Fitness: Get Abs Challenge Days 4-6

Image screenshot: Chloe Ting 2022 Get Abs Challenge

Click here to read my update for days 1-3 of this challenge.

It’s Saturday! Are we on day 4 already? Wow, where has the time gone? You may (or may not) be surprised – usually on Saturdays I do wushu, but not today! Nope. Why? Because I needed to do my Chloe Ting workout otherwise I’d be disqualified early from my team and I didn’t want to screw up our team score too badly.

But oh man. Today was not a good workout day. I didn’t feel well to begin with (hello Aunt Flo and what’s up headache), but I wanted to be on track to hit the 25% goal so that we can at least get a rank B for the team challenge.

My teammate has been slaying the challenge as per usual (literally the girl doesn’t miss a day) and a few days ago I got the countdown timer saying I needed to complete 25% within 3 days or something. The challenge is 18 days long so that meant I needed to complete day 5 by tomorrow. So that meant no extra rest days for me this week – I had to workout daily to get 25% on time.

…or so I thought.

It’s only after I completed today’s workout that I realised I still had until end of day on Monday to complete Day 5. Gah, I totally could have taken a rest day today as long as I worked out tomorrow and Monday. That said, usually I take Sundays as my rest days, so perhaps this worked out for the best and I’ll take my rest day tomorrow after all. It’s still far better than having zero rest days at all this week so I could keep up, so I’ll take that as a win.

I’m expecting to get disqualified next week but still continuing this challenge at my own pace. We’ll see how it goes!

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Fitness: Get Abs Challenge Days 1-3

Image screenshot: Chloe Ting 2022 Get Abs Challenge

Good day to you! After much deliberation (no deliberation at all) and consideration (a very low amount of considering occurred), I decided to go ahead and do Chloe’s newest challenge after all. I got through a week of Caroline’s Epic Heat, and, while very enjoyable, turned out to still be a bit too much for me at present.

Not to say that Epic Heat wasn’t great – it was. It was maybe too good. Or, at least, too intense in difficulty for me right now in between my intense wushu classes. I ended up so exhausted last week that I wasn’t able to do any workouts beyond my 3 wushu classes. In fact, even in my wushu classes I was very low on energy compared to before. I think I probably went too hard before and my body just decided it wasn’t having it any longer.

I want to push myself, but not to the extent that I need almost an entire week off from regular workouts to recover, with my energy also being impacted for wushu classes. Therefore, we’re going to go ahead with the Get Abs Challenge and see how we do.

I’m doing this challenge with a friend again because working out as a team genuinely makes such a massive difference to my motivation. I might actually fail the team challenge because I won’t be working out on my wushu days, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

For this challenge, I’m going to be switching up the format of my posts a little. Rather than doing Weeks 1-3, I’ll be adding a new post for 3 days at a time. There are 18 days in total, so expect 6 posts in total from me. Hopefully it won’t take me 6 weeks to complete!

To be clear, I’m absolutely not expecting abs from this challenge (although, I kind of already have some ab definition so it’s not entirely outside the realms of possibility), but I do genuinely enjoy working my core. My core is incredibly weak, and core strength is vital for stability for a multitude of movements and lifting, so I’m hoping to improve my core strength since the challenge is going to be quite ab-heavy.

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Fitness: Wushu White Belt!

Hello!

I am very proud to announce that I finally took my white belt test on Saturday… and I passed! I officially have a white belt, woohoo!

I started learning properly a few weeks ago. I actually finished learning the form within 2 weeks and was invited to take the test on July 3rd, but I wasn’t able to make it… then subsequently, they didn’t have time to test me… then I wasn’t able to make it again and… lol, let’s just say, on Thursday, one of my Sifus was like “You’re so ready, are you gonna take the test or not??”

I’m glad I had a bit more time to work on my foundational skills and my form to be honest. Now that I’ve taken the test, I think the extra couple of weeks’ practice helped a lot, both with polishing my form and with stamina increase.

