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.

Hah!

Yesterday, after a failed attempt at a cardio session and three hours spent just to get the second and first choreography session right, we felt the ardent need to get back at Ms. Anderson for humiliating us. So we had infinite loads of fun by watching her dance to her choreographies with the sound turned off and with our dirty rock music in the background. Extremely rewarding, though we were still somewhat jealous of her grace and agility. If this kind of experiment appeals to anyone, we heartily recommend "Steady as she Goes" by The Raconteurs with her second choreography (even works with the bits in her promo video)

Post-pregnancy video

In the first post, we said we'd probably try the post-pregancy video as well and, faithful to our masochistic natures, we did. Two times now. Neither of us has babies nor do we plan to in the near future, but we still did it because we thought it would be tougher on the stomach area than the other two and we were right. We found ourselves at one point sort-of half-levitating and panting and dripping sweat and very much pain, and we were liking it!
What is funny about this one is that, though the shitty disco or whatever you call it music is gone, they decided to play classical music (probably because they thought new mothers are more responsive to that and are somehow superior on a spiritual level than before) . So what you find yourself doing is butt lifts on the great rhythms of Vivaldi's Spring. It is quite funny to find yourself in that situation, but I think it is even funnier to watch it. Which is what our dear friend I. did when she came over to visit and we tried to impress her with our newly acquired physical skills. It is also worth mentioning that for the bits where she got bored, she was reading Sarah Kane's Blasted. She must have had a hell of a time!
So, to get back to the physical stuff, we really felt the effect of this routine and it was surprising to us that after just one time, and in spite of severe muscle soreness, the second time we did it it felt much easier and at times even relaxing. But then again, this has happened to the mat exercises as well and now we barely sweat while doing them. (mild exaggeration alert there). We are eager to see if this one will help C lose the surgically-acquired stomach. It can't be worse than a C-section acquired one and our dear Tracy promises to get that back in shape.
Today we're in for cardio, which we haven't done in a looong while. We hope to be able to get down the second choreography and do the first one and the second in succession. I've read on different forums that the second one is really difficult, so we'll see about that and keep you (if anyone is reading this) posted.

Slacker week

Yes, yes, we weren't really at our best this last weekend but that's totally explainable. C's had her exams, she's an arts student and needed to make these impossibly messy and smelly moulages, her studio was impossible to use, my place is no good for cardio because of the owner's mysterious ambition to build king sized bunk beds that take up most of the space in our bedroom...excuses, excuses. Bottom line is, just some half-ass mat session on Monday (which I may have already blogged about) and another mat session on Saturday night, followed by well-deserved beers, Pringles and smokes. We did notice, though, that even if we started out super-tired and quite depressed (me, after a long day of just basically watching the Man type stuff, and C running around town shopping for Ox heart or whatever), by the end of the Saturday workout we were as cheerful as two chirping birds. We had managed to pull off the entire weight routine without breaking a sweat I'd like to say, or a swear, but can say neither of these things for they are not true.
Yesterday and today we did nothing, because I must say I sort of used C's exams as a lame excuse for myself. We do plan to get back to work on Wednesday, though, when C's exams are done and when I shall have no more excuses, either. Then, in the evening, we'll head out to get our prize, which will be a much-awaited Arctic Monkeys concert. Yaay.
Oh, and last week we also took pictures and measurements of the actual state of our butts, thighs, stomachs and arms so we have some means of seeing our improvement or lack there of. I must say the Man was only too pleased to do us this favor. I don't know if we'll be posting them here for the time being, but if we're seeing enough differences, we will do so soon.
Well, that's about it. I'm going now to try and do at least my leg routine for the night. I've just seen Julie and Julia AND eaten two servings of the Man's lasagna, which is enough to make me feel guilty. And probably should.

First serious cardio session

After a looong time learning Tracy's first choreography, we eventually got down to business in the small crammed studio that C lives in. We somehow managed to push the furniture to the sides and do the routine both at the same time without hitting each other. To our surprise, we really managed to do 40 min of the routine without stopping and without too many mistakes. We are very slow studies though, neither of us had ever learned a sequence of steps before and I suppose we looked quite awkward. It will probably take us another week to be able to learn the second choreography, do that for another 40 min and then, a third session to be able to do the first one and the second one in succession. Baby steps, baby steps. We will probably be 90 before we manage to do 8 songs with 8 different choreographies.
Yesterday we did her mat method from beginning to end, lifting the weights and all. We are eager to get to the point where we won't have to listen to her any longer and that "I want your looove, sweeeet looove" song, be able to get through all the movements correctly and listen to our own playlist. The weirdest thing about this whole project is that we are really enjoying every minute of it. We are feeling the high. Now C is cooking healthy Chinese to reward us for being the magnificent creatures that we are.

Tracy Anderson and Gwyneth Paltrow

Intro

Ok. We are two slightly above average intellectual girls with lives of their own and many interests, but highly aware of the certainty of our becoming flabby, mushy, disgusting, undesirable creatures somewhere in the near future unless we take some attitude.
This is why we have decided to submit ourselves to what we like to call the pact with the devil or the weekly torture of Tracy Anderson. She is a celebrity trainer with very poor taste in music but a flat stomach and cellulite-free thighs. She is not our friend. We have acquired her three DVDs on "Mat method", "Cardio" and "Post-pregnancy workout" (just in case, cause we're dellusional) and we spend our weekends swearing at her making us sweat.
We have also decided to start a blog, just another measure to keep us working out and ashamed of any potential failure. We will (if we don't get too bored) attempt to document our "transformation" thanks to her crazy routines. Just to be clear, we will NOT be doing 2 hours of training 5 to 6 days a week as she recommends. We don't have the time and don't need such desperate measures since we are not interested in slimming down, but rather getting toned and firm. We will more likely do 2 full-time sessions a week and some 15 min every night individually.
Brief presentation: C: is 24 years old, 5, 15 ft tall (1, 57m), and weighs 101, 4 pounds (46kg). She has undergone surgery after a car accident and had never really worked out before, and much less after that. Having lost her spleen after said surgery, physical effort is much harder for her than for your average bear. Also, she has back problems (due to said surgery) and needs reminding to sit and stand up straight (which S is happy to do, provided C is in a good mood).
S is 26 years old, 5, 54 ft tall (1, 69m) and weighs 105, 8 pounds (48 kg). Despite what some of you might believe, S does not have eating problems nor any other issues for that matter, just very light bones and has never really looked impossibly skinny nor does she wish to. She has done some RG and Kung Fu back in the day (the days when Bush senior was president, to be more precise) but is quite lazy nonetheless.
We both have the capacity of eating like pigs and we often do so. We love us some oil and pasta and we don't want to have to renounce these simple and pure pleasures on account of impending cellulite. This is why we have turned to Tracy. We want to look like dancers in the New York City Ballet and she promises to do that if we stick to her program. We'll see about that.