Friday, February 4, 2011

Alas! I have found you, Sylwia!

Back in July, I purchased all the Tonique workouts as downloads, but never really gave them much thought.  At the time, my attention was on Chalean Extreme and Turbo Fire.

 When my computer crashed over a month ago, I scrambled to find all my workout downloads.  I was able to recover almost all of them, but I thought I had lost Tonique Mat forever.




Well, tonight just happened to be my lucky night, as I finally found the Tonique Mat workout.  As I'm reviewing it now, I'm feeling a bit eager to start incorporating it into my regular routine.

For those of you not familiar with Tonique, it's a workout program designed by Sylwia Wiesenberg that is specifically gear towards women, with an emphasis on lower body toning.  Don't let the "geared toward women" fool you.--this shit is tough!  When it comes to the debate of heavy weight/low reps vs light weight or no weight/high reps, Sylwia clearly favors the latter.  The thing is though, there are high reps workouts...and then there is Tonique.

For some instructors, high reps can mean 15 to 20-something reps.  For Sylwia, this could mean 30, 40, 50-- hell even 80 reps-- in some of the workouts.  This woman wants to find  your pain threshold, and then annihilate it!  Even as you hit failure and are lying on the floor, crying in a puddle of your sweat, Sylwia keeps going with no sign of tiring.  I think she might be a cyborg, but I can't be too sure on that one.

The funny thing, you probably get the impression that she is some Jillian Michaels (wannabe) hard ass-type from the way I write about her....but that is further from the truth.  In fact, she comes off as sweet and encouraging in her videos, and based on an online interaction I had with her, I'd say she is a genuinely nice person.

                                        Either Sylwia A.) can't feel pain  B.) loves to torture people  C.) is geniunely sweet and is trying her best to help woman shape their bodies  or  D.)all of the above.

So, I guess that means I'll have to revise my rotation schedule yet again.  You know what, though?  Screw it!  This has been a tough year (or month I should say) in regards to keeping up with my fitness New Year's resolutions.  But you know what?  I just don't care anymore.  I don't want to feel dragged down or constrained to limitations...I just want to workout and feel good.  I'm pretty sure I've blown 8 out my 10.5 New Year's resolutions, but it's just not worth forcing myself to keep them.

On the bright side, I have been doing She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-For-a-Month's new program consistently, and feel I can keep at it for 90 days.  What I plan to do (and have been doing) is the toning workouts roughly 5 days a week and adding on whatever workout pleases me at the moment.  I've been liking Ms. Nameless' program so far, and appreciate that it gives me leeway to do other forms of exercise (even if she doesn't want to).  Hey, what can I say...I like cross-training too much to give it up.

So with that mind, I'm off to watch some Netflix before bed.  I must get a good night's sleep before my AM date with Sylwia and Ms. Nameless.  Stay safe and warm, and have a good weekend!

Cheers!

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