Another lovely summer week done and dusted.  I find it so hard to stay motivated on Friday afternoons when the weather starts getting beautiful.  Anyone else?  The perfect weather is making for some awesome dog walking sessions and a lot of sweat from just stepping outside which reminds me oh so dearly of my time spent in humid, hot Houston.  The change in weather has also caused me to change my workout focus, and honestly, I think it’s for the better.

When I first started Kayla Itsine’s BBG in February (wow.  I have been doing this for a long time.)  I loved that I could do the workouts from the comfort of my living room.  I would put the workout up on my TV screen, blast some music, and get to jumping and sweating it out.  There was something about being able to blast the music and be surrounded by comfort of my own home that I just loved.  Only once in my entire 12 weeks did I take the BBG over to the gym and it was Week 6 when I had to do Legs & Cardio and I needed a little bench to do split squats.  I had avoided doing my workouts at the gym previously because I didn’t want people to stare at me jumping around, flailing, and for them to watch me struggle to accomplish even one push-up.  I did my Week 6 workout that day and I hated it.  I hated the whole feeling of being there and people being around me and me not being alone in my comfort zone.  I felt like everyone was staring at me and critiquing my potentially improper form and thinking “Oh, she should be doing this instead of that” or “Why isn’t she trying harder”.

Enter BBG 1.0 Round Two.

I have only done one BBG workout outside this time around and I didn’t even like it as much as doing it at the gym.  My confidence in working out has increased immeasurably.  Before starting this program, I would go to the gym and run, elliptical, bike, anything that could take my mind away and give me the opportunity not to think about anything while pumping my heart rate up, up, up.  I wasn’t strong necessarily, but I felt good about working out daily.  When it came time to start this program, it really opened my eyes to how important strength and resistance training is.  I started caring more about how many push-ups I could do properly without modifying.  I started caring more about the DOMS (delayed onset muscles soreness) I would feel the day after I did legs.  I started caring more about feeding my body to fuel a workout rather than feeding it the bare minimum to be alive.

Now when I go to the gym to do my workouts, I feel so comfortable.  I am friends with one of the trainers at my gym who always sees me coming now and prepares a bench for me and cheers me on as I’m sweating it out.  He constantly tells me I’m making everyone else look bad and I love it.  I feel like I am finally comfortable in my strength.  I can do things now that I never thought possible and I like to challenge myself.  This was the first week when I was doing a workout at the gym where I just felt like I was dying.  I kept stopping and breathing and going again, but it didn’t even occur to me that someone could be watching or judging or even caring for that matter.  It only occurred to me that I had to finish.  I had to fight through those 30 minutes and get to the end as a champion.

It only mattered to me and no one else.  And that’s how it always should be.

-sj