Early in October I posed a fitness challenge to my 5:30am boot camp group.  On October 31 I would have them do a 5 minute plank and a 5 minute wall squat.  I wanted to ratchet up the intensity a bit and provide an end goal that everyone would be working towards, together.

The longest we’d held planks or wall squats up to the point was 2 minutes.   As an instructor you can tell when you’re pushing people far past their comfort zone.  The first clue is groaning or heavy sighing.  The second clue is a lot of fidgeting during intense, static exercises.  At 2 minutes my group expresses both of these clues so I knew we’d have to push through physically AND mentally.

So we spent the month of October building up our time in these positions then bringing it back down to 1 minute or 2.  It’s important to build, peak, back off then build again.  You can’t just keep building without taking off the heat every now and then.

So today we had our challenge class and I’m super happy to report that we had 12 gals come to class. We warmed up, stretched and did a fun cardio activity with pumpkins (it’s Halloween, remember) and then got to our challenges.    A 5 minute plank and wall squat is no joke and we worked hard in this challenge.

At one point I reminded them to find their “happy place” and one gal came right back with “this is not my happy place!” and I think we all were there with her!

Everyone who came to class got a goodie bag and left with, I hope, a huge sense of accomplishment!  Days like this are why I love teaching my class.

Now go run!

Keli 🙂