When I was working out heavily I tried to focus on weightlifting. I have always hated cardio, and I liked the results I saw when weightlifting. I would split my workouts up so that I did about 10 min of cardio as a warm up and then focused on a specific area of my body that day (arms, legs, back, chest, etc).

I've gotten lazy lately and now I just try to go on two 1 mile long walks a day. I use the MapMyRun app to track the amount of calories that I burn while walking and that automatically syncs with My Fitness Pal and updates my numbers for the day.

Well, I feel uncomfortable. I'm like the annoying gym bunny that no one wants to talk to because all she talks about is working out. Except I've never been in a gym and I only just went on the treadmill for the first time in my life a week ago.

A bit of back story here: I'm asthmatic and suffer from Exercise Induced Asthma. This ranges from coughing, to a runny nose to shortness of breath any time I exercise. All of which I still have in some form today but much better. I started off my cardio journey with a DVD in my kitchen where I was so uncoordinated that I managed to gouge out a bit of my side with my nail my first time out. Also almost made myself sick with overhydrating. Poor obese me. I tried running and I barely got one tenth of a mile.

I lost a few pounds and I started doing yoga once a week alongside my DVD. Turns out I'm pretty bendy. Actually hyperflexible and pretty much trip over crap all the time. I liked it but I was getting to the point where I wanted to feel the burn. Jeez Louise, the burn I felt. I lost 15lbs and I think I was still obese at this point, or just into the overweight category but I decided I was going to reward myself with something I experienced poorly in high school but wanted to try again: kickboxing. In hindsight if I knew how hard it was going to be I probably wouldn't have turned up but I'm a balls to the wall kind of girl and I was down for it. I almost passed out my second class because I had flu the week before but I really really loved it. Yoga started slipping away from me just because I was doing two classes at the dojo and I use public transport, again to keep me moving, and it adds 1 and 1/2 hours to my training. Screw living on a hill some days. So for a long time that was my thing.

Then one Saturday I was like, man, I'm gonna go for a run. So off I went. I could suddenly do more. One tenth of a mile past, half a mile. Two miles. I ran a relaxed 7k in a hour that day. 0 to 60? More like 0 to the moon. I signed up for Race For Life 5K 2016 and ran it in 32:10. I finished with the runners! Me! The asthmatic who could never finish the cross country course at school because she was dying. Okay not dying but severely depleted of oxygen. I managed to bust up my ankle a bit to the point where running wasn't comfortable so I didn't actually pick it up again properly until last week. But I'm doing RFL 2017 and I'm aiming for 30minutes dead on.

So I'm kickboxing pretty regular by this point and one of my teachers is like 'you should grade for your white belt'. I was like excuse me? I'd been at this 6 months by that point and felt horrified this was even being suggested to me. Peer pressure from my training partners had me signed up and raring to go (read: terrified) in Feb 2016. Basically a 6th dan master comes in and runs a Very Important training session every 4 months where we all have to wear uniforms and our belts if we have one and he judges us while we do it. I got my belt*. So I'm thinking about what Andrew, our master, was saying about how you need to be training at least three times a week to be progressing. Well I'm only doing two. Does that mean I'm not progressing? So I upped my sessions. I did my first double (2 hour) training session that week. I now train 5 times a week, two hours on Wed, two hours on Thurs, and one hour sparring (practice fighting) on Friday.

So I've got running and a lot of martial arts but like everyone says, that isn't going to change my body so while the dojo was closed last week for Easter I tried three bootcamp classes and one spin class -- hated spin. Hated the treadmill part of bootcamp but loved the dumbbell work. So I bought some. I trained two days so far this week after getting them on Saturday but I'd like to do more but I have a free HIIT class I'm trying on Sunday and a new boxing class on Monday at a different boxing gym on top of a regular session at my dojo because I can't train Tues/Wed as I'm donating blood. I'm also trying boxing yoga (aimed specifically at athletes and boxers to help us stretch and work on our mobility) next Saturday just to keep things interesting so who knows when I'll get to lift heavy stuff and run in the road like a nut bar. Basically this is what it looks like when it's at home: Sunday - run, Monday - rest day, Tuesday - resistance, Wednesday - 2 hours MA, Thursday - 2 hours MA, Friday - resistance/sparring, and Saturday - Run.

My point with my story is: try a lot of things, find what you love and what you'll be able to sustain. You might like something and move on to something else and that's fine. For me, the beauty of training to be a kickboxer is that it doesn't feel like exercise. It feels like learning and growing all the time. There is always something to be worked on. Running tends to be a summer thing so after my race in July, I might just table it til 2018 just for time's sake. So yeah, that's my story and my fitness regime.


*Since that first grading there have been three more and I have earned a belt at each one of them and am now a green belt (4th belt) looking to gain my blue (5th belt) in June.