February 13, 2014-Weight Room

On February 13, 2014, our class was in the weight room for the first time. Mr. Neufeld told us to come up with our own goal and find a video on youtube that relates to the goal you wish to achieve. The purpose of doing this was to take action to achieve your goal by following along with a workout video on youtube. As you know from my other blog posts, I want to improve in push ups and also I want to improve on holding certain exercise positions, such as the plank and also the side plank for a longer amount of time. So Karen and I decided to set a goal for ourselves to build and strengthen our ab muscles. By building abdominal muscles it will help me to do better/more push ups and to be able to hold a plank and a sideways plank for longer. After achieving this goal my structures for these exercise movements will be improved too. To add on to this, this video will also help me to increase the intensity of my workouts as well.  Some of the moves in the video were, side to side planks, side planks with a hip drop which I thought was a cool and different movement. I did Around the World Plank, Bridge Plank, straight plank, mountain climbers, straight plank with hip drop, spiderman planks and a side plank with reach. The spiderman planks were probably the hardest for me because I had to hold a plank and bring my legs in near my stomach area and hold it there for a couple of seconds. While I was doing the Bridge Plank I made sure my head was kept high and my stomach was up as much as possible. These exercises were all different variations of the regular plank and the thing I liked about this video was that it made the workout exciting by including unique exercises that were not boring. During the block, Karen and I replayed the video around four times and after the fourth time, my arms were aching. After gym as I was sitting in my fourth block class, I could feel a little pain in my arms. While I was doing the side to side planks my arm/body started to shake after 10 seconds. I researched about this and I realized that it is normal and the shaking means that my muscles are working hard and they are getting a good work out. However at the same time the shaking means that my muscles want to stop, but you have to gain the motivation in yourself to persevere through it. When I am having thoughts of giving up I always try to think of something else and try not to think about the pain I am feeling. This way I am distracting myself and it helps me to hold an exercise position for a longer amount of time or to keep on going by reaching a higher level on the beep test. Overall, the gym block in the weight room was beneficial to me as I am taking action to achieve my goal, and I have high feelings that I will be able to reach this goal by the end of the year!


Here is the video:

Here are a couple of pictures of me doing the side plank and the bridge plank: