Bootcamp: Day 7

There was a real humdinger of a wet and wild West Coast storm moving in last night, so our instructor decided to be "nice" to us by letting us work inside the gym. Little did I know what she had in store for us – circuit training. *cue blood-curdling scream*

Okay, I know, that doesn't sound so awful. And it wasn't really. It was just very tough. Essentially, we had to work at each station for a minute at a time. There was probably 20 stations in total and they were either some form of cardio or some form of resistance training.

The cardio was the most difficult – between each station you had to skip rope or run up and down two flights of stairs. The resistance training involved resistance bands or weights that we used to perform any number of moves we had previously learned. The hardest of these stations was one where you had to sit on a wobble board, hold a v-pose, and do the "kayaker" movement with an 8lb weight. I didn't accomplish anything on that station except for sliding off and laughing a lot.

As if that wasn't enough, the mats the instructor put down were the most stinkiest, dirtiest, vilest mats in the world. And let me tell you – it was more than enough motivation to hold any given pose for as long as possible to prevent the barest minimum of your body from touching those skanky mats.

The evening ended with a power walk outside combined with weights. As we walked, we had to do bicep curls, lateral raises, etc. I worked out a lot of stress with that walk and I felt more than refreshed when we came back and did yoga. Great evening. Even if it was indoors ;)

Play Along at Home: Find a skanky mat (or a clean one) and try a few bicycle ab exercises. Tip: the dirtier your mat, the more apt you are to keep moving.