Shine Fitness

A few weeks ago, Wicked Creative PR contacted one my local blogging friends with an opportunity to try out Shine Alternative Fitness. I was beyond excited to check it out!

With classes from Aerial Arts and Antigravity Yoga to Pole Fitness and Xtreme Boxing (plus lots more), it was hard to choose just one class.

I finally decided on Antigravity Yoga.

Description from their website:
Combines traditional yoga poses, aerial arts, calisthenics, pilates and dance while promoting agility, flexibility and muscular strength. Using a silk hammock as a soft trapeze for resistance and support, participants are suspended in the air for a full-body workout without the stress of holding and balancing challenging yoga poses.

Both nervous and excited, I entered the studio ready to fly.

Turns out a lot of other people had the same idea as me. :) With 10-12 students, the class was near to capacity - and nearly all of us were trying Antigravity Yoga for the very first time.

Suwasit, our instructor, was awesome! He started the class with a brief introduction to Antigravity Yoga - who invented it, where it was used, etc. Of course, I don't remember any of that. Only that the hammocks can sustain 1,000 lbs of weight. Phew!

Due to the large number of newbies, the class moved really slowly because Suwasit had to stop by most everyone to offer assistance and spotting. I, for one, had to hold inversions a bit longer than comfortable at times because I was too scared I would hurt myself getting out of the pose. O.o

Since there was so much spotting and the class was real slow, I feel like it was kind of a teaser class. It would have been nice to have fewer students an additional instructor to help with the spotting. Of course, that would be difficult to plan for.

I'd love to go back again and experience a real class. It ended up not being nearly as intense as I'd imagined - which I'm not complaining about at all today. :-)

This workout definitely works your core and ass - two things I'm always working on, of course. Plus, it's super fun to push yourself in ways that are unlike any other fitness class.

Vampire pose

I stayed a few minutes after class to get the pictures you see in this post. Suwasit was very kind to help me get into the poses again, take some pictures, and then help me get back out. He really was great and helped all us newbies feel comfortable.

Everyone I met at Shine was super friendly. I talked with Sunni for a few minutes after class. She was working the front desk, but she's also one of the dance instructors there and has been at Shine from the beginning. She seems to love working there. She apologized for it being so busy when I came in that I had to wait a few minutes. No apologies necessary! I think it's a great sign for Shine, which has only been open for about a year and a half.

With such variety of class offerings, there is certainly something for anyone looking to spicy up their workouts. You can register online for classes or just drop-in. They also have packages you can buy, but the most fun is that they offer private events. I told my boss we should have a team building event there! She just laughed, of course.

If you live in Vegas or are just here for the weekend, I'd definitely recommend Shine if you want to workout in a completely unique way.

Thanks again to Wicked Creative and Shine Fitness for the opportunity to try Antigravity Yoga for free.

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World Oceans Day

Did you know that Saturday, 6/8 was World Oceans Day?

Living in the Las Vegas Valley, I'm not exactly close to an ocean. Unfortunately.

But it's not only oceans that need our attention, so it seemed a perfectly fitting day for an eco-dive at Lake Mead.

Jeff and I joined a meet-up scuba group when we first settled in Vegas, but this was the first chance we had to dive Lake Mead. We packed and organized all our gear Friday night, so that Saturday morning, we'd just have to load the van and head out to meet our group at Fiesta Henderson.

Not sure why we thought this would be a gas station - not a casino.

We met our group around 7:45 and convoyed out to Placer Cove at Lake Mead. It was a great spot to stage a shore dive.

I'm in the back with the orange floppy hat and the pink shirt;
Jeff is in the yellow shirt. :)

After going over a few hand signals and some other things, we donned our gear and descended under water.

I was shocked at how cold 74°F water felt. My head was freezing around 17'. We foolishly left our dive hoods at home. Never again.

I was cold and the water seemed very murky. I started getting an uneasy feeling, so I signaled to Jeff that we should ascend. Back at the surface, I calmed my nerves and asked some basic refresher questions that I should have asked before we started. Oh well.

After a few minutes, we tried it again. Picking up that first piece of trash changed everything. Well, Jeff actually picked it up while I attempted to dig the dive bag out of my pocket. I was hooked after that. My eyes were peeled looking for other trash to put into our bag. It was so much fun! More fun than I would have imagined.

We stayed down for a while and got to a depth of 30+ feet. We needed a break, so we returned to the surface for a break couple of donuts.

