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PLANK CHALLENGE

Aug 17, 2012 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

On Wednesday I tried a new class at the gym called willPower and Grace at my new gym. I’d love to say that I’d been recommended the class and wanted to try it out, but reality is that I forgot to bring my trainers to the gym and didn’t want to miss out on a work out entirely.
The class was billed as ‘anew kind of class, that frees your mind, improves your flexibility and boosts your cardio system’.
It sounded great, and I thought it would be a mix of yoga and cardio moves. Which it was, sort of.
However, it was all focused around my very worst move… THE SQUAT.
I’m not sure why, apart from my obvious lack of flexibility in my hips, but I am terrible at squats. They get my legs shaking like nothing else! We mixed in a large number of squats of different varieties, many I hadn’t tried before. We usually did sets of 16 before holding a balance. It had me really breaking a sweat!
With about 5 minutes to go before the end of the class, the teacher exclaimed ‘that’s it for the cardio’-(cue gasps of relief) ‘now for the plank challenge’.
I am terrible at plank. Maybe even more terrible than I am at squats.
Unfortunately, things got even worse when we all had to get in a circle, with a stopwatch on the floor and see who could hold if the longest. As predicted, just after a minute had gone, I dropped first. I stretched out then got back into plank position, and repeated this until the teacher said stop at 3 minutes!!
I was so impressed by the girls that could hold plank for a full 3 minutes without a break. I have therefore challenged myself to try to improve my plank time from 1min, gradually over the next couple of weeks! I’m hoping that by the beginning of November I will be able to hold it for 2 and a half mins.
I actually went back to the class again last night, and whilst I found the squats slightly tougher with burning quads from the previous day, I enjoyed the class a lot more. Plus, it was a slightly longer class that included a lot more yoga stretching at the end. I will certainly be trying it again next week!

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