Shred This!

I've had an amazon.com gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket for some time now. I finally spent it. I bought a book that was recommended to me by one of my darling lurkers (thanks to whoever suggested "Straight Up and Dirty"... when I got it in the mail, I realized that I had been eyeing it in a bookstore not too long ago!), a chick flick, and Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. I've been hearing so many good things about this new DVD, and I wanted to try it out.

The way the Shred works is that you do it for 30 days straight... no breaks. The whole idea is that your body can do exercise, and you can push it, you just need to be willing to. Sounds okay so far, right? It's the whole philosophy that Jillian uses on the Biggest Loser, so I'm game! Each workout is 20 minutes long: a 2 minute warmup, three 6- minute intervals of 3 minute strength training, 2 minutes of cardio, and 1 minute of abs, and then a 2 minute cool down. Easy. I can definitely do this every day. There are three levels of intensity. You start at level 1, and when you are ready to move on (usually in about 10 days), you move up to the next level. Obviously, I started at Level 1.

Yowza! I'm not sore, and most people say that they are sore after the first day of the Shred. Well, I'm not, at least, not yet. The hardest thing for me was the cardio (lots of jumping jacks and jump rope) and the last minute of ab work. Sweat was pouring off of me like crazy. At the end of the workout, I had to sit down, drink a whole bottle of Gatorade G2, and eat some peanut butter to replenish my system. I gave 100% to the Shred, and trust me, the Shred took all of it!

I also went for a run last night. I had some work to do yesterday morning (same with this morning), so I've decided to switch my workouts to night a few times a week. I went running on the university's track again last night and did 20 minutes before I called it quits. My allergies are starting to mess with my asthma (which, until I started running, was pretty dormant for at least the past year) so I'm running to Target a little later today to pick up a new inhaler. I'm going to my doctor next month for my annual check-up, so I'm going to speak with her about my asthma and running if this continues to be the trend.