Feeling rested and ready to get back under, we donned our gear for a second dive. This time we made it to 45' depth. Woo! I wasn't really concerned with any of that. I was having too much fun looking for trash for my bag. LOL.

We didn't really see anything too crazy, but here's a pic someone else took of a couple larger items that were retrieved.

There was a pile of bones found next to that carpet. Yikes!

These were our first two dives since Oct 2011. I did surprisingly well for not doing it for such a long time. I only freaked out a tiny bit the first pop down but was calm for the rest of it.

I did okay with my buoyancy for the most part. The safety stop at 15' was a bit tricky. Oddly, it was a little trickier on the 2nd dive, when we were close to an embankment. I felt like I was having a little more trouble resting my knee on the ground at 15' than I did when we were just hovering on the first dive. Weird.

All in all, it was a great way to celebrate World Oceans Day. I had a lot of fun diving with a purpose - even if I only saw one teeny tiny fish.

Maybe next year, we'll actually be able to do something in the ocean.
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Working It Recap:: June 1-7

One week into June, and it has been HOT here in Vegas. I guess I really shouldn't be surprised, but with temps over 100°F, it's been a bit difficult to stay motivated to keep up with my workouts.

But my Run Streak and Push-up Challenge are still going strong!! Woot woot!!

 

Here's the breakdown.

Date	Cardio	Push-ups	Strength Training	Commute
Sat 6/1	1 Mile Run	5		WEEKEND
Sun 6/2	3 Mile Run	5	Yoga	WEEKEND
Mon 6/3	1 Mile Run	7	Triceps & Thighs
Tue 6/4	5K Run	8
Wed 6/5	8.1 Mile Run	9
Thu 6/6	1 Mile Run	10
Fri 6/7	1 Mile Run	10

Sunday, I ran to Lululemon for their free yoga class. It was awesome! It was a great way to combine my run streak with yoga. Yay!! Yoga was difficult, but it felt so good to stretch and push myself. I'm hoping to go again tomorrow.

My running will be SLOW, of course, because I'm tired from the streak, but also the overnight low tonight is only 85.

Next week, I really hope to be able to include some strength training. I need to get a handle on going to bed on time, so I can get up early enough to get it in before work. The after work heat is killing me.

Biking to work, however, is not looking too promising, though....

How are your June workouts going?
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3 Things Thursday

I'm having some serious memory issues. Ok. Maybe not serious, but I had 3 great things to share with you today, but I keep forgetting what they are....

So, here are 3 random things. That may or may not have been what I originally wanted to share. :)

1. Don't you hate it when you focus your workouts on your arms, and it seems that the stronger your biceps get, the flabby your triceps appear? Or after working your core, your stomach seems to protrude further in an unflattering manner? Please tell me this isn't just me.

2. I'm working on a couple exciting ways to celebrate my birthday in August with all of YOU!! I'm working on the details and trying to line up some great gifts, because no birthday should be without gifts. Stay tuned. It's gonna be epic. hehehe.

3. Daily photo challenges? Love 'em or hate 'em? I love the idea of them, but I always fall short. I started two this month, and after 5 days, I've decided to call them quits. I find they are too stressful. I know it's a little crazy to stress over something that should be fun, but I do. And then I end up being too hard on myself for lacking creativity. I figure that's not too good for my soul, so no more photo challenges for me. At least not right now.

BONUS: Today felt like a Friday. I'm still coming to grips with the fact that I will have to go to work tomorrow.
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Final 5 by the 5th Virtual Race

Let me start by wishing you all a HAPPY NATIONAL RUNNING DAY!! I'll be heading out for a run later today, but wanted to tell you all about yesterday's run first.

I ran my final 5 by the 5th 5k.

I decided to take the same route as my first 5 by the 5th 5k. I'd like to say that my improvement in time really wow'ed me, but this 5k was actually 7 seconds SLOWER than the one in January. *sigh* Of course, with the heat difference from Jan to June, I'm certainly not going to beat myself up about it.

This was also my first run with my new Soleus GPS Fit 1.0. I hadn't run with a GPS watch in years, so I was super excited for this to arrive. Way back in Feb, I won a gift certificate to Holabird Sports from #RunChat. It took me months to decide how spend my $50, but I finally decided to put it towards this GPS watch.

When I took it out of the box Monday night, Jeff commented that he might just have to steal it. What would you possibly do with a GPS watch? I had to ask my non-runner husband. LOL. He just liked the look of it.

