How I spent my rainy day in China

I was woken up this morning by a thunderstorm. Our new apartment is on the 11th floor and that feels a whole lot closer to lightning than I like.

I retreated to my new workout space for a little while.

30 Day Pilates Body

Day 20 - stretch and relax

This was the perfect way to start the day.

After a cup of coffee it was still raining, so I looked up a yoga video to replace my Monday hike up the mountain. No way I was going to do that. One thing I learned quickly about living in Shenzhen is that when it rains everything becomes slippery. It helps to clean the bottom of your shoes regularly, but you still have to be careful. 

Tone Yoga from Yoga with Adriene

I like the way Adriene guides you into a pose and then explains how your muscles should be engaging. Like in triangle pose, today I realized that my core should be doing more work than I realized.

Right after yoga, I watched the Xavier basketball tournament game on Slingbox. Sadly, they lost in the final 2 seconds. 

Still rainy outside and lacking no desire to go out in it, I signed into Booya Fitness in search of a video workout to burn some restless energy. It's so easy to find the perfect workout since there are so many videos to choose from. Use my link to join free for 30-days and see what I mean.

Flex Barre Total Body Express

I liked this one. It was a total body workout, but my legs felt it the most. 

The description for this workout listed calorie burn between 250-300. I had some internet streaming issues, but I wasn't even close. My resting heart rate is around 55, so I did get a good cardio session. 

Today was also the start of a new yoga Instagram challenge with the added bonus of prizes from Lucy Activewear and RunersLoveYoga. 

#RunnersLoveYogaFlow

Day 1 - warrior 1

One of the hard parts of yoga for me (besides my tight muscles) is hip alignment. For example, when I'm doing a pose, I feel like I'm positioned correctly. Then I see a picture.

The rain came off and on all afternoon along with the Bosch repairman. On his second visit he told (my rental agent on the phone because he only spoke Chinese) me that the washing machine that the owner just purchased needs to be replaced. Ugh.

And that's my rainy day in China.

Hope you had better weather where you are! 

Fitness Interrupted, But We Were Moving!

I actually started this post a few days ago, but then...life.

When I left off, I had just completed:

30 Day Pilates Body challenge 

Day 16: arms

Reformer on the mat. Wow, this move is tough.

21-Day Arm Sculpting challenge

Day 9: I'm now up to 12 reps.  

Mindfulness Yoga class. 

Same reformer on the mat arm moves as day 16. Love when that happens. And I'm loving this class. It's always small which means lots of personal instruction and adjustments. It's one of the reasons I'm doing better at yoga.

All that was from Thursday. So much has changed since then.

The warm air has started moving into southern China making everything sweat! Literally. The walls and floors in the building common areas look like they've just been mopped. Thank goodness we have a dehumidify option on our AC unit and we keep our doors/windows closed.

There are more flowers blooming again. Love, love the colors.

And, we have a new address! On a whim, we decided to look at apartments in the hopes we would find something a little bigger and in our price range. We scored!

After a couple of days packing, meeting with new owner, old owner, moving, and being without Internet, I finally got back to my regular fitness workouts today.

I resumed the 21-day arm sculpting challenge (day 10 rest and today day 11). No catching up on this one since it follows a planned progression with built in rest days. 

Bent over reverse fly is frustratingly tough with my tight shoulders.

Then I got caught up on the 30 Day Pilates Body challenge (days 17-19). Since each day focuses on a different muscle group it was easy to do all of the videos in one day. So today I did a booty workout, a reformer on the mat workout, and repeated my fave from the week (legs). 

Oh, and I'm super excited about my new workout space. 

There was even a casual morning walk taking place today. I love seeing what the people are doing: fishing, running, walking, dancing, tai chi, dog walking. 

Unpacked, stocked up and cooking. First meal made in the new place. 

Hope you enjoyed your weekend!!

3 Stars at Flow Yoga

If the instructor had been handing out stars during Flow this morning, I would have snagged three. I held three poses that often elude me.

Crow. I practice this pose off and on. Rarely do I hold it for more than five or six seconds. I've never tried to do it in class with others watching. That may have been just what I needed. I think I nearly got an 8 count. I know I got a "Very good" from the instructor. Now I just need to figure out how to prevent my knees from hurting my triceps. 

Supported Headstand (off the wall). I tried this one in class last week, but just couldn't muster a good wall-free balance. It came today, although briefly, and I was pretty excited. 

Upward Bow. I hardly ever try this pose. My arm strength, especially at the end of class is just too questionable for me to feel comfortable pushing and lifting up. I have a fear of injuring my neck. Today, my arms were feeling fresh, so I pushed all the way up from baby bridge and TaDa! I did it.

