on to plan c

We are currently under a Blizzard Warning in the St. Louis Metro Area.  If you are one of my few readers NOT from the St. Louis area, I PROMISE our winter weather is not normally this drab, dreary, and snowy!  Honestly, in the 26 years I have been a St. Louisan, I have never experienced this much snow and ice, let alone a Blizzard Warning.  (Although, a DQ Blizzard sounds pretty good right now, but I know I’m not going to be moving from this couch for at least a day!)

With ice on the ground (and on my car) and snow on the way, there was no way I would be able to do a run outside.  Plan B would be to run on the treadmill at the gym since I don’t own one (currently looking for a good deal on Craigslist), but since I refuse to drive in ice, I had to resort to Plan C.

I have several Wii fitness-type games (Wii Fit, My Shape, Daisy Fuentes Pilates, just to name a few), but I decided to use our newly acquired Netflix membership to watch something instantly on the Wii.

Unfortunately, the Jillian Michaels’ DVDs I was hoping to use can only be sent by mail and we are only using the instant membership.  After searching through the very few options I had, I decided on Crunch Fitness’ Cardio Sculpt.  (I had originally started with a SELF DVD, but it was way too ballet dance-y for me.)

In addition to not having a treadmill, I also could only find 1 of all my hand weights.  Makes it a little difficult to do strength training moves.  So, my makeshift hand weights came down to this:

Those of you who know me know I always have pumpkin in my pantry.  Canned goods are great substitutes if you don’t have hand weights (aka dumbbells) available.  They were a little too light for me, but better than nothing.

The video starts with some light aerobics moves to warm-up, and then incorporates some higher intensity moves with jumping and then incorporating weights.  They also show you modified moves so you can do a less intense version if you want.  I LOVED the jumping stuff – I’m a sucker for plyos – but wished it was a bit more intense.  Had I had heavier weights, the sculpting parts of the video would have been much more difficult.

If you are a beginner, this would be a great video for you.  For me, it was a bit too easy for my liking, but I did feel like I got a pretty good sweat going.  Nothing like I do on my runs or strength training at the gym, but it satisfied my active needs enough.

Now, I am looking for something new to do tomorrow – maybe find a more intense workout video, use one of the several Wii games I do have (Zumba, anyone?), or bust out that BOSU ball that has been gathering dust in the corner of my office.

Until then, I’m going to watch the snow fall, and hope for closer to the 20 inches they were calling for rather than just the 10 inches.