I thought the watch a little less intuitive to set-up than I would have liked, but after one run, I think I'm much more confident in how it works. Of course, there are definitely some features I have yet to investigate. It is a pretty simple watch, though. Not a whole lot of bells and whistles, but that's not really what I need anyway.

What I need is some additional motivation along the way. And this watch certainly seemed to help push me along.

I ran this race yesterday with no music, no phone. Just my new watch. The occasional glance here and there kept me motivated to push a little harder.

Well, until I started the 3rd mile. :)

Mile 1 - 9 minutes, 9 seconds
I felt great. Maybe started out a little fast, but I was okay with it. Just enjoying the route and the run.

Mile 2 - 8 minutes, 37 seconds
Wow. I was shocked at my speedy-ness. I worked hard for that mile, but I still felt great.

Mile 3 - 9 minutes, 30 seconds
This mile was hard. I kept wanting to push myself to keep up the pace, but my legs had other plans. They kept slowing down despite all my mental tricks. It seemed that every time I glanced at my watch, my pace got slower and slower. Never did it get slower than 10:00 min/mi, though. Yay!

Mile 3.1 - 1 minute, 15 seconds
I really felt like I ran this final 0.1 miles a LOT faster. I pushed it at the end, but this time doesn't seem to reflect that. *sigh*

Overall time - 28:31
Definitely no PR on this race, but like I said, no big deal. It was already in the 80s, which seems quite cool compared to the 100+ temps we've been hitting, but, in reality, is still quite warm for running.

I'm sad to see the end of this series. :-( It was fun and a great motivator to start the month out right.

My times were kind of all over the place throughout the series.

Jan - 28:24
Feb - 27:09
Mar - 27:21
Apr - 31:16
May - 27:40
Jun - 28:31

But I'm so glad that I stuck with it for the entire series - even the months when it took a LOT of convincing to get my butt out the door. I had hoped to see some improvement in speed over the 6 months, but I'm totally happy with the results of this series.

Did you run some or all of this virtual race series? I'd love to hear how it went for you!
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The End of My Hair Experiment

You may recall back in January I wrote a post about conducting a little hair experiment. I *really* wanted to make it to my birthday in August, but, well, I buckled.

I was already going crazy in January, so really I did pretty well - lasting until June.

I tried dying it redder in February.

That helped for a while. It was actually quite cute, but then a couple months later, and I was tired of it again.

It was actually getting nearly ponytail length. With a headband, of course.

So, I tried going blond(ish) for summer.

I actually really liked this look, but the conditioning after the coloring didn't work right. My hair was left brittle and coarse and difficult to run a comb through. Plus it hadn't really gotten to the length I was hoping for. Close. But not quite there.

So, I took out the scissors once again.

You probably saw a glimpse of my new look in my last post with the Summertime Tri's & Thighs workout.

The best part, of course, of drastically cutting my hair is all the compliments.

"Ooh! I love your new haircut."
"It looks great."
"You've got a great face for short hair."
"Saucy."
"Sassy."

And my favorite...

"You look like a serial killer."

My co-worker totally meant it as a compliment. She was referring to a character from The Following, which I haven't seen, but I was assured that she was a cute serial killer. :-)

Since I haven't seen the show, I can only guess it was this girl she was referring to. Valorie Curry.

I've been modest with this haircut. I haven't even bragged once about how I did it myself. LOL. Well, until posting this. :-)
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Summertime Tri's & Thighs

Summer is here! At least it sure feels like summer here in Vegas. With highs over 100°F, I am definitely feeling the heat.

And summer heat means tank tops/shorts and swimsuits.

Which means...

Time to focus on strengthening and toning our Triceps and Thighs, so I created a little workout to help us out.

I hate finding a new workout online, only to discover that I don't know what some of the exercises are, so let's walk through these together.


Seated Leg Raises {targets quads} - Sit on the floor with legs extended in front of you and feet flexed. Lift one leg as high as you comfortably can while keeping your foot flexed. Lower to floor without touching and repeat for 20 reps, then switch to your other leg.

Side-Lying Leg Lifts {targets inner thighs} - Lie on your side with bottom leg extended and top leg crossed over top. Rest either your knee or foot on the floor. Prop your head up with your hand or rest it on your arm. As you exhale, lift your leg, and inhale as you lower it - keeping your torso still throughout the exercise. Repeat for 10 reps, then switch to your other side.

