Box Jump

Before last fall, I had never seen The Biggest Loser. If things are really cool, I tend to stay away. Other examples you may be wondering?

Harry Potter
Twilight
Reality TV in general (I watched my first episode of American Idol about two weeks ago)

I thought the list was longer than that, but that's all I can think of right now.

Anyway, so when I was watching The Biggest Loser last season, there was this one episode where one of the contestants, Dina, couldn't jump onto this seemingly short box. Her teammate, Rudy, was yelling at her to get on the box and she just couldn't do it. I thought it was so lame at the time. I really felt like Dina could do it. And to prove that to myself, when I went to the gym in the days following, I looked for a similar box and went about hopping on it with both feet.




Yeah...turns out it wasn't that easy! As hard as I tried, I couldn't get my body to move. If I didn't know better, I would have believed my feet were glued to the floor. No matter how much my mind wanted them to, my feet wouldn't budge. I couldn't do it. And I realized how that happened to Dina on the show. I was lucky to not have Jillian Micheal screaming in my face. Or a friggin camera crew documenting my inability to conquer the box.

Fast forward a few months...

Today was a weight workout day. I'm entering week three of a six week plan. I glanced through the workout briefly before I went to the gym, but because it was mostly similar to previous workouts, I didn't look closely. So imagine my surprise when I completed my first set of glut ham raises and moved onto the next exercise and saw Box Jump - 2 Risers. Good lord. Really? I wasn't sure I was up for this. But I went after it and mastered it! It felt really good to not be afraid and to be able to do the exercise without breaking my neck. My HR got way up there and I was able to do all 4x10 sets!

My workout left me very very tired today. It didn't help that I followed it up with a 4-hour cleaning marathon. But tonight, as I sit on my sore ass, I'm happy to be watching movies and relaxing.

Two more days of this round of the game!

PS- I know this particular exercise, the box jump, looks insanely easy. But I dare you to try it the next time you're at the gym.