" for me, but surely not easy. At first major muscle groups were sore but as time went on I developed rare diseases. First I hurt around my ribs and all around my back. I thought I must have shingles because I had heard how painful they were and I. Was. In. Pain. No shingle blisters appeared and soon I noticed different pains. My waist hurt. How can your waist hurt? I decided I must be allergic to the detergent I was using because my skin hurt. Or maybe I was allergic to my exercise mat. And whatever is just under my skin hurt. Then the most extreme pain moved to smaller muscles. While the glutenous maximust hurt the minimust glutenous hurt also. You know the smaller muscles under the glutes.

Some of my pains ended up being something else. A real illness that knocked me off my regiment for almost two weeks............... but now I am back on board doing jumping jacks AND planks. Jillian is back yelling at me " Do. Not. Stop!...If a four hundred pound man can do this so can you!"
As my friend Vicky said, I wanted to climb through my lap top and slap her silly.