Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.
I met my objective, 360 minutes of activity in four weeks! I had a slow start since during the first week I wasn’t up for doing the medium activity exercises that qualified to be counted toward my objective.
One of the activity sets is a set created in a partnership with Humana, Inc.
It has three workout programs: Strengthen Your Heart, focused on high blood pressure; Active Kids, targeted at preventing childhood obesity; and Aging With Grace, designed to help elder mobility and agility. These were a little tougher for me than I thought they would be. However, I did notice one of the benefits of using the Your Shape program. Several times I had decided to give up or slow down but when the next exercise in the routine came on the screen, I’d try it and get back into the swing of it.
My weight is still edging up, which means I’m still building muscle (I hope). I definitely have more energy and more stamina. I’m able to many of the 15+ minute routines without too much trouble. I’m still not doing too much jumping around, but I can tell there’s been a big improvement when doing exercises where I need to kick or bring up my knees.
I’ll be posting one more diary update next week. Here’s week 1 and last week. After that, we’ll be giving away a free copy of YFSE to a random commenter chosen from the comments on one of the five diary posts, including this one.
PS I still haven’t missed a day since I started the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.
Well, I weighed myself this week. I’m kind of glad that I didn’t do that at the start of my exercising because I would have put the focus on my weight instead of my overall fitness, which is definitely improving. I got out a couple of my old shirts, which seem to fit better than they did when I put them away. But at this point, I don’t have a lot of outward improvement. What I do have is increased flexibility, more energy (which I’ve mostly been wasting by staying up too late) and more stamina for the workouts. I’ll track my weight again in a few weeks, but I plan on building more muscle before I lose much fat.
Last Saturday, the team I’ve been coaching went to our first Lego robotics competition. It was a long day of standing and walking around, but I seemed to do better than I normally do in this type of situation. What I was dreading was how I would feel Sunday and Monday, which is when I usually pay for an unusual day of activity. But when I woke up, I was feeling mostly fine, which is my new normal. (I’m a little achy every day. Not much, but I can feel my muscles all the time now. I think this will wear off in time, but even now it’s not that bad.)
I’ve been trying out more of the activities this week. My wife got me to try a Bollywood workout when we first got the program. I’ve been doing it most mornings. It’s low impact and not too fast, and I find it easier than even the Zen activities. (At my size, slowly posing and stretching requires a lot of energy.) Under an activity category, like Bollywood, there are multiple selections, each listing a level of difficulty (Easy, Medium, or Hard) and the number of minutes you’ll be working out. After going through the two short and easy “training” sessions over a few days, I started doing a Medium, 15-minute routine that I’ve been doing most mornings this week. Each routine is broken up into several different moves or exercises, and you do several sets of each exercise throughout the routine. Each exercise has multiple parts and the program tells you for each part if you’ve done it correctly by marking it with a green dot (and a small chime). At the end of each set, it tells you what percent you did correctly and then there is an overall percentage at the end of the routine. This morning I got 90% correct, which I guess means I’m a grade A exerciser.
Several of the others seem to follow the same pattern. I’ve done Hip Hop a couple times, but don’t have the hang of it yet, and Cardio Boxing, which is fun but definitely leaves me winded.
Bootcamp: Running, push-ups, and attacking
The Bootcamp activity is a little crazy. It includes these attack moves like the Sumo Squat Attack and the Double Knee Kick Attack. It also has running and push-ups. Now I haven’t done a push-up in my adult life (and not many as a kid) so I’m looking forward to be able to complete this one, but I’m not there yet.
I’m still working out every day and don’t have any plans to stop. I’ve really been suprised how entrenched this has become as part of my daily routine.
I’ll be posting diary updates every week for two more weeks. Here’s week 1 and week 2. After that, we’ll be giving away a free copy of YFSE to a random commenter chosen from the comments on one of the five diary posts, including this one.
Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.
Week two and I haven’t missed a day yet!
This week, I’m definitely noticing that the workouts are getting easier and that I have more stamina.
I’m used to muscle aches being due to a one-time event, like helping someone move. After a couple days, they would go away and I’m back to “normal”. Now the aches I’m feeling mean I’m stretching myself and I’ll be better than “normal” when they go away.
I’m pro-rut. That is, I like to do get in a habit (some good, some bad). I so surprised that I’m now in the habit of exercising every morning. I’m actually wondering what it will feel like the first day that I don’t get up and work out.
I’m feeling it in my ankles. It’s a little weird, but I guess my ankles need strengthening also.
There are targeted exercise routines for different parts of the body, so you can focus on your arms or your abs, etc. Since I’m on the “shape up” program, I’ve been trying out a little of all of them (except the one listed as “sports preparation”, that one seems a little too intense for me.)
The loading times between exercises is easier to handle now that I’m not just doing the two-minute starter ones. I don’t mind a little break.
