Oh, yes, and my workouts this week ....

I've been slacking a bit, sort of. I didn't feel great Monday, so decided to take a rest day. I actually felt a little worse on Tuesday, but sucked it up and worked out anyway before teaching spinning. It was my third time through Strength Workout B of the Infamous TRX Workout:

Joint mobility to warm up, then 2 sets of barbell squats @100 lbs to warm up, then

Barbell squats, 3x6x150; 1x12x115

DB step-ups onto 16' bench, 3x6x30's

superset: pullups, 3x6; DB overhead press, 2x8x25's, 1x6x25's

superset: SB jackknife, 3x10; cable rope pulldown, 3x10x50

I woke up feeling a little funky in my lumbar spine which is why I didn't try to go real heavy on the squat. It just wouldn't have been smart. In fact, I should probably have backed off on the weight even more than I did because I feel as though my range of motion was compromised.

I didn't feel wonderful on Wednesday either, so I took another rest day. Well, it was an active rest day since I had ballet.

In case you were wondering, pointe shoes hurt. Think about having all your bodyweight resting on the tip of one big toe. That's basically what's happening when you''re doing something like an arabesque or pirouette en pointe. I weigh about 115, which is a lot of weight to be resting on an area that's maybe half a square inch. When the pain gets too bad the natural tendency is to fall back a bit so your weight is spread out over a little more surface area ... but that's wrong and it looks ugly and if you do it in class all the other ballerinas will make fun of you and poke you with sticks.

Okay, not really. Still, next time you go to a school dance recital check out the pointe girls if there are any. Unless it's a company school the odds are pretty good that 3/4 of the girls won't really be up on their pointes. If one of them is your daughter, try not to be offended by the old bat behind you who's muttering, "Pull UP, ladies!" under her breath. She's doing it with love. At least if she's me, which she very often is, she's doing it with love.

I had another ballet class today, and also struggled through TRX Workout A, Phase 2. Same parameters as last time, except this time I went for 4 rounds.