It's time for a Sing-Along!

All right, everyone, to celebrate a personal best I achieved at the gym on Monday, I'm leading a sing-along. So don your best early-90's gear (that baggy plaid flannel looks GREAT on you) and sing with me to the tune of The Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be" (most of us know it as "500 Miles"). Deep breath...and...sing!

When I wake up
Well you know I’m gonna be
I’ll be at the gym and workin’ out with you

When I do pushups
Well you know I’m gonna be
I’ll be the girl who’s pushin’ up much more than you

And when I run out (when I run out!)
Well you know I’m gonna be
I’m gonna be the girl who’s runnin’ right past you

When I go shopping
Well you know I’m gonna be
I’ll be buyin’ up a pair of 8s or two

I’ll be buyin’ up a pair of 8s…or two

CHORUS
And-ah I would squat 100 pounds
And-ah I would squat 100 more
Just to be the girl who squats a hundred pounds
And falls down on the floor

Da-da dat-da da
Da-da dat-da da
Da-da-la da-da-la da-da-la
Da-da-la da-da-la da-dah

Da-da dat-da da
Da-da dat-da da
Da-da-la da-da-la da-da-la
Da-da-la da-da-la da-dah

Wish you were here.

Grandpa, if you were alive to see this day, you'd have been so proud of your country.

Not so off-topic...

Have you VOTED today?

Guest Column: VenetianBlond Finds a Gym

For a long time now, I've been wanting to feature guest columnists on SkinnyMommy. After all, I'm not the only one trying to be a parent, lose weight, stay fit, and eat the occasional dessert. The perfect opportunity came when a good friend emailed me about her recent gym-finding saga. Viola, SkinnyMommy's first guest columnist: Please give a warm welcome to VenetianBlond!
--Zapatera

Searching for a gym. Oh, joy. Not something I relish doing, but my current one just isn't hacking it. Now that I'm working full-time, the fact that they're not open at all on Sunday, and only 7-3 pm on Saturday (prime soccer game time for resident 6-year-olds) and only until 6 pm M, W, and F--well, it's just not working for me. So, I think, well, I'll get some advice from SkinnyMommy and see where that takes me. And oh, yes, we will name names!

The two gyms nearest my home are a Bally's and an LA Fitness. Bally's is on the same side of the busy street we live near, so potentially bikeable, but the LA Fitness has a pool. Then I find out that SkinnyMommy had a nightmare experience with a long term contract at Bally's. Thanks for the tip!

So I did sign up with LA Fitness. What impressed me:
1) My boy said he wanted to play in the Kids Klub instead of tour with me. I was kind of surprised. Drop in Kids Klub is only $3 so I can work out if K-Ice is not home. My boy totally loved it.
2) The sales tour only lasted 5 minutes. He didn't hijack me for half an hour to make the sale.
3) He correctly assessed my fitness (although I did tell him when we met that I was thinking of changing gyms) that I was in pretty good shape and just wanted to maintain or set some new fitness goals. (If he were to give me the weight loss hard sell I would have sashayed my generous booty on the way out.)
4) The sales guy said that their corporate office is more focused on retention, which if true, is a much better business model than being reliant on new sales.
5) It's all month-to-month. There's the registration fee, which wasn't too bad, and then I paid first and last. That's it. No time limit.
6) Classes are included and I get one free one hour personal training session. After the free one, they're $40 per session, which I think is pretty reasonable. (I'm set to see Nate at 8 on Monday.)

SkinnyMommy has been a real inspiration to not just settle for the status quo. I've been wearing size 8s for a while now, but how nice to be fit enough to run a 5k when someone suggests it, or be ready to play a pickup soccer or softball game without getting injured (okay, guilty).

Thanks, VB, and let us know how it went with Nate! In the meantime, folks can visit her blog to read about her latest pickup games.

HSPU Progress

Not to drown you in alphabet soup, but Madison's making me learn the shorthand for all the basic exercises. HSPU does not, as you might imagine, denote some obscure state university; rather, it stands for "hand-stand pushups."

I was telling you about the first stage of these, which involves one's knees on a bench. Yesterday Madison had me do three or four of these while she watched critically. She must've liked what she saw, because she pronounced me ready for the next stage which, she warned me, was "a big leap."

She wasn't kidding. The next thing I knew, we had the Smith bar set to about the level of my chin, my hands on the floor, and my feet hooked around the bar. The idea is to touch your head to the floor and use your arms to push yourself back up, using your legs if you need to. It looks like the photo above, or, as The Boy said when I told him about it, "Really dramatic."

The form took quite a bit of getting used to, and after a few awkward tries, I told Madison that perhaps I should go back to the bench. She scoffed and told me to keep trying. On the third round, I did ten in a row! "And you wanted to go back to the bench," Madison laughed.

It would seem she knows what she's doing.

The Ultimate Fitness Test

I could survive for 1 minute, 6 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Created by Bunk Beds Pedia

Don't make me laugh.

No really, don't. It hurts too much.

Yesterday, after I had done three killer (timed!) sets of pullups and dead lifts, Madison perkily declared, "Let's kill your abs!" To which I replied, "What did my abs ever do to you?"

We did a couple sets of ab exercises that I already knew, and then she introduced me to a new one. I can't remember what it's called, but it's done on a roman chair using the full range of motion.

So, imagine (and you will have to imagine it, because it's not true) that I'm the cute blonde in this picture. Now imagine that I bend all the way backward, until I can both look at and touch the floor. Then imagine that, using only my abdominal muscles, I pull myself all the way up until I can touch my ankles. Then imagine I do that 20 times. Then imagine I do three sets.

So please, no jokes today. I might cry.