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.
7/1 – Day 2: Completed 19:02. Videos Completed: Epic Heat Day 2. Equipment used: 5lb dumbbells.
Welp, as you can see from my completed videos list and my workout completion time, I absolutely was not about to have a good time with this workout haha. I’m actually amazed I managed to complete the workout at all because I was feeling absolutely exhausted all day.
I felt fatigued and groggy and ended up (unintentionally) taking a solid 2hr+ nap on the sofa after eating way too many rice cakes smothered in chocolate hazelnut spread. Lol, even after knowing how bad sugar is for my body I just craved it even more and overate. Ah well, it was one of those days.
It was also getting close to dinner time my hubs was hungry, I didn’t want to delay our dinner too much so I decided to skip my warm up. That very likely affected my performance at the start of the workout since I felt like I needed to stretch more first.
I was able to get into my stride shortly after though and still enjoyed the workout overall. My legs were already aching from the previous workout and, well, now my shoulders are aching too haha. I tried to keep my core engaged, but I also felt a lot of it in my forearms too. Ah, my weak lil noodle arms.
I liked that there were exercises that focused on one side first then the other, and for the movements where you used both arms at the same time on one dumbbell, I tried to let my left side take more of the weight. Oh man, those diagonal pushes were so hard. And I have never struggled to ‘drive a car’ as much as I did during this workout.
The 30sec rests between each superset was much appreciated and necessary haha. That’s something I really appreciate about the way Caroline structures her workouts. I can confirm I was definitely getting close to failure for a lot of the exercises during this workout. 5lb dumbbells were plenty heavy enough for me with the amount of time under tension per movement.
Unfortunately there was no time for me to do any wushu practice after the workout because we needed to head out for dinner, but I don’t think I would have been able to lift my arms anyway and my legs definitely needed a break haha. There wasn’t that much for me to practice anyway though, so it worked out fine.
Wushu-wise, I’ve finished learning my first form today! We did the Lian Huan Fist since I have no belt yet, and my Shifu said I could take the test to get my first belt, woohoo! White belt, here I come :D I’m particularly pleased since I only started learning it last week.
I’m very much still enjoying Epic Heat so far and am looking forward to day 3, which I’ll be doing on Monday since tomorrow will be a rest day. I’m a bit apprehensive since it looks like it’ll be an intense lower body workout and I… kinda need my lower body for my wushu class the day after lol.
I also don’t have a yoga block, so, um… yeah I guess we’ll see how it goes lol. I hope the DOMS don’t destroy me.
Long intro because I haven’t posted in a while! To skip directly to my thoughts on the challenge, please click here.
Wooo! It’s been a while since I uploaded a post and I have to admit, I’ve had one stuck in my drafts that I’ve simply never completed. I have had trouble concentrating and get distracted way too easily, and – ehhem – I don’t typically prioritise writing blog posts. Much has happened lately but I haven’t really written about it.
Looks like this blog is really mostly a faith, food and fitness blog haha. Food has been business as usual lately (we go through phases of eating healthy then eating junk. Gotta keep it balanced, but I have a few restaurant review posts I want to get up) though faith may need an update!
This post is going to be a fitness one though.
Fitness posts tend to be the ones I’m most consistent with, but since finishing Chloe’s last challenge, I haven’t really started a new one, so haven’t really posted anything. I have, however, started attending wushu classes! I’ve only just started and I’m pretty weaksauce, so there isn’t really much to blog about in that regard.
It feels like ages ago since I finished Chloe’s challenge but it was only 6/13, a couple of weeks ago. I feel like I’ve rested way too much and have become lazy, but in reality I tried out a wushu class on 6/16, only a few days after completing Chloe’s challenge, then wanted to try a different place on 6/18 but ended up not being able to make it.
Last week I went to wushu class on Tuesday and Thursday and did a Caroline Girvan workout on Wednesday as well as some wushu practice. I wanted to go on Saturday as well but ended up not being able to make it either. So, actually, I still worked out 2-3x/week over the past couple of weeks!
