30 day Squat Challenge

Oy. I think sometimes I'm a little bit on the loony side. Me? Take on a 30 day squat challenge? I. HATE. squats. As in like, generally refuse to do them. So naturally as I'm dinking around pinning things on Pinterest I came across this challenge: 30 Day Squat Challenge

The thing I liked about this thing is you aren't doing the basic squat 200 times. I mean how boring is that? I like that it's 5 different kinds of squats that you do in a rotation and work your way up to 200. Ahem. I mean over 200. Because naturally you will see in 2 of those squats you add a back kick and a side kick and you have to do 2 squats to equal one rep. Sneaky little FitSugar ;) AND the fact that you have a rest day every 4th day. So you do squats for 3 days and have a rest day. Nice.

So yesterday was Day One. I lined up my yoga mat and did my favorite 20 minute yoga stretching youtube video. Not gonna lie, it's the only yoga I do, then I watched FitSugar's instruction clip on how to do a squat correctly. Now honestly to me, this was the best instruction on how to do a squat that I have seen and it helped me greatly. I'm pretty sure that if I do a squat like that every time I'm not going to hurt myself :) You can watch it in the clip on the challenge page. It's in the basic squat section.

 And then I did my 30 squats for the day. Huffing and puffing, and not sure I did it right but decided that today I'm gonna need water. Haha. And I'm not really setting a time limit on anything. It's not like I am trying to hurry these. So if it takes me an hour, it takes me an hour. The point is to do it.

So why would I take on a challenge to do something I hate? Good Question! I have no idea. Well I suppose I have a little idea. I wanted a challenge so I could complete something. And now I'm smacking my head and my poor thighs for picking this one. But I need to get myself back on track with working out and I thought a challenge would be an excellent way to do that. And I can do this pretty much anywhere. And since I am going out of town twice in July I don't have to pack anything up to take with me. (Well except for my yoga mat, I think I'm gonna take that!) And by the end of it hopefully my knees and ankles will be a bit stronger and can handle more walking or running. That's really what I was looking for, something to strengthen my knees and ankles. And then I realized today that duh, July has 31 days in it. So by the end of the month I will be ecstatically done!!

And by then maybe I will have a nice little strength training routine come up with and I will continue to do squats on a regular basis. Maybe not 200 a day? Or every other day or whatever? But who knows? Maybe I will come up with a crazy LOVE for squats.

Other than that, I am still trying to reign it in. My no scale summer is a slow go. No I still haven't weighed myself but I haven't been 100% on track either. Last weekend was a busy full of coffee weekend, and no it wasn't soy. So by Sunday morning my heart literally hurt from all the caffeine I had. Because in any of that did I mention the word decaf at all? Nope. And I have learned my lesson once again and the word decaf will roll off of my tongue once again when I order coffee.  And I am going to take July to also ween myself off of dairy and gluten once again. If I can't go completely gluten free I will at least go mostly gluten free. At least 2 meals a day. But the goal is to go completely free by the time I am back to school. It just means a lot of separate cooking.

And I have heard the best way to get rid of stiff sore muscles is to go and workout again. :0) So that's the plan. Gonna hit day two of challenge here shortly. 50 squats, here I come!

What's your favorite challenge that you have done? Exercise or food wise? I wanna know!