Saturday, Day 9 - After yesterday’s fiasco we decided that it wasn’t worth rushing anything and if we saw and did nothing while in Barcelona it wasn’t going to be the end of the world. So after getting up and sorting kids out with breakfast and putting loads of washing on etc, I got on with a workout. I realised that considering I had committed to doing 12 weeks of sessions in just under 4 weeks, which meant either a session of Pilates + strength or a circuit session on each day, which would make 24 days. I’ve already had 3 days “off” and we’re only on Day 9 - not a good record so far, so that means I have to play catch up! Today I decided to do the circuit session from week 3 plus the pilates from week 4, and then tomorrow I’ll do the strength and circuit from week 4 which I think at least catches me up a bit. Anyway, I decided to do this while the kids were getting dressed and doing a bit of their scrapbooks that they're doing for this trip - it took about 20 minutes in total once I got on with it. Here are the circuit exercises:
1) Squat to kick front
2) Lunge with pulse
3) 1/2 roll back with arm raise
4) Push through (down dog through to plank and back)
5) Sit throughs
The pilates session focussed on increased prep of the abdominals in different positions. One thing I really want to encourage in my clients is that stronger abdominals comes with a more flexible spine and more mobile hips. If both those areas are tight then the abs don't really have to do anything - the flexible your spine as a whole the more the abdominals have to work to control the movements it does. So any session I create that might be intended to focus on abdominal strength is always going to be also working on spine flexibility and hip opening especially combining the activation of the movement of the hips with control of the torso.
Today we planned to visit Park Guell (Gaudi designed park in the north of the city) which was a simple metro ride away and which we thought would be gentle and easy (it’s a park right, grass, open spaces and peace surely??) - I seemed to have not learnt anything from the last two days of the millions of tourists and 30 plus deg heat!! It was overwhelmingly hot, massively crowded and not at all peaceful! We played a little while there, got the obligatory ice cream when we left and dripped all the way back to the apartment. We took a tip from the Spanish and stayed inside basking in the air-con until much later when it had all cooled down a bit and went out for dinner.