Motivation....

Well, it finally happened today - I had to force myself to get out of bed and go to the ice rink this morning. I wasn't especially tired - I was just unmotivated. I will admit to really struggling with how hard this is turning out to be, and how much work I'm going to have to put in before I feel like I actually belong on the ice with everyone else.

The good news is that I got my lazy ass out of bed and did go to the rink this morning. After my normal edge control warmup, I decided to focus on backward stroking, something that Will threw at me during my last lesson. It let me stay at one end of the rink, out of everyone's way and relatively isolated. I think by the end I had started to get the hang of it. I know I'm not bending my knees enough (that's an ongoing issue) but I do think I understand the basics after 30 minutes of pushing myself backward.

Pilates continues to kick my ass. This just isn't designed for someone as big as I am. I have way too much muscle to make many of the exercises work, and the tightness across my chest and back from all that heavy lifting has pretty much shot my flexibility. Add to that my seeming complete lack of any abdominal strength, and the whole experience is pretty demoralizing. Since I'm starting with "Blue" next week, and gym training is something much more familiar to me, I might decide to drop the Pilates for now. Getting my ego beat down at the rink, and then again in the Pilates studio, is just a bit more than I can handle at the moment. If Blue constructs a good program for me, at least working out in a gym is something very familiar, and which I'm likely NOT to be terrible at - so that will help counterbalance days like this :)

Still glad I'm doing this? Absolutely. I just need to find ways to balance how this makes me feel about myself with something more positive until this becomes an activity that doesn't suck out my soul every morning :)