And a new goal: to get my arms into bound. I can do it ok on my right side, but not on my left.

Before class, I did my daily morning workout:

30 Day Pilates Body

Day 15 - legs

I remember reading Teen magazine and then doing this exercise (back when I really had no thighs, lol!). Oh, teenybopper days.

I ended the night with a little Zumba. It felt good to move around and get sweaty.

What would you give yourself a star for today?

Potato Chips and Fitness

There's a lot going on here in my expat world, some good and some stressful. Sometimes it feels like I just can't handle another thing on my plate. This was in my Instagram feed yesterday, and I knew it was meant for me.

When I'm stressed, there are two things I turn to: fitness and chips.

Yesterday was National Potato Chip Day! I happened to have a bag of Kettle Brand gluten free chips on hand to cope, I mean celebrate. I'm a chip lover, so I'm grateful that the international stores near the apartment carry this brand and they carry a pretty good selection of the different flavors. 

And since I can't eat chips all day (even though I'd like to sometimes), I turned to fitness to help me de-stress a little.

30 Day Pilates Body challenge 

Day 13: stretch and relax day

Not really the workout I needed, but it is what it is. Best part was this stretch. A.MA.ZING. Really good after doing reclining pigeon first.

We actually spent most of the morning at the police registration office. In China, everyone has to register as a resident in the neighborhood where you live. We should have done it after receiving our resident visa, but mrC's company didn't tell us. Our apartment agent went with us to fill out the paperwork. It was pretty painless and now we know to do it every time we renew our visa.

Today...

Completed day 7 of the 21-Day Arm Sculpting challenge. I'm getting the hang of this one. Every other day is a rest day and every four days the reps bump up. 

30 Day Pilates Body challenge

Day 14: abs

Oh my Obliques!! 

Then I walked to Pilates class. 60 minutes of the Chinese drill sergeant. The abs work today was not as intense as last week, but we did a TON of bridges. I hope I can walk tomorrow.

After class I dropped in on my chiropractor who is in the same block and got a quick adjustment. It's one of the conveniences of living in China. No waiting. Most of the time, I don't even make appointments for things like manicure, pedicure, massage. Life here is much more walk-in, do business in a face-to-face way. 

I grabbed the mail on the way up to the apartment and found a much needed note from my mother-in-law. It might have taken more than a month to get here, but the timing was perfect.

The weather has been cold, gray, and just plain icky lately, so I've been curling up in my favorite blanket and marathoning The Blacklist on Netflix.  I love shows that carry over to the next episode like this one. 

After a couple of days of chips, Netflix and fitness, it's hard to stay stressed right?

How do you deal with stress??

I Can. I Will.

When I woke up this morning, the water was not working in the apartment.  I went to investigate and saw an announcement posted in the lobby of our building. In Chinese. Super helpful, right?

Luckily, one of my Chinese neighbors came along to read it, too. We sort of had a conversation (I don't speak Chinese and she did not speak English), but by throwing out phrases like méi yǒu shuǐ (no water) and jiān (time, while pointing at my watch), she was able to tell me shí (10 - which I interpreted as 10:00). I thought the whole thing went rather well. And, the water came back on a little after 9.

Meanwhile, with no water...

Yoga Camp ended. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed in the free flow workout for the final day. I haven't been doing yoga long enough to just make up a flow on my own. Plus, I look forward to being led through an invigorating session. 

I tried to watch what Adriene was doing (she was un-mic'ed), but at times I did veer off to practice some of the poses that still challenge my strength or balance, or both. 

After my lackluster yoga session, I chose a cardio yoga workout from Booya for my 30 Day Pilates Body challenge "free day" choice. My internet was super stinky (translated that means it would start, stop, start...), and the instructor went really fast, but I was still able to get a good workout from Crossflowx. 

Most importantly, I had a moment during that workout. Since my knee surgery, I've lost a lot of strength in my left leg. The ongoing problems have made it hard to build it back up. Side plank variations on my left side are usually pretty dismal...until today! I was so excited to feel power doing these side crunches. 

This was a big milestone for me. I have been fearing that I wouldn't be able to get stronger. Today showed me that when you do the work, when you're consistent, when you have faith...you CAN reach goals, make progress, see change. It might not happen as quickly as we'd like, but it WILL happen. 

BTW, today is the last day to enter the Booya Cardio Blast Challenge. Don't miss out on the chance to win one of the awesome prizes simply by doing a cardio workout! You can signup here.

After my morning fitness excitement, I had to make another batch of banana peanut butter protein bars. They make the apartment smell so good and make a great healthy snack or dessert. 

What's your latest milestone?

This is not a sponsored post, but Booya Fitness will compensate me for signups made using my link. If you signed up today, thank you!