It occurred to me that I should really start using TV watching, game playing, and computer time to interject a few fitness moves. My husband and I have actually started doing this, and it really helps you to stay motivated. It also helps you to not feel like such a couch potato!

For example, we were watching an hour long show that we watch every week. During a more boring part of the show, he and I hit the floor and did 100 crunches.  It broke up the monotony of sitting still for an hour, and I felt like I was actually accomplishing something instead of sitting idle for an hour.

My sister is a Capoeia enthusiast. She also happens to be in a lot better shape than me.  This, combined with the fact that I am not used to moving in the unique ways that this demanding sport/martial art/performance art pastime demands, made me one sore puppy a couple days after I attempted it with my sister in a class.

She came to visit me here in Ohio. The last time we went together was about a year ago. She has since gotten a lot better at this art, and I was impressed at watching her play/spar with some of the kids and the instructor. It can be very intimidating at first, especially for someone like me who is more of an introvert by nature.

When it comes to playing sports, I’m the first to admit, I pretty much suck at anything that requires a whole of of hand eye coordination.  If you take me to play tennis, you’d probably be winning even if you’re just a mediocre player.

I can run allover the court all day, but when it comes to making contact with any ball in any sport, I’m pretty terrible. But that’s not what playing sports is really all about. It’s not about winning and competition all the time, but to me, even trying to play sports is fun and it also has a lot of benefits for my fitness.

My husband and I decided to shake things up today in our fitness routine, and instead of doing something inside, we wanted to go hiking on a new trail that we found by our house. It’s a little part that we always thought was little more than a soccer and football field for the local kids games. 

Boy, were we wrong! We got there and started our hike, and found that the trails were graded very steeply in many places, and it was really cool because some spots were so high that they gave you a birds eye view of the deep ravines and gullys that made the woods and the scaping so gorgeous. It was a scenic treat as well as a physical workout that we really enjoyed.

It’s so funny to think that two sports that I always dreaded having to play as a kid, because it usually meant being humiliated due to the competitive nature of gym class and also because I had almost zero athletic skills and hand eye coordination as a kid, are two of the best summer sports to play at parties. Not only are they fun to play when you’re putting a few beers back at summer parties, but they also happen to be great sports for burning calories in the summer heat.

I hate to harp so much on my newfound interest and joy in a sport that I used to do as a child with my grandfather and my little sister and my mom so often – ice skating. I know that there’s a lot of hype built around the sport now too because of the winter Olympic games and the still highly spectated sport of figure skating – which I still enjoy watching on tv immensely, I suppose it’s somewhat like a trip down memory lane for me to my younger days.

With all the excitement over the Olympics, and American’s continued interest in figure skating, but not as much as it used to be sadly before the scandals of unfair scoring came into view, there is a lot of attention on the sport of figure skating. Ice skating has always been a fun sport to engage in for me. Ever since I was a little girl, my grandpa, who was an avid ice skater (he passed away several years ago now), used to take me and my little sister ice skating all of the time.