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[positibofit]

Patience is everything

The beginning of the new year has been a trip. I am not sure if I am tired because of work, or tired because of my workouts.

I have to admit I was putting myself in stressful situations. Doing workouts is a stressful situation for your body. I know that. But still I am sticking strictly to my schedule. Six times a week; only one rest day. For some people it sounds a fully packed schedule. But looking around there are people working out 2 to 3 times A DAY.

It’s your own decision how to handle your body. But never ever ignore the signals your body is giving you.My body has been sore for a lot of days now. I was pre-recording my evaluation video for #poppilates. Getting used to talk, motivate, smile and doing the exercises. It takes practice, it takes time. And you have to do it a couple times. When my body was so sore for the exercises I just recorded my voice for the workout.

Happily to announce that I uploaded the evaluation video yesterday. I am not sure how long it will take to review the video and when to receive a feedback, if I passed or failed. So I am basically sitting here in the unknown, waiting for an email.

Meanwhile...

...I am focusing on my toned body goals. I am still on the road for a six pack or at least toned abs. And I must say I am still motivated and actually happy doing upper body workouts. It became my favorite exercises. I always thought I was the cardio type, but that changed in the past month.

Looking back, when I was a gym member 2 or 3 years ago, I hated ab workouts. I went on the treadmill for 2 hours. Worked on arms, legs and booty only. Now? I am enjoying and loving ab workouts.Furthermore 

I am amazed that I found people on Instagram going on a similar trip and keeping each other motivated. Helping and providing tips. And every now and then coming up with a challenge. It is not a competition who is better or who is stronger. It is a just-for-fun challenge, seeing what your body is able to do, or not. And there is no reason to feel bad about it. It’s another motivation to work on it. There are a couple challenges I failed so much. Since today. Giving up? It’s not an option. Working on it? Definitely. But without pressure.

Thankful and feeling good

Despite of all the stress and fully packed days, I am still happy, still confident about the journey.Due to Covid there are a lot of restrictions. A lot of plans have to be set on hold. But using the time for preparation, for defining plans and developing detailed time frames.

Honestly, I am falling asleep in a minute when I am going to bed at night. But knowing I achieve everything on my to-do list makes me so happy. It sounds weird doesn’t it? A couple of friend try to remind to relax, lie on the couch. However, to be honest, I relax when I work out, I relax when doing yoga and meditate. And I relax seeing my friends. Going for a walk or having a cooking session. It’s not that I am 24/7 by myself and only focusing on my body. But it has become a huge part of my life. Friends accept it and support me. And they cannot wait for my certificate and to teach them officially. And I can’t wait either.

So for the rest of the day I will be handling my full-time job. After that I might take a few pictures or record a video for social media content and then off to a friend. And I already know that I will fall asleep immediately tonight, after waking up at six. But always knowing that I accomplished my duties for today. I know it takes a lot of discipline and I realized that not only my body, but my mind has changed to.

Stay focused, stay healthy!

[positibofit]

Time is running

New year, old goals

The festivities are over. We ate, we laughed, we celebrated; in compliance with the COVID regularities of course.

To be honest, I am relieved that Christmas and New Years Eve are over. People are more stressed during that times, did you notice? 

Then I think to myself, ‘you are actually putting yourself into this whole Christmas competition path’ so don’t complain.

Anyways

I can proudly announce that I passed the first written test for the #poppilates instructor certificate.

50 questions needed to be answered. And I realised, even if I passed the test, I still need to learn a lot. I mean, let me just throw a topic in: muscles.

As an instructor or a coach, your goal is to teach your students not only the movements and lead the way to a better body feeling. It’s also important to explain exactly what the benefits for each group of muscles are. 

A good friend has a huge range of knowledge when it comes to fitness, health and nutrition. Everytime I come up to him, asking a question, he always has an answer and explanation. And this is what I am looking for in a professional. 

So for me there is still a lot of work to do. But I believe, with every practical experience, you will gain more routine and more knowledge.

Evaluation Video

So since the end of my #poppilates instructor journey is coming closer, I need to focus on my evaluation video.

Working out by yourself in silence is a total different world, than start speaking. Explaining positions, explaining which parts of muscles are working, offering move options to increase or decrease intensity of an exercise. Motivating and still smiling and doing the exercises. And everything within seconds. 

I am confident with every move and I can memorize the choreography very easily. But putting everything together within a limited time frame. Oh boy, that’s a challenge.

To be honest I was pretty confident in the first place and told myself ‘ok let’s shot a pre-video, to see how the lightning looks like and the camera position and do an audio test.

Well, I experienced a harsh landing on the ground of hard facts. And one thing I need is PRACTICE...practice, practice, practice... well that wouldn’t be a problem, if the time is not running out.

