Once upon a time, the Hubby and I snowboarded ALL. THE. TIME. As in, we would purchase season passes when they went on sale in the Spring. And we would make sure we got our money’s worth. We would head to the mountains any weekday we had off work and at least one day each weekend. We would snowboard on Christmas Day. One year, when our local mountains were low on the white stuff, we even drove across the state and back for a few hours of snowboarding.
Then our lives changed. We no longer had weekends quite as available for snowboarding. Season passes stopped being the economical choice. Snowboarding became an every-once-in-a-while occurrence, although I think we’ve managed to make it to the slopes at least once each year. But that one time isn’t as fun as it used to be. Instead of experiencing the freedom of flowing down smooth runs, we’re re-learning how to control our boards (and our bodies). It’s a lot of work, and not necessarily very enjoyable. More frustrating, actually. For us and for those that ride with us.
When the Hubby took me on my first snowboarding adventure, he told me that you cannot tell if you like it or not on the first day. Or the second. The third day is when you can tell if you’re having fun or not. He said that this works exceptionally well if you are able to ride three days in a row. I trusted him, and I gave it three good tries, and I was hooked.
But now? Now we don’t often have three tries in a year. Now we have other priorities and other activities that compete for our time and resources. Now, snowboarding feels like work MOST of the time we’re doing it.
But we used to really love it. The Hubby might still really love it, even through all the work and frustration and leg pain. Me? I’m on the fence. But not quite ready to give up on it. So this year, we’re trying something new. We’re trying to get into snowboarding shape first, and then hit the slopes.
So I did some googling and found this snowboarding workout. And we gave it a shot for the first time last night. We cannot manage it. Literally – we can’t do all of the exercises in the set. If you’re interested, you can read through my bullets on what I did & didn’t do – I won’t be offended if you skip those, though.
Hubby and I committed to spend up to 15 minutes a day for the next seven days, attempting these exercises and to re-evaluate at that point. I’m curious to see how much we’ll improve and how sore we’ll be at the end. I don’t really think that doing some exercises in our living room will completely make up for being able to hit the slopes every weekend. But I do think that anything that makes us move more and work our muscles is probably pushing us in the right direction.
Read on if you’re interested to see where we started. Or check back in next week for an update!
- Pulse Squats are okay. My quads are burning by the end, but 30 seconds doesn’t seem like the end of the world.
- Mountain Climbers feel like I should be able to do a lot more of them, a lot more easily… but they’re also okay.
- We skipped the Step Ups because I don’t think we have anything in our house that we could actually step onto for these. If it weren’t storming out, I would have braved the front porch steps. But it wasn’t worth it. So we nixed them.
- Russian Twists were literally the only thing I felt like I could do well, for the full time. I think I owe that to Liz’s 6:30 a.m. Abs Class at the Downtown YMCA – my abs may be hidden, but they’re still pretty strong, and my obliques can probably withstand a lot more punishment than this workout can dish out.
- Single Leg Stand Up… I managed two on each side. We completely abandoned the concept of 30 seconds per leg and focused on attempting to complete the exercise. At all.
- Back Extensions were okay for me, also. This is an exercise I did for physical therapy following my car accident a little over a year ago, so it’s not completely foreign to me. One of the exercises where I didn’t feel like I was about to die while trying it.
- Elevated Stationary Single Lunge was difficult, and I don’t think my form was great… but I got through it.
- Quick Get Up – from the description the Hubby read, I thought you weren’t supposed to use your hands to stand up. That proved impossible. I was able to manage this one a few times on each side, but had to push off with my hand. Seems like that’s cool, from the photos. So I did it. But it was pretty difficult.
We did NOT repeat the exercises a second time. We made our way through the list (except the Step Ups) once and called it good for a start. And I was immediately sore and felt like it was a chore to sit down. That feeling hasn’t changed in the last 24 hours.
We completely neglected to do any stretches, but judging by how tight my legs feel today, that will be an important component to bring into our lives.