Hello World

[paulapalooza]

Hello World,

 

I am pretty happy to have stumbled upon this website. I decided that I should take fitness a little more seriously since it's awesome and stuff, and this website rang to me like no other has. But anyways, I feel like I should do a short introduction.

 

I'm a 19-year-old college student. I consider myself to be pretty fit. During the school year, I have dance practice for at least 8 hours a week. In my glory days I was a cross country and track runner (but those glory days are gone, and we'll talk about this later). I currently try to work out three or four times a week. I'm 5'3 and 115 pounds, so weight loss is really not an issue for me.

 

For the summer, I set some fitness goals for myself:

• I want to return to my glory days and be able to run four miles at a decent pace without my legs falling off (actually, running 4 miles without stopping is pretty good at this point).
• I want to become a better dancer, and that requires a boatload of things: stronger leg muscles, stronger core muscles, stronger everything muscles, copious amounts of flexibility, balance, grace, etc. To be more specific, I want to be able to do all of the splits, increase back flexibility, and be able to hold my legs at angles and heights that nature doesn't normally permit.
  Example 1: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md52j9bUqo1ru9u97o1_500.jpg
  Example 2: http://24.media.tumblr.com/9c6bd39e9cef1986b58ca3c76d4903ba/tumblr_mfr065m95q1r7t78jo1_1280.jpg
• I want to make my puny weak arms not-so-puny-and-weak (I suck at pushups and I can't do pullups and did I mention they look like twigs).

I know that the resources on Nerd Fitness can help me achieve those goals and motivate me not to give up. I will improve my stamina. I will work towards stronger everything muscles. I will get obscenely flexible. I will have fun while doing all this.

 

However, once the school year starts, I will see some struggle to keep this program up and would really appreciate some tips on the following dilemmas. Dining hall food is shitty. Eating healthy there is hard. Also, time is an issue. I'll probably be dancing about 11 hours a week, and I have a tumbling class twice a week. That leaves me very physically tired and unable to workouts outside of that. That may not be a huge problem since I'll be very active, but at the same time I want to achieve some other fitness goals outside of dance practice, and dance practice isn't always very strenuous. (Also I happen to go to a school that's unusually difficult so there will be very little spare time, energy, and sleep.) Is it worth trying to work out outside of what I already have there?

 

Anyways, I'm ready to start this new fitness program in a few days....(It turns out that 14-mile steeply uphill hikes are quite strenuous, and as a result every part of my lower body, particularly my ass and feet, burns like hell, so anything beyond minimal movement is not an option at the moment).

 

Yours in fitness,

Paula

[Laureleye]

Maybe you can add a couple of simple body weight exercises right after dance practice 3 days a week - when you're still warm.  I'd think you could do some planks, dumbell rows (using anything heavy) and pushups in about 10-12 minutes.  That would work your back, shoulders and core.  Surely you don't need much leg work.