A New Cotton Crop Harvest...

This season, a new cotton basic has been catching my eye...the cropped tee.  For me, this is the perfect shirt to feel stylish while lounging around the house.  I can especially envision these guys making their fabulous ways into my gym wardrobe to replace the (yawn) sports bra tank in the gym.  They've been popping up in every store from American Eagle to Victoria's Secret, and the very basic version that is on my list is the version from Forever 21.  No designs--just basic, solid cotton.  Here they are; at $7.90 a pop, you can certainly add a few to work them in from one laundry day to the next!

Get the crop here!

or 

here, at Forever 21

Fitness Greatness

Two of many fitness innovations that have increased my knowledge of fitness and my physique...

Iphone App's 100 Pushups:
This application guarantees to whip you into enough shape to do 100 pushups.  I'm in.  Pushups are the key to toned shoulders, arms, back, chest, and core in one exercise movement.  Push your way to firm, sculpted arms and be held accountable on your Iphone.  Your phone counts down the time in between each set, giving you the perfect amount of recovery time--a factor that can either make or break the success of a workout.  The app also posts reminders onto your phone's calendar.  Since having pretty major spine surgery that currently limits (still...yawn) the amount of upperbody weight lifting I'm allowed to do, I am relying almost solely on this app to reshape the way my arms look in my sundresses this summer...until we meet again, bench press and pull-ups! Learn more about this app here.

Cross-Fit:
An ex once led me to this website and took me into the gym to try this workout, well, out.  He insisted that the gym time I was logging by doing traditional weight lifting was outrageous, and that Cross-fit made you much fitter anyway by keeping your body's muscles guessing.  Cross-fit relies on Olympic Powerlifting movements, kettle bells, the pull-up bar, etc.  While I can't really subscribe to this way of life in the gym with my body's surgical recovery limitations, I can attest that Cross-fit helped me to run a half marathon on zero training and PR (set a personal record), and my body looked great.  Every exercise has demonstration clips.  The workouts are posted each day, even on rest days.  Usually, the routine either encourages as many rounds as you can do in a certain amount of time, as much weight as you can lift in a given number of rounds, or how much time it takes you to complete a specified amount of rounds.  Don't be intimidated because you can start small, adjust the day's workouts to fit your current fitness levels, and work up.  There are also an increasing amount of gyms offering Cross-fit classes, and even gyms that are only Cross-fit gyms.  Click here to get started.  I've always maintained that the only thing I did get out of this relationship, besides lessons learned about yucky guys, was a hardcore fitness regimen.

Big Fish, Small Gym

The smallness of the gym I've chosen as mine in Leonardtown is demotivating me.  Same face at the desk, same people (if anyone is in there) in the weight room.  I'm accustomed to the very large, beautiful, sophisticated One Life Fitness in Norfolk, the less elegant but still huge location in Virginia Beach, and my familiar Navy gym in Norfolk.  I really miss them all, the last one most of all because I had made it my home with my gym partner, Liz.  In the first two gyms, I could hide behind the crowd and do my less than attractive supplementary exercise (think squats with the dumbbell in between your legs to work your inner thighs--or heel and toe walks, etc), or if I were having a fat day or just a bad day in general.  Here, there's absolutely zero hiding.  I miss escaping into those big, familiar gyms.

Particularly embarrassing, I asked the small gym on which I settled for information on their available job positions after very, very much pushing from my husband.  He really wants me to earn any sort of supplementary income, and he thought the gym would be a good fit since I'm entertaining  personal training as a possible stray from my English teaching background.  It didn't stop there.  Hand in hand with inquiring about the job was filling out an application and calling to check on its status--all husband driven.  Well, small gyms are no place to make your own after job hunting.  Now, every time I walk past the same desk person who both took my application, encouraged me to call the manager and talked to me for one of the interviews, I am met with a weird stare and crossed arms where there was once a friendly greeting.  "I didn't want the job anyway, buddy, especially if having it requires me to glare at guests who do anything out of the ordinary card swipe/workout/exit," my inner voice defensively maintains.   It's less than motivating to hop into the gym on a regular basis now.  How weak of me to let this stand in the way of an activity, more, a routine, that's shaped the very core of who I am for more than half of my life so far.   If it weren't for it's less than a mile distance from my new home, I'd abandon it and flee to the free Navy gym in Patuxent River.  Perhaps I should anyway...except the gas prices...  Maybe I should just work out at Patuxent until I have established a regular routine and then mix in this very tiny, truly small town gym.

I think I've also been depressed mildly due to the new move and other factors, so the gym job rejection isn't the only culprit behind my laziness for two months.  Because I'm beginning to resign to my life here (and also because, just in time for spring weddings and beach season, my muscles are atrophying in a major way),  I'm going to snap out of it today.  No more excuses--no "I'm traveling home for Easter tomorrow so what's the point of doing two workouts and then taking time off?"...nope.  I'm working out.  No excuses.  Breaking the excuse change.

  But, let this be a lesson that small towns are not always synonymous with the nice and down to earth reputation that they've earned in other ways.