21DFC Day 6 – Seeing New-Found Muscles

This is Day 6 of the 21-Day Fitness Challenge held in Feb 2012. The challenge is now over but you can do the tasks in your own time. Visit the overview page for all the challenge tasks.

Hello everyone! Welcome to Day 6 (Feb 8) of the 21-Day Fitness Challenge! :D

Review of Day 5

The comments sections have been brimming, thanks to you guys! ;) Check out the comments for the past 6 days:

By now, I think it’s pretty clear how serious all of you are about improving your fitness. You see, it’s easy to be driven by a surge of enthusiasm at the beginning of a challenge, put your name up for participation, and then commit yourself to XYZ activities.

However, it’s a totally different ball game altogether to follow-through on those activities and actually bother to log onto the site daily to report your progress. Even if there have been days where you did not live true to your plan, the fact that you make an effort to still report that is telling of your commitment to your goal.

To all of you who are talking the talk and walking the walk (no pun intended), please give yourself a big pat on your back, because YOU deserve it.

Based on yesterday’s comments, it seems that quite a number of you are getting the hang of your increased / new-found level of fitness – to the point where you feel weird if you miss your workout! It’s the same for me too, as I shared in my Day 5 update. It’s a sign that our physical activities are getting normalized into our routines / subconsciousness, for sure. Definitely a positive sign. ;)

My 21DFC Progress, Day 6

After yesterday‘s non-exercise (thanks to waking up slightly later than desired), I really wanted to get my workouts in place for today. So I intentionally turned in early yesterday night, applying my #3 learning (from Day 5): to sleep earlier if I want to wake up early.

And that was my holy grail to getting the day off on a strong start. I woke up at 6:15am today in full enthusiasm, and promptly set off for my first workout session for the day. The morning jogs/runs are certainly turning into a routine!

Sun rising over the horizon. Yay for early morning runs!

After that, I returned home and rested for a few hours, before setting off for a swim. I’ve been looking forward to that, especially since I had to postpone my swims in the past week due to my period. The weather was great today too – bright and sunny.

The only shot I managed to take of the pool before a lifeguard came over to speak to me because he saw me using my camera <.<

The swim was good – my usual 20 laps in the olympic-size pool.

Originally I planned to go for my kickboxing class in the evening, but after 2 workout sessions today, and knowing that I have to wake up early for my morning jog tomorrow, I decided to skip the class. I realized today that it might not be a good idea to have evening sports classes, especially if I still want to jog the next morning. Reason being it’ll be hard to wake up in time because I’ll be home late after my class, and it’ll be about midnight by the time I finish showering and get my stuff done. Either I move my daily exercises to evening time, or I don’t go for my morning jogs on Thursdays.

Whatever it is, I’ll need to sort that out soon, because there are still 10 classes left and it’d be a waste not to go for any of the classes, especially after having paid for them.

Regarding workout aftermath, I’m still feeling aches, considering (a) I’ve been rigorously exercising since Day 1 (except for yesterday) (b) I’ve been doing two exercise sessions a day when I never did more than a session a day in the past. But I know these aches are just temporary. They are but my body’s way of telling me that it’s becoming stronger. If anything, the sensations are gradually fading away as my body adjusts to my new-found level of fitness.

For tomorrow, I’ll probably be doing the usual – morning jog, followed by swim. I’m looking forward to that. :D

By the way, tomorrow will be the last day I’ll be blogging about my fitness progress, as (a) my fitness activities moving forward will pretty much be the same as what you’ve seen for Week 1 (b) I’ve accomplished what I set out to do with 21DFC, which is to incorporate fitness into my routine, so there’s little point writing about my day-to-day fitness activities in such extreme detail. Rather, I’ll be joining you guys and sharing my updates in comments sections of the daily 21DFC posts. ;)

In place of that, I’ll be using a slightly different format for the 21DFC posts for Week 2. I’m thinking of something similar to our 21-Day Meditation Challenge last October (2011), where I post a daily question (related to fitness) for us to reflect upon. So besides being engaged on a physical level with our daily fitness plans, we’ll now also be stimulated on a mental (and possibly emotional) level. It will be a fun addition to the challenge. Stay tuned!

How About YOUR Day 6? Share Your Progress!

How did YOUR 21DFC Day 6 go? Did you get to complete your scheduled activity? Did you achieve any personal victories? Did something unexpected crop up, which made you learn some valuable personal lessons?

Regardless of how your day went, we want to hear it all. 21DFC is not about sharing ‘flawless’ fitness progress, but about sharing everything our journey towards a healthier, fitter life – obstacles and all. Post your day’s journal in the comments section! If you have any images to share, simply upload them to Photo Bucket or Imgur first, then include the link(s) in your reply.

What physical activity did you do (if any), and for how long?
If you didn’t get to do any physical activity, why? And what can you do about it such that the same thing doesn’t happen again?
What physical activity do you plan to do tomorrow?

Check out other participants’ responses and join in the discussions!

(Image)