The 30 Day Shred, Day Two: Oh My Heck, Y'all

Whew! Jillian, my new personal trainer on the 30 Day Shred DVD, says that pain is just fear leaving your body. Reader, there is a lot of fear leaving my body today. I did the workout for the second time last night. And I swear to the lord, I can already see a little bit more definition in my upper abs. Understand that noticing this is like peering down into a koi pond and glimpsing a darting fish. It's down below the surface, but it's there.

After I mentioned this workout the other day, my friend Jane posted about it. Jane has been shredding for 30 days, and she's gotten great results, AND she really nails the tone of this DVD, so go check it out. As she says, the workout is led by Jillian, with her "two best girls" backing her up. One, the goddess-like Natalie, is doing the advanced form of each exercise, and Anita, who is a hyperalloy combat chassis made in the fires of Skynet, does the "modified" version. I can only do push-ups the girl way, so I stick with Anita most of the time.

Jane says she finds Jillian's patter to be "shockingly demotivating." It's true that Jillian is always saying things like, "I know you wanna quit on me," or "I know you just wanna turn off this DVD and sink back into your own filth." I think it depends on your style of working out, though. I don't mind hearing that, because it makes me think, "Okay, so it's normal to want to die right now." To me, it is sort of encouraging.

One lesson learned: don't wait until after midnight to work out, because you will be up until four in the morning. Last night I lay down in Hank's room for a few minutes while he was going to sleep. We have an extra bed in there. So I fell asleep, and woke up at 11. Then I talked to my buddy Erika about these conference proposals we were working on, for like an hour, then I dragged myself into Matt's office. I said, "Oh my god I still need to shred! Wah!" I threw myself down on the carpet. And he said, "I'm going to tell you a truth. There are people who are doing the 30 Day Shred, and there are people who are not. You need to decide which of those you are, and be that." Then he smiled with satisfaction at his nugget of wisdom. So I went upstairs and put on my sneakers.

Afterward I was so filled with energy, I was like, "Let's play some Rock Band! Woohoo! I wanna ROCK." So we did, and it got really late. Then Matt agreed to get up with the kids this morning. So everything worked out swell.

I do recommend this workout. Right now my quads (I have "quads" y'all, which are like muscle thingies in my legs), and my stomach muscles are pretty sore. But I'm going to take some ibuprofen so I don't feel all the fear on its way out. I still have to escort the kids around trick-or-treating, and Normal Neighbor has promised to supply beer for us to drink while we do that. It will be classy! Her beer is in cans, but she has these little koozie things with grosgrain ribbons tied around them. Adorable.

Y'all have fun tonight!