So here it is, I am trying to at least work on my sayings, without doing each exercise. I just realised my body is so sore from the last days of working out plus doing the workouts for the evaluation video.

So I am cutting it down. Focus on my general workouts I am doing everyday and practicing my sayings without each exercise.

After feeling more confident in what to say to future students, I will start to record a new video.

I am optimistic to finish it in the next two weeks, if I can stick to my plan.

Reaching limits

I knew from the beginning, that this will be a tough journey. But now, coming closer to the finish line, it’s getting harder keeping everything together. The what’s so called ‘work-life-balance’. Times getting shorter but days are getting longer.

I am getting up at around 5:00 am - happy to say I can stay at home for work and start doing my workout in the morning which now take around 2-3 hours. And that does not include the shower and meal after the workout.

Then focusing on my full-time job for the next 8-10 hours. When I am lucky. And after that, depends on the weekedays, it’s either grocery shopping, seeing friends, cleaning, any sponaneous issues....and tada, its 11:00 pm and I am in bed. And I am not talking about sleeping right away. I am in bed. looking at the clock and panicking when it says 01:30 am and the alarm goes of at 5:00 am again.

I don’t even find the time to sit on the couch and do nothing. There is no time for that. My days are so fully packed. The only time-out I reserve for myself is Sunday: Yoga and meditation day followed by a hot bath.

But other than that it’s a fully packed week. But to be honest, right now I am pretty happy being that busy. I am feeling myself caught in this whole COVID topic and it’s only frustrating me more and more. With focus on my duties, I think less of it and really prepare my life for the day after lockdown.

And I am so looking forward to it and I will be so ready for this adventure!

Always remember, you only got one life. So do something that’s worth living for!

[positibofit]

Full speed forward

Wow, two intense weeks. I wanted to post a new entry last week, but I could not find any rest time to sit down and write to be truly honest.

It’s been intense. But in a positive way. I know it sounds odd. I am still on my pilates instructor journey and trying to watch at least 5 to 10 videos of the instructor course. Last weekend we had an amazing master class kick-off Zoom-Meeting. We got to know fabulous and ambitious people. It was a great get-together and workout-together. Another way to find motivation is knowing other people are choosing the journey. Everyone with their own struggles and progress. But still in the same boat to reach the goal and to push each other. Oh I am loving the spirit.

Full-time work will be rough before vacation starts, but after that, I will focus 100% on my workouts. I already started to put more intensity into each training. Adding weights and adding reps. And oh boy, I can feel my body and every muscle, and hell yeah I am closer to my goal in gaining the abs.

So looking back on my general fitness journey so far, I must say I am on track and definitely happy with my goals I set. I am not even thinking about my new goals, since I realised, I lose motivation, when having to many goals. So I will stick to my split-goals, which are definitely not perfect yet and to my body-toning goal with main focus on the abs. And this will take a couple more month here. But that is fine for me. 

How did I set my goals?

It all started with the typical new year resolution. What should be my goal for the year? And so I decided, hey what about being able to do the splits again. And so it all started. And after a couple month I already reached the goal and stick to it. But I did not wait for the year to end to find a new goal. I literally decided right after it to become a more defined body. Hey I never saw any abs on my body ever. Am I even able to gain abs? Let’s do it then. And not even half a year later, I am so proud to see that I cannot only gain the bizeps and the tights. I do gain abs. They are still shy, but I will not lose track on here, since I put a lot of work and sweat into it.

Oh Merry Christmas

So Christmas holidays are coming closer. And we all know that this means food, a lot of food. And I think we should enjoy every moment of it. I quit any hard diets long time ago. I eat what I want and what my body is craving for. Of course you should not eat a bunch of chocolate bars. But I quit going on a low carb diet, or keto diet or any other diet. The only thing I am doing and really watching out what I am eating is during the week while doing workouts. But on weekends... hell I will eat a Pizza and ice-cream for dessert. And this is how I feel comfortable with, how I found the balance in working out, pushing yourself to the limits but enjoying everything else to the fullest. Of course, I would be lying if I say I am ignoring any nutrition facts. Of course you need to look for your calorie income and you should think twice if you like to take drinks now or stick to your water. Bodies are not the same and for me my body is craving for a porridge bowl with peanutbutter and fruits instead of  white bread and meat in the morning. To give you an example.

But it is still a long journey and I am still motivated and ready and I am looking forward to the first finish line. 

[positibofit]

Keep focusing

It’s been a week now since I signed up for the #poppilates instructor course. And well, things have been going smoothly so far. I decided to wait a couple of days before posting a new blog, to see how things will work out. I needed a couple days to really get used to study again. I mean come on, when was the last time I studied? 

It’s not easy to keep focus on my full-time job, my workout routines and other duties. But it is not impossible to change the daily schedule. Some events appear spontaneously, some things you cannot plan and then you need to switch and adjust the daily schedule. It’s not easy and to be honest. I am a fan of organised plans and sticking to it. I think that it’s one thing I am learning here, too. And hopefully it will get better with each day.

