Felt like I was giving birth!

 Today's workout was a killer! Nicole had me laying on the floor the entire time. I layed on my back on a yoga-mat in the middle of the studio. I was doing a lot of hard work, hopefully "waking up" muscles that have just been dozing for the past 7 years!

Nicole had me "vocally pushing" my leg and ab muscles for practically every exercise. I was surprised by the noises that were coming out of my mouth...it was like I was giving birth! Or what I imgine it'll sound like!

My memory is deffinitely not working at full speed ;), so we're just gonna pretend that I'm recalling these exercises in the right order!

I started out with knee-lifts. I started with my knees bent, feet on the mat. I tried raising and bending my knee as far up as I could. I was able to do a better job raising my left knee up all on my own. My right leg needed more assistance from Nicole.

I also did this thing where I pressed the arch in my lower back down to the mat. Nicole placed her hand under my lower back as a reference point for me. I had my knees bent up, and I focussed hard on trying to push down and squeeze Nicole's hand with my lower back.

We also worked on bridging, where your hips/butt come up off the floor. So, with my knees bent up, I tried pressing down with my feet, as well as pushing into the floor with my hands and shoulders. While doing this, I worked on raising my hips up.

Then, I did leg presses. Nicole held up my foot (right foot, then left) and used her chest to provided extra resistance when I needed it.

Nicole assisted me in the beginning when it came time to open/spread my knees apart, ankles stayed together. I felt my left inner thigh muscle engaging, but not the right. So Nicole had me try just the right leg, moving the knee in and out. I was able to feel the right leg start to engage when I was moving it independently.

From there, I tilted both of my knees from side to side. Not surprisingly, moving my knees from the right side over to the left, was more difficult because of the weakness in the right leg. I'm surprised the neighbors didn't call the cops...I probs sounded like I was getting murdered!

Doing sit-ups was good. I attepmted normal, fully-on-the-ground sit-ups first. I deffinitely feel my abs working a raising me higher than before. Nicole also had me leaning back on one of those half ball thingies, and pulling myself up/forwards to my knees, using my arms and abs. I was given a strap to aide in pulling myself up with my arms. Nicole didn't want me using my arms too much, so she held on to the other ends of the strap, controlling the amount of resistance I was given.

To end our session, Nicole held up one leg at a time, and gave me one of those painful but good stretches.