Wedding Blog

To say I’ve never been a fitness junkie would be the understatement of the year. But with less than two months before our destination wedding (and two weeks of flouncing around in a bikini), I kicked my procrastination in the butt and, heeding the many suggestions of you lovely readers, joined a boot camp to get buff.

My goal was not to lose weight but to gain some tone and hey, if I would be able to finally open a jar of pickles without having to wait for Mr Breezy to get home, BONUS! (Mmm… I love me some polskie ogórki!)

On the morning of our first day of Mode Boot Camp, I had so many butterflies in my stomach I thought I might start levitating. And as Mr Breezy and I walked over to join the group and watch this super buff guy pull multi-colored rubber bands out of a bag, my knees felt weak. But as the hour progressed and I snuck glances at the other people in the class I realized, hey–we’re all in the same boat here! And I started to enjoy myself.

No wait, I got that wrong. Enjoying myself didn’t happen until the third class. The first class was spent marveling at the very unfamiliar sensation of dizziness and wanting to throw up, and the second class was spent moaning over sore arm, thigh and butt muscles which I didn’t even know I had.

But the third class and the rest of our 3-days-a-week-for-4-weeks boot camp was… AWESOME!

This camp is run by a guy named Mike who believes in high-intensity circuit training using nothing but rubber bands, straps and your own body weight. Much to my delight, there was no running, no aerobics and no sit-ups.

Source

After a warm up session, we did five different exercises for 40 seconds each, and 20 seconds in between to get to the next station, and we’d do this whole circuit twice. Ten minutes of exercise doesn’t seem like much, but when you’re going at full throttle trust me, it IS. We’d do a few different circuits and before you knew it, the hour was up and your body was burning! It was a good burn, though, one that made you feel like you were actually accomplishing something, you know?

What’s more, the group was really small so we sort of got to know each other. And unlike the people in the other boot camp which happened to be going on near us at the same place each time, we didn’t get yelled at to keep going or threatened with 10 extra burpies if we weren’t doing them properly. I don’t know about you, but I definitely respond better to positive reinforcement.

Speaking of positive reinforcement, what better motivation than seeing the results of your hard work? Not only do I feel the difference, I can actually SEE the difference!!

I almost fell off my chair when I was uploading the photos from my final dress fitting. Wa-wa-wee-wah! It might not be the biggest gun show in the West, but it’s ginormous for me!

I didn’t think to take some ‘before’ pictures but here some ‘after’ ones from last night:

Our last session of boot camp was last Friday and I never thought I’d say this but… I’m sad it’s over! It was definitely the best thing Mr Breezy and I could have done. Oh, and did I mention how incredibly proud I am that he stuck it out with me? And not only stuck it out but made me laugh so much that it was really fun (which made me work my abs even more… boo-yah!). If you’re considering doing something like this with your spouse-to-be, I highly recommend it.

Now we have three weeks left until the wedding and my challenge will be keeping it up on my own. It’ll be tough but I’m going to try hard - after all that work, I’d better!!

Did you do a boot camp before your wedding or some other fitness regime you’d never tried before? With your spouse-to-be or without him/her?