What did I do?

So for the last days I have been working out a lot. I am still struggeling with a little pain in both legs. So I had to adjust my workouts and focus more on the upper body than the lower body. But it’s getting better every day. I am able to do the splits again, however the stretching takes an hour now to really prevent more injuries.

The #poppilates instructor course is going well so far. I just watched the first videos and learning the manual that came with the registration. Taking an online course makes things much more easy. You can learn on your own speed and you can re-watch each video over and over again, until it sticks in your head.

I developed a schedule for me finding time for my workouts and learning. The last week was rough. I was so excited to jump into the instructor course and watched the first videos, but then from time to time, the daily life hit me, my full-time work - of course - takes the most time of my day. And of course, I am really sticking to my workout schedule every day.

So I tried to combine my everyday life to build in the time for the videos. For example when taking a bath. This was actually a very good idea. You can relax and watch the pilates videos. 

I am not a fan of listening to the videos when I am about to go to sleep, like an audio book. I need to stay awake and focused on the visualisation they’re showing. Exactly the same when it comes to driving the car.

So I decided to use my full rest day (no workouts) and also on weekends for learning and preparation for the test. Since the lockdown, there isn’t much of outdoor entertainment you can do anyways.

How to continue?

I will continue with my schedule I made up. It’s going quite good. There will be some adjustments in the next days, since the Christmas Holidays are coming and I am on vacation. I will have much more time for the pilates course and of course for the workouts.  

The test and the evaluation video need to be made in mid February 2021. Sounds like plenty of time? Well, I just realised that time flies by very quickly. I mean 2020 is almost over. Isn’t it scary that another year is almost over again?

But looking back I am happy now. Happy to finally did the step which was way overdue and finally doing something for the future that makes me happy every day.

[positibofit]

Are you ready for the fitness journey?

It took a while to start my journey and I am happy to announce that I signed up for the #poppilates intructor course. A couple of month ago I received a bunch of messages from people asking me, if I teach or give nutrition advise. That is another reason why I’d like to start becoming professional. My dream would be to build a community with fitness enthusiasts and the one who would like to become one.

So I started this blog to share my experience regularly.

Originally, I planned to become a yoga and pilates instructor. But due to the pandemic and closing of the yoga studios I decided to start becoming a pilates instructor first. And after lockdown I will focus on becoming a yoga teacher. Since I know #blogilates from 2009 and my workouts are inspired by #poppilates I decided to start this journey to earn the first experience in this business area. There are a bunch of courses and I don’t mind adding another pilates course afterwards or maybe a personal trainer licence. But let’s take it step by step.

I know that the road will not go straight forward. I still have a full-time job, friends and family and tons of other everyday-duties.

But this will not keep me back in becoming an instructor.

What does it mean to go on a journey?

For me it means gaining experience, increase the personal horizon and go farther than your limits. Seeing life from different perspectives. Learning about cultures and getting to know yourself and things aroung you.

You should never lose interest in learning something new, always be curious and open minded.

It doesn’t matter how long a journey will take. If it’s just for a couple hours, month or years. As long as you focus on it and never lose the goal.  

This ist me - Anni

Sport has always been part of my life. Sometimes more- sometimes less.

I remember that I started early with gymnastics class for children when I was in kindergarden. I remember that my Mom wanted me to take ballet classes. But back then this was too girly for me. So my Dad decided to put me into Teakwondo classes. Which was very good for gaining confidence and learning about self-defense. 

After that I joined track and flieds athelitcs, rhythmic gymnastics and soccer. I am also very open minded when it comes to sport. I tried tennis, badminton, squash, football, baseball. I love cycling, swimming and running.

My personal biggest success was to run a half marathon back in 2016. We only had 13 weeks of preparation. It was a hard journey, but it all paid off.

In addition to that I also love watching sports, NFL, Soccer, Olympic Games...

You see, sport has always been a part of my life.

A couple of years ago I gained more interest in yoga and pilates, which leads me to the point becoming an instructor and thrill other people to join.

So why do I start this blog?

I remember when I left my hometown to live in America for a year, I also started a blog, to write about the daily life and what kind of experience I made. I did it for a couple weeks only and lost interest. And today I think what a pity that I never took the time to write everything down, as a memory, as a diary. I know you will never forget certain events. But how cool would it be to have tons of entries, where you one day look back and re-experience everything?

I’d like to take you with me on the journey.

I’d like to share my experience and progress. At the same time I would like to get in touch with you and exchange your experience, your ideas and tipps.

I’d like to share my workout routine and my goals I am setting.

And I want to remind myself on far I got and where the journey will lead me.

So are you ready? I know I am!