Proof

I'm inserting a lame photo of ourselves doing the exercises, complete with a cheesy effect that is very effective at masking our identities and our whereabouts :

Webisodes again

We did those suckers again. It's beyond me how they can exhaust me so, must be the speed or the music. What I know for sure is that her counting is not helping at all. She is counting the reps during the leg routine and that is getting on my sore nerves, because by the time she reaches 14 I'm invariably out of breath, but I still have enough reasoning capacity to do the math and know I'm not halfway there yet. I am, however, quite pleased with myself after having done them. We both are. This week we have already been through one mat method dvd, one post-pregancy dvd and today we've done the webisodes. (The way we do them, for anyone who's interested, is that we take the warm-up from method mat, the webisodes in succession and the warm-out from either method mat or post-pregnancy and that makes up for about an hour of exercise, the equivalent of a third DVD.) The ideal thing would be to be able to do another routine this week, so as to have four and compensate for the last week, when we did just one.
Oh, oh, and I almost forgot, we have one hour-long footage of ourselves gracefully doing the mat routine along with Tracy. We've filmed ourselves with my mobile phone camera because I don't have big mirrors in the house and we wanted to know if we were doing everything properly and of course, if we were looking as good as her while doing it. I think we're quite presentable, better than expected, even though a bit (too) red in the cheeks, with hair unsexily out of place and prone to usage of profanities.

Excercise on location is not as easy as it seems.

We went out of town to see Florence and the Machine and spent a few days at a friends' place. This made it quite difficult to excercise, though we did manage to sneak one mat session in yesterday. However, this makes it the first week we couldn't do it twice, and I think we both feel quite guilty about it. Truth of the matter is, we really had no choice. We'll make up for it next week, promise Tracy, we promise.
Anyway, while it was easy to get the chairs for the mat routine, and we had lots of space, we had to make do with only one set of weights, and handle being watched, which was the toughest thing of them all. Not by girls, by guys. We were photographed, too.

The Webisodes

Oh, the dread, the dread! We got the webisodes: thighs, arms and abs. We don't go to the gym because we are poor so no treadmill in sight anytime soon. However, the three that we've done have kicked our butts. The speed she has in the arm one is absolutely impossible and in the abs webisodes she changes her rotations all the time without saying anything (or maybe she does say stuff but it's impossible to hear it because of the blasting techno music in the background). As you are lying on the floor crunching it's sort of hard to watch the screen at the same time, so if you don't have some sort of signal that you should switch, you risk missing half the stuff she's doing.
What we did like, though, was the way she explained her standing abs routine: much more coherently and enlightening than in her mat DVD so we managed to get some of the moves right. Also, the butt and thighs webisode was really good and left us both with the need and desire for more. It's hard work and it's exhausting, and the soreness afterwards never-ending but it gives one a feeling of efficiency. Last but not least, another one of our favourite things in the webisodes was Carlos, aka the guy behind Tracy. Poor dear, he looks so funny and out of place with his large shorts, long sleeve t-shirt and girlish moves, that it's quite plain to see that she put him there only to make the workouts harder for us laughing disciples.

Breaking the silence

We haven't written much lately, on account of a busy week and newly found euphoria for some. We have been exercising however, do not be fooled. No cardio, though, since the cause of the euphoria is kind of incompatible with us doing cardio in C's studio. Neither of us is complaining, though, far from it.
We've done our mat and post-pregnancy routines for the week and they were completely uneventful. What is more interesting is that our friend I (the reader of Sarah Kane from a previous post) has started doing the videos herself, so that is quite exciting since we have another person with whom to compare results. She started with the more difficult post-pregancy routine and promptly threw up. I was quite concerned with this bizarre outcome when I heard about it, but she says it happens to her every time she strains herself, so she didn't mind it very much and went on with the routine after the quick trip to the bathroom. I lives in another city, not far from here and we see her regularly, but unfortunately we can't really exercise together. Though now that I think of it, we could do some skype workouts.
Well, that's about it for now, not much happenning, except that I've made us some "endives braisées" that I am going to devour right now.

About injuries and satisfaction.

I think that it would maybe be interesting to speak a little of the less pleasant effects of exercise that have been experienced so far, even if they represent no real discouragement. After our last cardio session we both suffered from minor muscle strains in our calves, calluses on our toes (because of the pirouettes and the fact that we danced barefoot -oh, how romantic it sounds) and I from a sore...ahem...bikini area, because my right leg does not have a good a turnout as my left one. See, we learnt some ballet terms in the process as well. All that (injury, not learning) without forgetting to warm up!
The next day, as I was preparing for my mat routine, I was positive I wouldn't be able to do the leg rotations because it would make matters worse, but I did manage to go through all of it little by little and, surprise surprise, by the end of the routine all pain had gone away. Never to be felt again. Even the calluses seemed to disappear, even if we really know there can be no logical explanation for that.
What we learnt from that, besides compassion for professional dancers, was to wear some kind of shoes the next time we pirouette around, since the combination of lino and skin is fatal. Also, what Tracy fucks up one day, she mends the next.
What I'm waiting and hoping for now is the cracking in my right hip to stop when I do my leg routine, because that sound is driving me mad, I hate it. It does seem to happen less and less nowadays than when I started out, but I think I will still need some more time to get back the flexibility I had back in my RG days. If ever, considering that I was 5 back then.
So, with all that in mind, I'm waiting for C to wake up so that I can go to her place and do our cardio for the day. Since our last post, we managed to squeeze in another mat and two post-pregnancy routines :D. Still going strong.

'tis a miracle!

We have measured our bodies yet again in what Tracy our friend would call "the problem areas" and we have noticed the following: C lost 0.75 inches (2 cm) in her abs and the same in her butt, and 0.39 inches (1cm) in her waist, while I lost 0.39 inches in my thighs and arms.
This is veery impressive to us, since we did not expect it after just 3 weeks of around 3 h or exercise per week. Besides, we did not diet at all. As mentioned before, we are not interested so much in losing weight as we are in reshaping our bodies, and this seems to me to be happenning. It's good, then,we just have to keep at it. We just hope we don't shrink till we disappear from the face of the earth in 3 months, cause we just might.