Starting week eight on PUSH.tv

After waiting for my new PUSH.tv DVD for a long time, I contacted PUSH.tv and they resent it via 2-day air. It arrived on Friday, June 15, and, as Murphy’s Law would have it, so did the original DVD mailed on June 1st. Somehow this seemed inevitable.

My contact at PUSH.tv told me that the DVDs usually arrive very promptly (and that was my experience with the initial DVD, just not month two) but that it can take up to 12 days with the postal system. Given the four weeks I ended up doing what was supposed to be a two-week workout, I’d rather they either sent the new DVD earlier (say, at the end of the first two weeks on a new DVD) or sent it via more reliable mail, even if it cost a couple of dollars more.

Aside from the delay, I’m pleased with the new DVD. Like the second workout on the first DVD, this new workout is a challenging-but-achievable step up from the exercises I got used to. The incremental changes keep it from being overwhelming. I’m vaguely dreading the day we do full-body push-ups on the floor, but I feel like the step push-ups I’m doing now are preparing me.

With this DVD, I’m also starting to use the “Area of Focus” section in addition to the main workout. I switched my area of focus from legs to abs (because as it turns out, my legs are killer-strong from biking, but my abs are just sad), which was good, since I never bothered with the Area of Focus segment when it was legs.

The Area of Focus is basically the same thing as the general workouts (at least for me, since I have Jessica Smith as my trainer and she also leads all of the Area of Focus exercise), except that each two-minute bit is focused on an ab exercise. The result is a tough workout, even though it’s only about 10 minutes long.

I read recently that “cycling requires core strength but doesn’t produce it.” That hadn’t really occurred to me, particularly that cycling won’t make my abs measurably stronger, hence my new focus in the workouts. I’m continuing to do the regular workouts three times a week, and then doing the abs Area of Focus on alternating days.

An indication that this PUSH.tv thing really is working: Daniel did the abs workout with me yesterday and I was stronger. Not to gloat; it’s just that I’m hardly ever stronger than him. He’s going to join me on that workout regularly, so I have no doubt he’ll be whooping up on me shortly, but it’s nice while it lasts…