Using an Exercise Ball

Sadly I missed TRX Tuesday, this past week because my son had to come home sick from preschool. Instead of lamenting the missed TRX class, I decided to get my core on with the exercise ball I hauled back from my mother’s house this past weekend.

I actually like doing exercises with the ball, so today I did some push ups on the ball and some sit ups holding the ball in between my feet. This is a great exercise for the lower abs and the psoas muscles. I also threw in two sets of wall sits with the ball. It may not have been a 45 minute TRX class, but my muscles were burning, so I think I did a decent job!

I had another revelation yesterday during my five-miler. I think I need to start exercising more in the evening. Since my son was still home sick today, I wasn’t able to make it to the YMCA to run. As soon as the hubs walked in the door, I walked out and headed to the closest bike path.

I admit that I wasn’t all that excited about the prospect of running five in the humidity we have been having, but I did it anyway. Surprisingly, the run went really well. After my warm up mile, I found myself pushing the pace down without really thinking about it. I rounded out the last mile with 4 strides of 20 seconds each.

For those of you who don’t do strides, I highly suggest adding them on to the end of easy runs. Start with one and go from there. They are really great at sneaking in some speed and increasing your leg turn over (they are short enough to accomplish this without taxing you aerobically on your easy days). All in all, it was a great run and it encouraged me to try to incorporate some evening running into my summer training schedule.