Exercise

I needed to keep up some sort of regular exercise - and found there was a huge free resource on YouTube.  I used the utility room as my "gym studio" - with the back door open for air conditioning ha ha.  On 24 March I dipped my toe in the water by doing these two:

20 min Zumba for beginners



30 min Fitness for the Over 50s (unfortunately it stopped after 15 mins)



Then I discovered this 3 Mile Walk one by Leslie Sansone which became my absolute favourite, and I did this one many times.


Shortly afterwards, Amanda invited me to join her and her two friends, Jo and Karen, on their morning Zumba session - which was great.  At 10 am Spanish time (9 am for me) we had a group video call on WhatsApp, and then having decided which video we were going to do, would all press play at the same time.  The benefits of doing it this way were the support of the group, and also having to get up and be ready at a set time each morning.

At first we did this video by their Zumba teacher , Fanny, at their gym and this remained my favourite.


Then we branched out and tried the other one from the same gym by Vanessa, usually doing both of them as we got keener and fitter.


The others were always on the lookout for new videos.  Amanda found these by Tanju and we all agreed they were good too.  Again we would often do one of his and then follow it with the Fanny one 




We tried these two but they didn't catch on.  They were too fast for me and I couldn't do the floor work.

The bloke was unbearably vain in this one, and even did some singing ugh!


This one was better - rather good but too fast for me


The problem for me when doing the videos with the  group on WhatsApp is that my phone was propped up on the work surface, and wasn't therefore in my pocket counting my steps!  This was pretty crucial for me - so I invested in a (very cheap) "fitbit".  It did the job - and also had functions to monitor my sleep and my heart rate.  I found both of these pretty unreliable but a bit of fun.  I didn't like having to wear it constantly - but it certainly did a good job of step counting and I got a lot of use and fun out of it for £20!


Once lock down began to be eased in Spain the sessions dried up - Karen was able to go out running and Amanda began to have hairdressing appointments.  I carried on for a while doing the 3 mile walk one and occasionally the Fanny one, and once I tried finishing off with 20 minutes of pilates for beginners - which turned out to be very much like the floor work we do at the gym in the aerobics class.  I had good intentions to keep this up, but as I got out more walking the motivation to do indoor videos waned a little!! 





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