Not as much as I’d like, but perhaps I’m being a little too hard on myself for feeling lazy. There were days when I felt like I wanted to do some wushu practice, but I just struggled to find the mental energy to start, and then I just gave up and didn’t bother. I haven’t really been out for walks either (mostly because it’s been sweltering these days. Highs of 35-37°C all last week, ugh.)
I am, however, thoroughly pleased to announce that I was able to do 5 proper pushups a couple of days ago.
I watched a video about the power of the mind and how most of the time our minds give up before our bodies do, so I figured why not just try. Try actual push ups. So I did. And I did one. Then two… then three… four… five. Then I stopped. I probably could have done a couple more. But I was already thrilled.
This is the first time I’ve been able to do proper pushups. I’m actually amazed. Two years ago I set my goal as being able to do 10 proper form pushups. I’m finally getting there. I mean, let’s be honest, my form wasn’t like amazing. I could have bent my elbows a lot deeper. But I also wasn’t on my knees, and that’s a huge win for me.
Yesterday I went to wushu class again and I plan to go again tomorrow. Today? I tried out day 1 of Caroline’s Epic Heat. I don’t think wushu 2x/week is enough exercise for me (I know, I don’t even recognise myself sometimes!) so I’d like to supplement my week with other workouts in between, where I can do a quick workout and also get in some wushu practice.
The hardest thing for me is starting my workout, but I’ve realised that if I’m doing something more structured (like a CT/CG Challenge), then my body just naturally prepares for warming up and working out. Good to know I’ve actually developed some degree of discipline with all the workout challenges I’ve been doing!
I realised I struggle to start wushu practice on my own because it’s just mentally taxing to try to remember what I’ve learned and then also have to practice it without someone guiding me. I’m such a beginner, and I don’t have the mental capacity to “teach” myself and push myself at the same time. It’s daunting, so my brain just gives up before starting.
I don’t want to warm up and get it done, especially since I don’t know how long I’d actually exercise for and I hate getting sweaty for only a 10min workout. But if I’m already sweating and warmed up from a workout, then I’ve already conquered the first hurdle. It’s far easier to tack on 5-10mins of wushu practice to the end of a workout when I’m already in the zone.
So that’s where Caroline comes in! Chloe’s new challenge doesn’t launch until 11th July, and I’m not sure what it is yet, plus I’ll need something I can take at my own pace between wushu classes starting now, so Caroline it is.
Again this post comes super late, not that I haven’t finished the challenge already, but I just haven’t found the time/energy to write this post. Not to say I just haven’t had time at all, I must admit I haven’t been prioritising a lot of the things I’ve wanted to do as I’ve either felt a little paralysed by my never-ending to-do list, or I have too many things that I want to do so I’ve been doing bits of all of them lol. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s my current state of mind.
Fitness-wise, I think I have improved significantly and it shows on my body. I added a couple of progress photos at the bottom of previous post and it hasn’t changed much since then, but compared to a couple of years ago? Oh yeah, the change is pretty dramatic.
I mean, just looking back on my wedding photos you can already clearly see such a big difference, and I wasn’t even at my heaviest at that time.
Anyways, now that I am this far in my fitness journey, I have started to make these workouts more of my own. I still follow Chloe’s movements for the most part, but I will also change it up wherever I see fit to target the areas I feel like I need to work on (my left side, ehhem).
This Summer Shred Challenge was only 3 weeks long so this is the final 2022 Summer Shred post! Goodness, it absolutely flew by. As with my last post, I wasn’t up for writing a daily update so I just noted the workouts I did and put my concluding thoughts at the end.
This entry comes late but it also comes with a couple of updated “after” photos. Not gonna lie, I was kinda shocked at how much my body has changed lately, and I felt so proud of my progress I’m finally posting them here.
As with my previous post, I only made a few notes throughout the week and then wrote my closing thoughts once the week of workouts was over. In this case, I didn’t have time to write on Sunday/Monday as I was down in LA, but now that I’m back home I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and finish up this entry.
The Journals feature was recently released on the Chloe Ting website but I personally still prefer to track my own workouts and progress on my blog, though I’m finding I have less time these days to dedicate to it. I have a bunch of posts that I’ve been meaning to write up but haven’t had the time.
I do want to find time to blog a little more these days though. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in seeing what 2 years of Chloe Ting workouts can do, read on…
