I’m not sure if you’ve watched this video of the first woman to complete American Ninja Warrior.
Watching her go through all the obstacles was so impressive that I was left enthralled and inspired. She’s like a real life Lara Croft!
The obstacles even looked fun and reminded me of the ones that I went to for school camp. For a brief moment, I wondered if there was something similar (but less daunting) in Rome. I found the Spartan Race while searching online although I’m hesitant to join as it seems quite demanding. 30 burpees for every obstacle you fail to pass. Yikes!
Anyway, the past 3 months I’ve been busy doing Jillian Michael’s Body Revolution where you do 4 circuit training (or phases) and 2 cardio exercises, 30 minutes each, a week over a course of 12 weeks.
Here is a taste of phase 1 :
It started out as something I wanted to do for fun. As I did her 30 day shred before, naturally I wanted to progress to something a little more. I liked that we didn’t need any fancy equipments – all we needed was a stretch cord, a mat and some hand weights all of which I already had. By right we are advised to have a pair of 3, 5 and 8 pound weights but all I have are a pair of 1 kg and 1.5 kg weights which I use together in combination for the heavier weights.
For those who have already done the 30 day shred would probably find weeks 1 & 2 easy. Jillian uses quite a number of familiar moves like bicycle crunches and chest fly’s. Nevertheless, I still feel sore the day after. I regularly find myself red faced and completely drenched with perspiration at the end of each workout.
Each workout changes every 2 weeks and gets progressively harder, with the same philosophy I suppose as a P90X workout where your body doesn’t adapt to the same exercises, preventing a plateau and get continuous improvements.
Seeing physical changes didn’t take very long neither, and by the end of the first month, I could already see changes in my tummy, chest and arms. Although admittedly my tummy pack disappears as soon as I eat a meal.
Nevertheless I’m quite happy with how I look like. I feel that I’m more toned compared to how I looked like before and I enjoy looking at my shape in the mirror in the nude.
At the end of the first month. Please excuse the splotchy mirror :
At the end of the second month :
And at the end of the third month :
My arms and shoulders look so different! At the risk of sounding so conceited, but It’s hard to imagine that I am even trimmer compared to myself in 2012.
If you were wondering, I haven’t lost any weight with this program, which is good as I didn’t plan to. I think I’ve reached my optimal weight at 56 kg. I probably could look even leaner if I followed the diet that Jillian recommends, but with my experience after doing the marathon this year, I’d prefer not stick to a daily 1200 calorie diet as I am a fairly active person and eating too little will make me very tired and grumpy.
Now that I’ve finished the 90 day workout, I’m taking a break. In all honesty, I don’t know if I want to continue with it again. Even though I loved the results, I find myself always procrastinating when it comes to workout time, considering that it is only 30 minutes, which is not a good sign.
There were times when I didn’t want to exercise at all as I felt weak from the workout from the day before. I had to remind myself that I’ve already done so many weeks, it’ll be a waste to quit now. The time when I felt most motivated was in workout 12 when everyone cheered and clapped at the end.
(Image from tmbez.wordpress.com) Gosh, Jillian looks crazy evil here.
And there were those times when I find myself in pain and left hobbling a couple of hours after doing the exercises. I seem to still have issues with my left knee and I don’t want to risk injuring it and had to modify my movements. This training has A LOT of jumping and squatting which is not good for those with bad knees.
But who knows what will happen in the future. Hopefully my knee will grow stronger and maybe I could find something else to challenge myself for the fun of it.
If you’re thinking of taking up the 90 day body revolution, be forewarned, it’s VERY tough especially from week 3 onwards and can be quite a commitment. But it works in the end. It really works. Give it a try if you have the courage 🙂
And so I end this post with a picture of my posterior courtesy of the body revolution.
Kim K who?
There is a reality TV game show in Italy called 
Being Singaporean, I enjoy watching this show because of the familiar elements and also of the cultural shock that the contestants face with challenges in communication as well as navigating in places which are strange to them. It was interesting for me to see the techniques that the contestants use, some begged, some bartered, some flirted … suffice to say, you’d have to have very thick skin to survive in this competition. 
Last week, the contestants were in Malaysia – Penang, Cameron Highlands, Kuala Lumpur and Larkin. I had a lot of fun with Cart, with us excitedly trying to spot out the places that we’ve already been to like the 
(Eva is one of the funniest contestant there, openly gawking at how good looking the men were) Something interesting to note while the contestants were on the Kuala Lumpur monorail is the prohibition signs. ‘No eating’, ‘No Smoking’, ‘No Littering’ was the standard but there was also a ‘No Kissing’ sign. Asians are quite reserved naturally, so I was quite surprised to see the sign so outright. 
I thought the challenge that they did while in Larkin was a little off – according to the host, the contestants has to eat and finish the different ‘Typical Malaysian food’ before heading off to the next stop. 
Chicken feet was something common I guess, and cow lung, even boiled frogs but as far as I know, Bull Testicle isn’t commonly found in food chains in Malaysia. 
(And according to the host, is very hard) What I admire about the contestants is their tenacity in pushing on to the next challenge and it was always gratifying to see so many kind hearted people willing to host them in their houses for the night. 
So when they reached Singapore, I thought for sure that they would have a hard time. Singapore, being a metropolitan city with a fast paced life, I didn’t think that there would be many who were kind. And their first challenge there was to find a place to shower and change into their fancy outfits. 
To my surprise, while most hesitated for a while, practically everyone was willing to share their homes to the contestants when asked. There wasn’t that much airtime in Singapore though, as they basically went to Raffles Hotels and drink the Singapore Sling as a challenge and then had to rush off to to Indonesia after that. Some might think that Singapore is too small to have many challenges, but I think there are a lot more ideas that we can come out with. 
Nevertheless, if you’re interested you could watch the show in full from the 
