Muscle Maniacs

We’re now into our 7th week of a 10-week kick-boxing  program at Farrel’s EXB in Johnston.  We’re liking it alot even though it’s very rigorous and hard.  This program is relentless-6x/week, Monday through Saturday, with M, W, F being cardio days (kick-boxing) and T, Th, Sat being resistance band training days with alternating upper and lower body workouts. Very challenging!    Our  muscles are burning by the end, we’re out of breath, our clothes are soaked, and sweat is running down our beat-red faces. It wasn’t exactly easy to squeeze the Austin Marathon in last weekend! The first kick-boxing workout after the marathon was, well, a joke. The Johnston Farrel’s gym is located less than 1/2 mile from our house, so it’s very convenient for us, even on the days we  run before the Farrel’s workout.  We’re in the 5:15AM class, so are back home again and ready to shower by 6:15AM.  Nice!  Only 3 1/2 more weeks of this before we’ll have to figure out how to maintain the strength and balance we’ve gained. Our neighbor, Tom, is doing this with us, and we’re finding that common suffering and accomplishment builds great camaradarie.  We’ll all  be relieved when the 10 weeks is over because the program is quite intense to maintain in addition to the running we already do and everything else that is part of our life.  On the other hand, we’ll miss it alot!  The exercise music is loud and invigorating.  It wakes us up quickly.  We’ve met some great people  and have been part of a 10 person team with other “newbies”.  Our  team is on the mat at 5:15AM, along with maybe 20-25 other more seasoned people who have been doing this for awhile and just can’t seem to quit. Our team has two coaches, Ashley and Nichole, both of whom encourage yet push us to our limits.  One of our team assigments was to come up with a name for ourselves, and a favorite T-shirt color, and then our coaches ordered T-shirts for us accordingly. Well, our team came up with the name-”Muscle Maniacs”, and our T-shirts finally arrived!  We were all supposed to  wear them the next day, but most of the people forgot. We both remembered to wear them, and since we had taken our camera along for a group picture, we instead captured a picture of the two of us with coach Nichole.  Can you tell it’s EARLY in the morning????

Class is about to begin here. You can't see it in this picture, but we've all "wrapped" our wrists (to protect them) and are just about ready to put our boxing gloves on.

We’re definitely growing some muscles. Don’t anybody mess with us!