Not gonna lie, I was so beyond exhausted towards the end of my test I could barely do my form properly lol. And then they asked me to do 10 pushups!

I freaked out because if my belt was dependent on pushups, I was 100% going to fail. They reassured me that I wouldn’t fail if I couldn’t do it; they just to see my upper body strength so to just do as many as I could. So, I gave it my best shot.

I started trying to do full depth pushups and my Sifu stopped me, saying half way is fine. He advised that in wushu, we need to practice speed and power, so half depth at a fast pace is what they’re looking for. I am so very, very glad I’ve been working on my pushups throughout my fitness journey.

I’d completed pushup #6 before they said, “That’s enough, you can stop now.” I was sooo surprised since I was still mentally preparing to push myself through the rest of them (they may have stopped me because I probably looked like I was about to cry with how hard I was pushing myself, but I was determined lol).

My Sifu said that I could probably do 15 pushups if I tried. I felt elated! It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you just put your mind to it. As a result of the test, my Sifu said that my current ability is probably between a yellow/green belt!

To be honest, I didn’t think I had done very well because I was absolutely knackered and wasn’t able to perform at my best, I got confused by some of the names of the foundational kicks and punches and made mistakes lol, and I even stumbled a bit at the end of my form.

Not to mention it was the end of an already exhausting week. My body was not at its best by any means. I felt drained and was aching all over, and even when I showed up to wushu class I was still low on energy. But they were very gracious and encouraging. Plus, I still passed! Ahhh! So happy! (But also they said this test was pretty easy anyway hahahah. It gets harder once you reach purple.)

I’m honestly so thankful for Martial Club for inspiring me to do this. I have been interested in wushu since forever due to my love for Chinese Wuxia TV series in my teens, but that never went further than a 2 week wushu summer camp when I was 15, and doing a bit of Taichi with my dad briefly around that age too.

I don’t think I would have tried even now had I not had the opportunity to hang out with the Martial Club family recently. Just seeing what they’re doing and what they’re capable of… it’s incredible! I’m excited to keep improving, and gotta make my MC Fam proud, after all.

Muchos love,

Bobbie

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Fitness: Caroline Girvan Epic Heat Day 4

Image credit: Caroline Girvan Epic Heat Day 4

7/10 – Day 4: Completed 18:36.
Videos Completed: 5min Warm Up, Epic Heat Day 4.
Equipment used: 5lb dumbbells, medium resistance band.

Hello, it is us. We have just finished day 4 of Caroline’s Epic Heat. Honestly I am very tired, feel generally quite fatigued and, despite my bright smile, did not like this workout overall. I am amazed I got through it, but the transitions were rough.

Even though Caroline showed what was to come, the 40s->20s->40s sets were a bit too much for me. Especially when the transition was more difficult to do, like the chest press -> pushups -> chest press. I found that I barely had time to get into position for the pushups before it was time to grab my dumbbells again for the chest presses. If I had been using heavier dumbbells, I might have injured myself trying to pick them up too quickly.

Jacky definitely struggled with trying to figure out what the exercises were, and a lot of the time, by the time he figured out what the exercise was, Caroline had moved on. This was especially the case with the 20s exercises.

I think my leg/glute strength has increased since I was able to do the squats for longer and the medium band was perfect to push me hard enough so that I needed to stop a couple of times but not give up. The jumping squats were a big phat n-o for me haha. I tried a few each set and dang, back to the regular squats it was.

The 5lb dumbbells were easy for the hip thrusts despite having my medium bands on. So that was kind of exciting… finally time to level up, methinks! Increased leg strength makes sense (and is kind of vital) since I’ve been doing wushu that requires different types of kicks and deep squats, but it is encouraging to feel a noticeable difference during my workouts too.

My upper body, however, was still aching from day 5 lol. Those pushup burpees, man. Today I barely attempted a real pushup and stuck with either knee or incline pushups. My energy levels today were insanely low. Not as bad as yesterday, but still low.

I have also been extra lethargic lately because I’ve been fuelling my body with a solid diet of junk food and carbs for the past few days, so unsurprisingly all I wanted today was a big fat salad (which I thoroughly enjoyed for lunch).

