Joanna and Naomi do Bootcamp

Ah, the week of no posts. I knew this would start happening, the laziness would creep up until days had past without a word written. I need a bootcamp for posting – “sit down and give me 300 words!”

Week three and there’s an end in sight! We’re at the hump, it’s all downhill from here. Naomi and I have started to compare our progress after ‘camp, in what has to be the most neanderthal method possible.

You guessed it: a round robin of arm wrestling, Friday night. Two guys, three girls, and one table. No clear winner; Naomi assumed her bf wasn’t unleashing his full strength, she and I came to a stalemate on the left arm, and no one really kept track of who beat who.

Back to camp -there were many push ups this week. How many? I kept count to try to focus my mind from the pain. 106 on Wednesday, 155 on Thursday. That’s right. That’s more than the summation I’ve done in my entire life. I’m not even exaggerating. I couldn’t figure out why the sides of my ribs, directly beneath my shoulder blades were stiff on Thursday morning, until we started pushups again. Ah yes, I thought- that’s the reason.

We’ve started to intersperse sprints into our morning jogs, and have amped up the number of burpies, straight arm forwards and straight arm side raises from almost bearable to unbearable. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Fridays are becoming my respite. No one’s particularly good at running up hills and flights of stairs, I’m not bad at it, comparatively, so I get house odds. Thank god for the small favours of previous workouts.

Burpie clarification: I don’t even know if I’m spelling it right, frankly it should be spelt s-u-c-k-s. (I know! I’m 9 years old!) What you basically do is lay your hands on the ground in front of your body, then spring back into a high plank position, feet slightly apart. Using your stomach muscles, you jump back to a crouched position, drawing your legs close to your arms, and spring up into a straightened position, optionally jumping with hands high in the air for extra marks. And repeat. Ad nausea. (Ha!) Speed is a big key in this particular exercise, as well as a non-slippery surface to ensure your feet don’t slide from beneath you in plank position. Then you end up in a belly flop, sans water. Not as refreshing.