Conditioning – and I am Not Talking About Hair

I eagerly signed up for a 5K on June 3rd and have not yet started to train.  Until today!  (I signed up for the Couch to 5K program and every time I see the daily emails from that program a pang of guilt goes through me.)  Max offered to help me get ready and today is Day 1!

We went to the gym during our lunch break (so I don’t want to hear that people don’t have time to do this).  I have to admit I was a little worried.  Since I signed up for said 5K, I have not done any exercising.  Oh boy.

The first time I had ever heard of the term “conditioning” was with hair – like, “My hair is dry and unruly – I need some more conditioning”.  I was going to learn a different type of conditioning.  Here is how it went:

With towel and water bottle in hand, we went to an area of the gym that was conducive to our exercising.  First, we warmed up with stretching and a bunch of jumping jacks.  The fact that the back of my legs burned after the first set of jumping jacks was sure to be an indication of how the rest of this workout would play out.  Then we were on to the conditioning part.  We did two rounds of:

:30 jumping jacks

:15 rest

:30 push ups

:15 rest

:30 jumping jacks

:15 rest

:30 mountain climbing (that’s what he called it…)

:15 rest

:30 jumping jacks

:15 rest

:30 squats (not your run of the mill squats, you have to do a mini jump and then when you land and squat you have to touch the floor with your hands.  That was challenging.)

We did that twice and then afterwards ran on the treadmill for 15 minutes.  I SURVIVED!  I do have to say that the back of my legs are burning a bit already (can’t wait to see how I feel tomorrow morning).  This routine can easily be done at home (sans the treadmill), so you can do it any time – it literally took us 30 minutes to complete.