Today’s workout was originally planned for yesterday, but I had absolutely no energy yesterday after eating way too much McDonald’s (I kid you not. They got me good with the $2 Big Mac offer. I had like 2.5 Big Macs and way too many chicken nuggets and fries), as well as some pizza and pastries. Talk about a massive cheat day… or 3. Lol.

That said, even if I were feeling in tip top condition, I still don’t think I would have liked today’s workout. The quick switches were just too much for me. Glad it’s over!

Tomorrow Chloe’s new challenge launches and I feel like it’d be better for my current fitness level, so I might switch over. I think I’ll take tomorrow as another rest day because… well, my body needs rest. Tuesday is my wushu day again, so let’s catch up again on Weds!

Muchos love,

Bobbie

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Fitness: Caroline Girvan Epic Heat Day 5

Image credit: Caroline Girvan Epic Heat Day 5

7/6 – Day 5: Completed 17:51.
Videos Completed: 5min Warm Up, Epic Heat Day 5.

“Hey Bobbie didn’t you just finish day 3? Where is day 4? Why are you on day 5 already?” – All great questions. I am… preparing for my hubs to join me in the next workout, and he hard refuses to do burpees. Lol, mood. Anyways, as such, I’m switching up the days so that Mr. Bob can join me for day 4 on Saturday.

He enjoys the dumbbell workouts. He’s for sure going to see this and say, “‘Enjoy’ is a very strong word.” I take back “enjoy”. He tolerates dumbbell workouts, better? :D

Either way, I ended up doing the burpee bonanza today. Um… yeah. It was… hm. Burpees :’) I am next level not a fan of burpees, but Caroline loves them so I can learn to at least tolerate them. I do appreciate the way that she made the workout more interesting by incorporating so many different exercises then doing the burpee version of those exercises.

30mins of burpees would otherwise absolutely bore me to tears, but this one kept me on my toes – literally. Not gonna lie, it was probably the toughest one so far for me because I am weak and have very low stamina, so I was rarely able to do the exercises for the full 45sec. But it’s still encouraging to look back on my workout footage and see my burpee form on point… for at least the first half of it lol.

Also very encouraging was watching myself do actual pushups!!! There is absolutely room for improvement, especially with how low I wasn’t really able to go, but I’m still thrilled that I have progressed to proper pushups. I did have to switch to knee pushups for some of the reps in the later exercises (because, hello? Exhausted) and I took a couple of longer breaks, but overall? Pretty darn proud.

The fact that I managed to get through it is a massive win in my book, especially since my lower body is still kind of aching from Monday and even more so from wushu class yesterday. I am not sure I’d want to do this video again, ever, but I’m glad I did it. I literally sweat so much I soaked through my towel by the end of it.

I realised at the end of the workout that my crotch sweat patch game was. next level. Honestly I didn’t even realise crotch sweat patches were a thing until literally yesterday when I watched Michelle Kare’s friends trying her home workout and one of them mentioned it. I am very, very glad this was a home workout lol.

On another note, Chloe’s new challenge (2022 Get Abs Challenge) drops on Monday and she released Ep 1 today. I wasn’t planning to do the challenge since I’m doing Caroline’s Epic Heat right now, but the trailer of it on Chloe’s Ep 1 HIIT video looks so unbelievably cute I’m very tempted to go ahead and try it.

The music is super cute, Chloe’s outfits are super cute, the concept looks adorable. I might just have to hit pause on Epic Heat to do Chloe’s challenge. It’s only 18 days so seems pretty doable… we’ll see. I’ll stick with Epic Heat for now, but if Epic Heat starts getting too intense, I might switch over to Get Abs.

I barely had energy to do one practice round of my wushu form before I just clonked out and needed rest after today’s workout. Those burpees took a lot out of me, to the surprise of absolutely no one. I’m going for my white belt test tomorrow! Need to retain some strength for it. Wish me luck!

Muchos love,

Bobbie

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