Jessica Smith 10 Minute Interval Walk

What I picked and why

This is Day 4 of my week of Jessica Smith. I'm happy that I picked someone who believes in the importance of a 10 minute workout because I was exhausted this morning. I slept in a little bit and just didn't want to workout. I picked this 10 minute interval walk since it was only 10 minutes. How bad can 10 minutes be? Tomorrow, I'm hoping to have some ambition. I really want to do the Stride and Step. If I don't get off  my duff and do that tomorrow morning, I'll have to come up with a week of step workouts. There are so many step workouts on YouTube, I'm sure I'll find enough to fill the week, but will my glutes survive the week!

The Workout

It was only 10 minutes, but it was a very fast ten minutes. There wasn't anything physically or mentally challenging as far as the moves go, but I was breathing heavy for the entire workout. I was even huffing and puffing during out "rest" segments. I'm not sure what I was expecting out of this, but this wasn't it. I wasn't disappointed, but it wasn't what I was expecting. This was a 10 minute workout with 7 minutes of vigorous activity. I've done 30 minute workouts with less intensity. It did call it an interval walk, and after reading some of her book, I should have been expecting this, but it just wasn't what I was expecting. I think I was expecting something more like the 12 minute walk from yesterday. This was more like a HIIT workout tutorial, but even that isn't accurate because she didn't talk about the interval timing that we were doing, but it wasn't the fun and interesting Jessica Smith walking workouts that I love. This was a great workout, but it was all about keeping the correct intensity for the correct amount of time. She had a timer on her shirt. I was actually glad to see the timer though since I had just read about it in the book. It's called the GymBoss I'm thinking of getting one. I would get an app for my phone, but I always run my BodyMedia workout tab while I'm working out, and it doesn't like to run in the background. I'm thinking that an interval timer would be beneficial. One of the reasons that I haven't done the exercises in Dolvett Quince's book is because the thought of dealing with the timing aspect of it just makes me cringe.  

I'm losing focus here. Okay, back on track! The workout was mainly some really fast walking with some really big arm movements. After we did that for a certain number of seconds that I didn't time and she didn't divulge, we moved on to something "less intense" like some gentle front kicks or knee lifts. There was also a twisting one where the legs kicked more to the opposite corner and the opposite elbow came in to meet it. During the fast walking segments, she did mix it up a little by having us walk to the front and back or go side to side with it. She also mentioned the option of jogging during the walking segments. It was interesting to have the walking be the high intensity stuff and the other moves be the resting part since it's normally he reverse in walking workouts. You catch your breath during the marching parts, but not in this one! I don't think I really caught my breath until the end. The last minute was slower to help us catch our breath and return to normal, but there wasn't a stretch. I don't think I really needed a stretch though since it was only 10 minutes and it was straight up cardio. 

I appreciate the benefits of the workout, but it wasn't very fun or interesting like her other workouts that I've done. However, that was more about the fact that it was a HIIT workout that was very focused on keeping the intervals going, and that's just not interesting for me. I also missed seeing Peanut!

BodyMedia Screen Shots

Here are my BodyMedia device screen shots. I was surprised to burn 140 calories in 10 minutes. The workout arc doesn't really show the ups and downs of the HIIT stuff since it's like a 40 second / 20 second interval so over the course of a minute the high and low average out and make it a blob. The final boost at the end was from the brief period of jogging that I did.