Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Workout Update: Lift 4/Beginner Pilates Doubles Day 4

Day 4 was supposed to be Fundamentals 2 again in Beginner Pilates, but I kind of accidentally and then on purpose did the Hips, Buns, and Thighs workout instead. Meaning, at first I thought that was today's scheduled workout, was glad to see it was 27 minutes long because I had a work call get scheduled last minute, and by the time I realized I was not doing the correct workout, I was not going to switch. I will say that this is much harder than either of the Fundamentals workouts and there were a couple of times when I had to pause and skip a rep. 

The Lift-4 workout was shoulders, which is an interval workout. There are three rounds. In each round you do two shoulder exercises (ten reps each, without rest in between) then you do a 30-second HITT cardio exercise. After the cardio move, you get a 30-second rest and then repeat everything two more times and then move to the next round. In the first round, you do shoulder presses and upright rows for the lifting moves, and then the cardio move is a quick jump-step kind of thing. In round two you do front raises and lateral raises for the lifting moves and burpees for the cardio move. In the third round, you do wide front raises and what Joel calls shoulder flys in which you start with your arms bent at 90 degrees out in front of you so your hands are at forehead level and your elbows are basically touching, then you open your arms so that your hands move to either side of your head and your elbows stay high at the same height as your armpits. Then, the cardio move is plyometric lunges. 

Once you get through the three rounds, you do two core exercises, back-to-back for three rounds. The first is that you lay on your back and kick your feet in a scissor motion (kind of like the Pfeiffer scissors from P90x, but your feet stay about six inches off the ground as opposed to kicking your legs and feet up high and you kick your feet fast), and the second is a sit-up variation. It is another tough workout that will have you gassed by the end of it. 

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