#onepunchmay2020

[less-flower]

Today’s workout:

50 x push-ups/high-low boat/squats, 4:45 min planks

YWA Yoga for Gratitude

3.1k run

YWA Post-Run Yoga

Had a great run 😊. Week 3 of C25k felt pretty easy.

[glavielepj02]

Saitama'wing 😔👌

[flourishfox]

Saitama sketch

[kahixxi]

[mooseekaart]

Saitama

I like this anime. He's so cool. I like his dedication and humbleness. I am waiting for the next season 😊

[less-flower]

Today’s workout:

100 push-ups

50 HB/LB

100 squats

05:00 planks

YWA Yoga for brainpower (11 min)

YWA Meditation for learning (12 min)

May’s theme of the monthly YWA calendar is meditation, so I’m giving that a try. I’m rather bad at it since I have trouble turning off my thoughts but maybe practice will help? I spent this meditation mostly thinking about what I’ll do the rest of the day, though ... But I started to nod off a bit and startled awake at least once, so at least it seems to have been relaxing 🤣.

[less-flower]

That’s C25k week 1 done!

I ran into town to see if I could find a bakery that’s open today (it’s a public holiday) but alas, no such luck. I went past the strawberry booth on my way back, though, so I might not have bread but I have fresh fruit 🍓😊.

My OPM efforts are spotty at best but I did do 30 push-ups and squats, 15 high/low boats and > 1:30 min planks so far.

[less-flower]

One Punch May day 1 - Introduction

Hi! I’m Mareike, I’m almost 40 and German, living in a small town in Southern Germany together with a friend and working from home as a translator. I’m a nerd and pretty creative person, so I have a fandom-random main blog at @sternenblumen and a writing blog at @flowers-stories (big fandoms are The Musketeers, Stranger Things, B99 and Zombies, Run! but I also love Harry Potter, Ghibli, Full Metal Alchemist and a lot of other fandoms). On this blog, I write/reblog stuff about myself (duh), mental health, body positivity, yoga, running, swimming, ...

I won’t bore you with my full weight-loss/fitness journey since it’s been going on almost my whole life - among others, it involves binge eating disorder and depression, diabetes, loooots of attempts to lose weight and a long time believing I was not physical fit even though I’ve been involved in some type of sports most of my life, despite regularly failing at PE. Since I made this tumblr in 2016, I have fallen in love with running and yoga and learned to enjoy the gym. I still struggle with my weight but try to shift my focus more to physical strength/endurance than the number on the scale or my body shape. (Due to the diabetes which is weight-related, I’m not able to entirely disregard it but I try to not let it rule me.)

I previously participated in Half-Punch April and enjoyed it - on those days when I wasn’t cursing myself for agreeing to do that XD. With my gym closed and running currently not being possible due to some foot pain, this and yoga are my best bet at getting in some exercise regularly!

My plan for this month is doing the following every day:

100 push-ups

I looked up some push-up variations and discovered I'm actually doing it “wrong”! I use a wide shoulder stance (i.e. arms held perpendicular to the body, not close to the body). That’s still a legitimate variation, though, so I will keep doing them like that 😉. I’m doing 50 of these on my toes and 50 “normal” ones on my knees.

50 x high boat/low boat

That’s the yoga term for it - you could maybe call them reverse V-ups? Reverse sit-ups?

100 squats

5 minutes of planking

Cumulatively - my current best time at planks is about 1 minute.

1 hour walking

I hope I’ll be able to run again soon, in which case I will go for a run of whatever length and walk the time needed to bring it to one hour - 10k running won’t be possible for me currently, I’m afraid.

[less-flower]

I’m running again! Or, at least I’m working towards it ...

I went to the doc on Thursday and got the confirmation that I was right about the problem (heel spur) and a prescription for gel inlays. Of course, neither of these things made it go away instantly but I’m impatient. So, since it also was a long break (again), I decided to start slow by doing C25k again, this time using the app.

Definitely felt good to go out and run again 😊. No idea about the distance - I guess 3.5k? Timed it perfectly, though, I was right around the corner of my house when the workout was complete. And I went past the strawberry booth and got two trays (?) of strawberries 😋🍓.

Also:

50 push-ups

25x high/low boat

50 squats

2:30 min planks

YWA Yoga Morning Fresh (35 min)

YWA Post-Run Yoga (7 min)

I hope I’ll get the other half of OPM done over the rest of the day.

[less-flower]

One Punch May - let’s try that again!

So far, May has been a failure with regard to working out ... I did not do OPM (after the first three or four days), I did not do yoga, I did not run. The best I could do was walk a lot, and given that this week was an absolute shitshow (I worked 30 hours in three days, so about 12 hours of overtime ...), even that was mostly a token effort.

But it’s the middle of the month, so it’s the best time to reassess and start again. I did so this morning with 100 push-ups, 50x high/low boat, 100 squats and 5:30 min planks, plus half an hour of yoga. I’ll go for a walk later today. It feels good to make a real effort again 😊. And even if I end up with “only” about 15 workouts by the end of the month, that’s 15 more than nothing 😉.

[less-flower]

Yoga For Back Pain | Yoga Basics | Yoga With Adriene

Had horrible back pain yesterday, so this one was very good for it - though I probably would have needed a bit more upper back.

OPM progress so far:

50 push-ups

50 squats

30 high boat/low boat

3:36 planks (cumulative - the first one was one minute! It went downwards after that ...)

[less-flower]

C25k W2D1: I don’t know what Fitbit was measuring but it was very generous - no way I got 5.45k in 30 minutes (which was a 5:35 pace. I don’t even reach that pace when fully running!). It was probably more like 3.5k 😉.

Apart from that, it was pretty good, and it didn’t even bother me much that most of the running intervals happened to be uphill stretches 😊. My right arm is hurting again (pulled muscle or something), so I had to work on keeping it from moving too much but it worked out okay.

Before that, I did a YWA full body flow - worked surprisingly well despite the hurting arm, even planks and downward dogs. Only raising the arm above my head didn’t ^^’.

OPM is pretty much a bust currently. I haven’t fully given up on it but I’m very far from 100x a day, it’s more like 30-40x two or three times a week ... *sigh*

[less-flower]

I’m way better at doing the exercises than I am at doing the journaling prompts 😅 ...

2/5 - What is your favourite exercise?

For bodyweight stuff, I love planks and lunges. And at the gym, I really like deadlifts! (Here’s hoping the gym opens again soon, I miss it.)

3/5 - What is your least favourite exercise?

Sit-ups and hip dips 😱.

4/5 - What is your favourite form of cardio?

Swimming! It has always been my sport - even at times when I felt like a total failure in all things physical, give me a pool and I’m happy. My style is very good (thanks to my time in the water polo club when I was in elementary school), and I’m pretty fast. In 12th/13th grade, we could choose two team sports and one solo sport, so I chose swimming as my solo sport, and it was the only time I managed to get a B in PE.

If only going to the pool wasn’t so complicated and expensive *sigh* ...