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Mia Garlock

Day 87:Back to Blade Day 1, Again

Since I didn’t get to finish out week one of Blade, and I’m fond of the schedule that Sam devised, I’m going to be starting over from Day 1 again today. Day one is hard, but I want to start this week on the right foot, and I want to finish the full week before I move on to week two.

I spent the last 4 days doing Yoga and Core reset, and getting hydrated, and I’m ready to get into the sweaty hard stuff again. I’m energetic and awake this morning, and I’m taking that as a sign that I’m ready to dive in. I know that there are those staggered push ups in this workout, and I’m going to make them mine.

First, Mindstilling. I’ve been extra good about it since I made my little Sticker Chart for myself, the same thing applies from childhood it seems: a visual aid to remind me of my progress and keep me accountable, works. Just like stickering up my water bottle to track my progress with Valkyrie Squad, now I have a little chart in my planner that helps me keep track of my Mindstilling. Today, it’s Morning Motivating Mindstilling, ha! What an alliteration. Things like that make me happy.

Guess what happened over the weekend? Our Legion became over 800 strong. Yeah, over 800 Valkyries are signed up for Squad now! I can’t believe there’s that many of us. I’m so proud of us, proud of all these women standing up and saying “I can be strong, I can be badass, I can fight, I can swing a sword, I can stand by my Sisters.” How epic is that? I mean I know it’s 2022, almost 2023, but I haven’t really seen or recognized a large group of women coming together like this to heal mind and body in… ever. That’s nearly a thousand bodies, all learning to love themselves. To be strong, fierce, unafraid of themselves, or anyone else. To trust themselves, and the woman beside them. That’s incredible! And to think, we’re all just a bunch of bookish girls who became obsessed with a series.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com

Not going to lie, I turned down the furnace before I started my workout. I refuse for it to kick on during my sweat session, I do not need to be choked out by hot air while I’m gasping trying to get through my workout. Once it kicked off, I rolled out my mat and got going on Core Reset.

That core reset workout, man, if you ever wondered what it feels like to truly engage your core, that workout is all you need. Every time I do it before a workout, I feel my core working for the entire thing. Blade Day 1 is hard enough as it is, but once you get that full core engagement, wooooo boy, it is a whole other level. I wasn’t sweating during reset, but I was warm. Then I got started in the Blade workout, and my body was like “Oh, we remember this.”

I did not lose my balance once today during the curtsey lunges, and they always throw me off. Immediate win. Must be that core working properly, eh? Then we did the pushups. One hand on a block, one hand on the mat, and I did them. From my knees, I did them, because I’m just not there yet on the full plank push up, and these are no standard push ups. But I did them all, I did both sides and I didn’t falter. My arms were shaking after the first round.

Because oh yeah, did you remember? Blade day 1 is a circuit, we repeat it. The offset squats were the easiest and my favorite of today, mostly because they don’t make me want to fall over. I blew through those with gusto. The Hip Bridges, I modified. Sam was doing single leg hip bridges, and my core just isn’t there yet. I modified to do a standard hip bridge, both feet on the blocks- but I placed my pilates ball between my knees and did a pulse-squeeze at the top of each lift to get full core engagement and really tighten up my glutes at the top. The last move of the circuit was Crazy Ivans, and my entire body was shaking by the time we reached them, each time.

All in all, I was ready for today, and I think I kicked Blade Day 1 in the butt. I sweat through it all and I didn’t stop or take any breaks for any of it, which is definitely better than other times I’ve done this workout. My legs haven’t stopped shaking yet, and the backs of my arms are twitching every few minutes, there’s a small puddle of sweat at the top of my mat from all the drops that fell off of my face. I’m proud of myself for getting through it the way I did!

When the sun comes up, I’ll walk Yrsa. We’ve been doing some new training over the last week to try and tame some of her unruly behavior. She’s doing really great, we just got to keep working on it. Maybe now she’ll finally figure it out that she isn’t actually a racoon, and she does not need to be in the trash. I might be holding my breath for a while with that one.

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