Bootcamp: That's not me on the right
When I first started it had me select an objective, and I said I wanted to “shape up and slim down”. It then set a goal for 360 minutes of exercise (30 minutes a day, 3 days a week, for 4 weeks). But at the end of last week, I was only at 6% done. I figured out my problem. As part of its plan for me, it wants me to choose from a set of specific activities. Unfortunately for me, that set doesn’t include a lot of the very basic easy ones. Now that I’m ready to move from light to medium exercise, I’m doing more from the “shape up” set and am now up to 22% done meeting my objective. I’m planning on hitting 100% before the end of the year. It’s also showing me as burning almost 600 calories so far, but most of those were this week as well.
I’ll be posting diary updates every week for the next three weeks. Here’s week 1. After that, we’ll be giving away a free copy of YFSE to a random commenter chosen from the comments on one of the five diary posts, including this one.
Thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with a copy of Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and sponsoring this fitness diary series. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.
I’m not into fitness. I lead a fairly sedentary life and I like it that way. I like the weather to be 72 degrees and fluorescent. So it’s not shocking that I’m out of shape. I’m also software developer and my hobbies are programming, playing computer and board games, and watching TV. That’s why I jumped at the chance to review Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012, or YSFE for short. My wife just picked up an Xbox 360 on a Black Friday sale and this way I get to work out and play video games at the same time!
I just saw a post on Lifehacker on giving your New Year’s resolution a 30-day trial, and I’m already doing that! YSFE recommends 3 workouts a week, but I’ve been doing it every morning this week. I left the house this morning at 5:30, but I still got up a little earlier that I would have so that I could work out. My biggest surprise was that I had more energy than I did before. I had been planning on going to bed earlier to offset the early mornings, but I didn’t and I still had more energy all day.
Some notes from Week 1:
There’s a several minute intro video that you have to watch once per person. I first watched it when my wife was signed in, then had to watch it again before my first workout.
The Kinect interface works very well. We have a Wii Fit Plus, which works well for specific activities, but the Kinect really tracks all of your movements pretty accurately for working out and for navigating through the menus.
Some of the warm-ups are really fun. My favorite is the Wall Breaker which is basically a punching and kicking game.
Waiting for each workout to load seems to take a long time, and it either shows you how to do the workout (for the simple warm-up ones) or it shows a health fact or tip. But there’s only a few tips and they repeat over and over.
The workouts are targeted at specific areas, like cardio or glutes, and do a good job demonstrating the exercises as well as monitoring you and telling you when you’re not doing them right. This is very helpful since I tend to cheat (that is score the points with the least amount of effort).
Also, I’m so out of shape that I often run out of steam during the longer routines. (I’m expecting this to change over the next few weeks.) Some of the workouts expect dumbells, but I wasn’t prepared.
There’s a wide variety of activities from running through Manhattan to performing a Bollywood dance number. It may take me a month to try them all.
The Sumo Squat: My next challenge
My goal when I started YSFE was to slim down so that I could fit more comfortably in some of my older clothes (I think they shrink over time). I can’t tell if that’s happening but I can certainly say that my energy level is way up and I think I’m going to try to stick to my every day schedule. If I can make it to New Year’s Eve, I might actually have enough energy to stay up until midnight this year!
I’ll be posting diary updates every week for the next four weeks. After that, we’ll be giving away a free copy of YFSE to a random commenter chosen from the comments on one of the five diary posts, including this one.
Stomach bugs are a nasty thing. What makes them nastier is when they hit big families! Usually it isn’t just one person who gets it and everyone else feels fine. That is why I try to keep a stock of supplies just in case it wreaks havoc upon us!
I remember back 6 ½ years ago. I had a 2 year old and a not quite 3 month old. My dear, sweet husband had to go to a class that work had paid for down in Los Angeles for 4 days. 24 hours before my loving husband left I got a stomach bug that was so bad I could barely walk. When he left I was still at the tablespoon full of water at a time because 2 would make me throw up;). So as life would have it, by the time I was barely able to have a quarter cup of water, the 2 year old had his first bout of the stomach flu! Poor NerdDad missed it;). So that meant that we were getting by on water and soda crackers for days until I felt I could venture to the store upright with both kids. Needless to say that with the sudden onset of the stomach flu (it was only September) I was not prepared at all! And it being my first experience with my own little one, I wasn’t prepared for what he would need.
I vowed it would never happen again! Now I always make sure to keep Pedialyte, soda crackers, and broth on hand. I do not skimp on the brand when it comes to Pedialyte, it is just too important. When we first started buying it I would get the big bottles because it is cheaper by the ounce but we never finished it. My kids were also kind of thrown off by the fruit punch because they don’t normally drink it. So I was stoked to find the tetra pack in the apple juice flavor! It is the perfect serving size and cools down quickly at the first sign of stomach issues!
So are you stocked up in case of stomach bugs? Here are some essentials for a well-stocked medicine chest from Pedialyte!
Learn more about how Pedialyte Singles in the Tetra packaging helps with dehydration due to cold and flu and download fun activities to keep on hand for those times when your child is at home sick. Please talk to your doctor before using Pedialyte. Pedialyte is to be used under medical supervision. I was selected for this product review by Collective Bias. All opinions are mine and were not influenced by any third party.
