Saturday Mornings: Trading Cartoons for Boot Camp

We don’t play! Elaine and I work it OUT! Ropes + squats and 14-pound ball tosses.

When someone mentions Saturday mornings to me, I usually think of big bowls of cereal and cartoons—PeeWee’s Playhouse and Garfield and Friends. (Yeah, I’m dating myself.) Okay, so these days it’s more like protein smoothies and HGTV, but you get my drift. Basically, my Saturdays are reserved for lazy time. It’s when I inch-worm my cocooned, blanketed body from the bed to the couch and partake in TV time. For the past three weekends though I’ve ditched the blanket and gotten with the boot camp instead.

I have no idea who I’ve become, but I’m now the girl who wakes up early on Saturday mornings for a good kick-ass workout. My fiance, friend Elaine (my god-dog’s mama) and I go out to a local college’s track and get our awesome on. Mark’s pretty amazing when it comes to creating workouts that are brutal but great for the body. We do dynamic stretches and laps around the track as high school kids smoke us with their young fast legs. We do push-ups and kettlebell swings, rope work…totally awesome stuff all before 10 a.m. I thought I’d hate it, but it feels good to do something positive with folks I dig.

I always wanted to be able to hold planks for a long time, and it just so happens that, thanks to my active Saturdays, I’ve finally started doing planks for a few minutes without shaking. When this happened, I got up and started doing happy dances (there was possibly one or two pelvic thrusts in there as well…). That one extra day that I made the choice to get up and pump up instead of stay down and slump down is proving to be a great choice. I totally recommend finding like-minded folks to get out and move with. My Saturday mornings have made such a difference. I start the weekend off right.

What about you? Are your weekends for resting or do you trade Saturday morning cartoons for an hour of muscle-building awesomeness, too? —Tish