Day 24

I got back on track today by coming home from work and immediately (ok, almost immediately) changing into my workout clothes. Today: Sculpt, which is 50 minutes of toning, particularly focused on the upper body and the abs. I've made a small bit of progress in that I was able to do "the plank" position briefly, including putting one hand behind my back and maintaining the pose. I also doubled up the weights today whenever I could--meaning that anytime we were just supposed to use one weight at a time, I used both of them. Since they're only 3 lbs each, it seemed about time to kick it up a bit. I'll take any progress I can get, no matter how small.

One of the moves in this workout is Leandro's self-proclaimed "signature" move--a bizarre form of rotating push-up he calls The Mermaid. This is NOT the Pilates exercise of the same name, which was disappointing to me because I like the Pilates version much better. Here's how Leandro's Mermaid works: Sit on the floor with your legs sticking out to one side, slightly bent at the knees. Twist your body to the other side and place both hands on the floor in push-up position. Lower your upper body down over your hands and do a push-up. As you push yourself up, swivel on your toes, keeping your knees bent, and rotate your knees to the other side, then lower yourself down over your hands again. Repeat, rotating your knees in the opposite direction. You will probably have to do this yourself to get what I mean. It's weird. Not even hard so much as just plain strange. After trying it the first couple of times I did this workout, I now simply fast-forward through it without guilt.

One odd and unexpected thing I've noticed in the last week: As a result of all the mat/floor exercises in these workouts that have me on all fours, I'm now developing some sort of callus on my elbows. Each of my elbows now sports a patch of flaky skin that doesn't go away with lots of lotion and seems to get thicker and tougher with each new layer. Definitely didn't anticipate that change to my body when I started these workouts! It's actually kind of gross to have flaky skin all the time so I hope it goes away soon.

Week 4, half way over!