Cassie Week 2: Dance, Swim, Jog, Repeat!

This week is all about easing into a routine that I feel will work for me. From my past trial and errors, I’ve put together the three activities that I actually enjoy and love: dancing, swimming, and jogging.

For the past few months, I have tried to be active for at least three days a week. A few of the weeks I missed a day due to unforeseen life things like searching for a place to live or a tight deadline on a freelance writing or illustration piece. I felt like I didn’t have time to fit in fitness when I had the stress of these things hanging over my head.

Something I’ve come to realize is that when I take that hour to be active in the morning, my brain levels up. I end up getting more quality work done than if I hadn’t exercised.  When I don’t, everything drags out or I don’t achieve as much. I procrastinate more, and my thoughts are foggy.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are the days this week that I’m chosen to apply my routine. I like to exercise in the mornings to feel the benefits throughout the day. Also, I have to as I work evenings and don’t get home until very late. I wake up, eat a protein bar, and get on the treadmill. I would love to be able to run a marathon within the next 12 months, so I’m gearing myself up for it steadily. I say that I like to jog and I do. Can I do it for very long? No! For like 2 minutes! Lame! But, I know how good it feels and to be able to get better I have to build up my endurance. It may be weird that I like to jog but yet can’t do it. The way I found out how much I enjoyed it was when I was tired of walking… I didn’t feel like I was getting benefits and I wondered if I could jog. Then, I did.

To build myself up, I warm up by walking 5 minutes, then interchange between 60 seconds of jogging to 90 seconds of walking for 20 minutes, then cool down with 5 minutes of walking. After this, I throw on my swimsuit and swim for about 20 minutes. There’s no clock around so I kind of just swim until I feel accomplished or tired.

My favorite thing about swimming is going to the deep end of the pool and just flailing around.  The movement feels good. I also love laps! The stretch of my shoulders and the continuous flipping of my feet feel empowering. My joints always feel less strained and more fluid after swimming.

I want to at least take one dance class per week. This week it will be Belly Dancing. I took a few at the beginning of Summer, but like I earlier stated, got distracted by the apartment search since the only day I could search with my boyfriend was the day this class was held. Because I work evenings, that takes away a lot of dance classes and studios that I could possible go to. Otherwise, I might try to do a monthly unlimited plan but financially, I’m not that stable yet. I can only do drop in classes, and with the financial place of most small businesses, they want “memberships” to ensure they’ll be able to pay their own bills to stay open!

The reason I love Belly Dancing is because it works the stomach muscles and even though when I look in the mirror while we’re dancing it doesn’t look like anything is happening, it is! And I also feel sexy while I’m doing it! And after! Well, later in the day, after I shower the sweat off of me and am in clean clothes.

For a long time I had dance classes as something on my list of things to do once I got to a certain weight.  For one, I’d have less fat that would jiggle. I guess I’m finally bored enough with traditional and “public safe” ways of getting fit. I want excitement! I want to be proud of my body even though it’s not perfect or rather, “media perfect”. It’s my body, and I want to live in it and enjoy it! So, I ditched the “I’ll do it when…” attitude and decided to: dance now, dance later; jog now, jog later; swim now, swim later.