Side Arm Push-ups {targets biceps, triceps, obliques, hips} - Lie on your side with opposite hand palm down in front of your shoulder. Wrap your other arm around your rib cage and bend knees slightly. Exhale and push yourself up until your arm is straight. Inhale while lowering yourself back to about 1 inch from the floor. Repeat for 10 reps, then switch to your other side.

Single Leg Circles {targets core, thighs} - Lie on your back with arms by your side and palms facing down. Point your toes and raise one leg toward the ceiling. Inhale and trace a circle on the ceiling, moving your whole leg, but keeping your hips still and planted on the floor. Draw 10 circles and switch directions. Repeat with your other leg.

No real good reason for no picture for this one.

I guess I figured a still photo wouldn't do it justice.

Scissor Kicks {targets inner thighs} - Lie on your back with arms by your side and legs extended. Lift legs to about 45°. Quickly open and close your legs, crossing right over left and then left over right. Repeat until each leg has crossed over the other 15 times.

Diamond Push-ups {targets triceps} - Start in the plank position with your feet about shoulder-width apart (drop to your knees, if necessary). Place your hands under your sternum with your thumbs and forefingers touching to form a diamond. Inhale and bend your elbows out to the sides, lowering your chest to the floor. Exhale to straighten your arms. Repeat for 10 push-ups.

4-Limbed Staff {targets triceps} - Start in plank position with your hands under your shoulders and your arms close to your body. Exhale and lower yourself down toward the floor. Keep your body parallel to the ground and your shoulder parallel to your elbows. Hold for 5 breaths.

Obviously, this one is my weakest link. My form is terrible because I do not yet have the strength for this pose.

I can't wait to add this workout to my summertime routine. Here's to strong, beautiful arms, and sexy, toned thighs!

If you give it a try, I'd love to know what you think. {even if you don't try it out, I'd love to hear your thoughts!}
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Disclaimer: I am not a personal trainer or health professional. Please consult your doctor before starting any new exercise program.

Working It Recap:: May 24-31 + June Goals

Happy June, everyone!! 

I'm super excited to write this post, because I successfully completed the ENTIRE Sexy for Summer challenge! I'm pretty sure that's never happened before. I usually get distracted somehow or start making excuses, and for whatever reason, I end up quitting before the end of the challenge. But not this time!! Whoo hoo!!

I'm also super excited because I ran a sub-8:00 mile! I doubt I'd have been able to maintain that pace very much longer, but it felt so great to break that huge little barrier.

Unfortunately, the frowny faces made a strong appearance this final week of May. My legs were so tired from all those squats, that I just couldn't bring myself to bike to work. Now that my squat challenge is over, I hope to get back on the saddle on Monday.

Here's the final breakdown for May.

Date	Cardio	Sexy for Summer	Strength Training	Commute
Fri 5/24		155 squats 50 lunges (3) 60 sec plank
Sat 5/25		145 squats 90 sec plank		WEEKEND
Sun 5/26		REST		9.6 Mile Bike Ride to pick-up our Bountiful Basket
Mon 5/27	6.64 Mile Run	165 squats 95 sec plank		MEMORIAL DAY
Tue 5/28	1 Mile Run	175 squats 100 sec plank
Wed 5/29	1 Mile Run	185 squats 110 sec plank
Thu 5/30	3 Mile Run	190 squats 115 sec plank
Fri 5/31	1 Mile Run (7:59!!!)	200 squats 120 sec plank

In other news, last Monday, I joined the Runner's World  Summer Run Streak Challenge. Basically run at least one mile every day from Memorial Day to Independence Day. I've made it 5 whole days so far. I hope to keep the streak alive! I've actually never streaked before, so please wish me luck!

So, as a recap of May, it was much better than April. :-)

Obviously, I successfully completed my Sexy for Summer challenge. I also did much better with my eating. We started participating with Bountiful Baskets, which has been quite helpful.

As for the running and biking, I feel like I did better in May, but there were definitely still some weeks where it was quite hit or miss. C'est la vie.

And for a couple goals for June...

1. Of course, I hope to continue streaking. ;-)

2. I'm going to try a push-up challenge. I'm opting for the beginner track to try to focus on doing them with proper form AND not on my knees.

3. ENJOY THE SUMMER! Spend time every weekend outside on the patio or at the pool.

How was your May? What are your goals for June?
Anything exciting planned for the summer?
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