Face the sunshine

I'm seeing an improvement in my fitness and a great measurement of this is burpees! I started the year barely being able to do them properly, partly due to strength and partly mind of matter of my head telling me that I would collapse if I tried to hit the floor with my hands whilst kicking my legs back! I'm still very slow at them and will never break any records doing the 'one minute challenge' of how many you can do but my technique is a lot better and my stamina has improved so that I can fully get down, do a press up, jump up and do a tuck jump - far more of an advanced burpee than what I was previously doing. I'm really enjoying high intensity classes at the gym including circuits and a GRIT class where I'm even doing jumping lunges which I wasn't just a couple of months ago. The GRIT session is 30 minutes of high intensity exercises which you do for short periods of time with rest periods in-between. I feel a real sense of achievement when I...

I'm now 10 months post surgery and at the start of the new year had a bit of a 'review' of what I was doing to keep active. I felt I was almost coasting in terms of exercising and a large part of that was because I was still getting back into it after surgery and there were some things I was being careful with. I've introduced core exercises slowly, I've been mindful of my abdomen area when exercising and even now I've been advised not to use anything like a rowing machine or bike where I am sitting down or squatting too deeply due to the nature of the surgery. I can do these things again in time but I am not rushing into them to create complications. I've recently changed gyms as the one I was going to just didn't provide the range or amount of classes to challenge me or help improve and maintain my fitness. It was ideal for me when I initially joined back in 2015 after recently having surgery and having a hernia. It was a small health club where I fe...