unexpectedly advanced

So, because somebody else said to me today that my Pilates and swimming were inspiring (which I am very pleased, if somewhat befuddled, by; I’ve been doing this barely a month! it hardly seems like it’s enough to inspire!), I went to look at the intermediate stage of the Pilates exercise I’ve been doing. Not because I was going to start them right away (today ended week 5! the ones I’m doing are getting a little boring! but they’re still not *easy*), but because I wanted to see what I was getting myself into when I stepped it up a notch.

It was exactly the same workout.

Bewildered, I went and looked very carefully at the beginner’s workout, and then at the intermediate one. Ah. Two of the exercises have added two more reps to them, in the intermediate stage.

Well, okay, except…I’ve been doing that many reps all along. It’s because of my dance training: it’s really hard for me to do things in counts of 6, which is what the beginner set mostly required. I do them in counts of 8, which is what the intermediate set has stepped up to. And they have no advanced workout. (Trip says I am unexpectedly advanced!) So I’m at a loss as to what to do!

I’ll start adding–I don’t know, two to four, probably–reps to the sets that I’m doing, but in the longer term, I don’t know! I could get a video, except I’ve been doing my workouts in my office, where there’s nothing to play a DVD on. (On the other hand, we just got a new computer, so I could presumably abscond with the laptop to my office so I could use internet videos.)

But the other thing is, videos just sort of set my teeth on edge. Perky! Thin! Models! doing the exercises do not particularly inspire me to do them. They merely make me feel inadequate, because I know perfectly well that regardless of how good shape I might get in, I will always have a short waist and sturdy thighs. I mean, this looks like a decent fairly basic workout, but watching it just makes me want to kill Ms. Legs there. Bitch doesn’t look like she’s putting any effort in. >.< Hm, this one is a bit better, because although she is also Ms. Skinny Bitch, she has a few moments of sort of grunting around in there when she does the harder versions of the exercises, and it looks like a more cohesive basic routine, to boot….

Anyway, I’m okay with the thing I’m doing, which had some tiny videos showing you how to do the exercise, and then I printed out the list of exercises with some reminder-type pictures next to them. That’s good. I would like their version of an advanced workout with the same tiddly videos and pictures. I’ve asked about it, but I’m dubious about its existence.

Since I’m babbling about exercise anyway…

Swimming’s going pretty well. I’m getting to where I’m feeling strong doing a 500, and where 2000 meters doesn’t feel like all that much most days. I’ll probably wait another couple weeks before moving up to 2500 meters, mostly because what’s constraining me now is a wish to get home and start writing by 10 or so. I never, ever start writing by 10, so maybe it’s silly to be using that as the yardstick, but there you go. Ideally in another two weeks (or worst case, 3 weeks) I’ll be done with this book, and if I move into the next one right away I should be able to do that nice steady 1500 words a day that I’ve discovered is enough to get the book done while also letting me feel like I’ve got a life, and if my goal’s 1500 words instead of 2600, then it doesn’t matter if I don’t get started until 11. Which I’m doing anyway. Nevermind that. >.<

If I get to the pool tomorrow, that’ll be 4 swims this week. I’d like to be doing 5: Sunday, T-Th, Saturday, but four is quite good, and the idea is to work my way up to 3K over the next couple months, and this summer when I in theory will have plenty of free time start doing 4 and 5K swims, which take 90 minutes or so. But that’s some major future tripping. Right now I’m doing okay with the 2K swims, and enjoying them a lot, even if the pool’s too hot and stupid people get in my way. (Mom says they’re ignorant. I’m sure that’s a much nicer way to look at it, but when someone’s just drifted back and forth across the lane in front of me (well, they’re *incompetent*, too), I’m not inclined to be nice.)

I’ve been doing some barre work, too (well, counter work, since I haven’t a barre). I should…hrm. I should ask Mom if she’s still got the dance warm-up stuff she wrote down for me, because despite having had over a decade of dance training a lot of it’s slipped out of my mind. I tend to only remember basic things, and then I get bored fast. Anyway, barre work is actually much more intensive for me than this basic Pilates thing I’ve been doing–it takes about three minutes to work up a sweat doing ballet exercises and unless I do them before Pilates I mostly don’t get sweaty doing this workout (which should indicate how very beginner-y it is). So right now I’m doing 20 minutes or so of barre stuff on Mondays and Fridays, to complement the Pilates stuff. (And that’s why I’m not swimming on Monday and Friday, cause that’s too much time out of potentially productive morning writing time.)

And now I should go to bed so I can get up and swim tomorrow. Although the pool doesn’t open til 9 anyway, so I don’t have to get up quite so early.