Hey! I ran! And Pilates!

First, just to keep me honest, check it out! I'm running!  This picture is a little old, but I'm running every other day.  I'm super proud of myself.

Now, I'd mentioned I've been looking through free fitness videos on my Roku.  The latest channel I found was NetFit.tv.  I tried their Pilates 1 video.  Now, I have a lot of prejudices about fitness, and one is that Pilates should be taught by women.  This is completely irrational, Pilates wasn't even started by a woman, there's no reason only women should teach it, but I still feel that way.  So I rolled my eyes nearly out of my head when this big body builder guy started talking to me about not driving around parking lots.

He started with upper body using 5-10 lb weights, which reminded me that I need to go back to the weight room, stat.  I'm wiggling my arms and shoulders right now to see how sore I am, and it's clear that I definitely did some work, though my triceps aren't crying or anything.  In the video one of the backup exercisers, a huge dude, was kind of a wimp about this, which made me push harder.  I'm totally tougher than him.

Then our instructor started abs, and the routine was pretty rough.  There was no Pilates 100, mostly leg lifts with a butt lift at the top of each.  It worked me, my abs aren't happy, but was pretty boring.  I skipped the plank stuff, I'm not a fan of plank work and just did some teapots.

Finally this guy did lower body, which surprised me.  His lower body exercise was straight out a Mari Windsor video.  I don't do Pilates for lower body work, personally.  I'd rather push out some squats and hamstring curls and get on that Chinese-torture-contraption for inner/outer thighs.  This was a good workout, though.  I was just very surprised at how closely it followed that set of Windsor-Pilates videos.

So, do I recommend it?  Yes, but only because it's free.  It was a good, solid workout, but not very engaging mentally.