Tuesday 17 June 2008

The arrival

Yay, my Callanetics dvd arrived today!

I'd ordered it a while back from Amazon after Boo described in great detail the benefits she's noticed since doing it.

I've just watched all the intro material that covers basic techniques and forms and then I jumped into the one hour workout.

Some of the exercises I'm going to need a lot of work with as I'm just not coordinated enough to get with just one run through. I keep on moving in the wrong directions and the pulsing just isn't natural for me yet. Other exercises I don't think I can do properly as I'm just not flexible enough yet. There's one where you sit cross legged on the ground and walk your hands out in front of you, then out to the side and then you pulse to the side. My knees don't touch the ground when I sit crossed legged (never have, even as a kid) and so I'm finding it hard to actually walk my hands forward as I have trouble even touching the ground in front of me.

And I always forget to hold my pelvic floor muscles tight. It's a good thing the instructor lady keeps reminding you! lol

Now I've read all the articles with the supposed results you can get from doing Callanetics and even though Boo has assured me she has lost a remarkable amount of inches, I'm still not entirely convinced that this is the be all and end all of exercises. Some of the reviews have people stating that they'll never pay for a gym membership again as this is the only kind of exercise they'll ever need to do again.
Now, fair enough this tones and helps with muscle definition but it's not exactly an aerobic exercise. I still think you need to combine it with another form of exercise to actually lose body fat and so I'm hoping that in conjunction with gyming and walking and playing squash I'll see results soon.

I took some measurements last week and I'll perhaps measure myself after a month and then let you know the results. Fingers crossed.

And pulse.

xxx

2 comments:

Hieronymous Anonymous said...

Well, I hope you're not getting the 'be all and end all' vibe from me, since I don't think it is.

I'd definitely agree that combining it with something more aerobic would be a much better idea (and that is what I hope to be doing - the inch loss was purely from this, and I think I can do better).

As to the co-ordination issues, yeah, that happens. It was quite funny when I was leading Mouse, her husband, and my mum in doing it over the weekend before last. The sheer number of flailing limbs was hilarious!

Mouse said...

Boo to me when we're doing callanetics -
"Stomach in... arms up...bum in...arms UP!...stand straight...other leg...no, OTHER leg...stomach still in...

I'm incredibly uncoordinated! If I'm getting one bit of the movement right, I forget some other vital part.