Lunges

Lunges. They are the best exercise in the world. But I hate them. Oh, how I hate them. They work all those problem areas on my thighs and butt. But they hurt me.

One time back in college, my roommates and I had a roommate night. (We were very dedicated to having a roommate night every month or two. Must have been good prep for date nights now that we are married and live with BOYS! Ew 🙂 So we had many roommate nights, but on this particular night we decided to do lunges. Around the block lunges. I don’t know why. I think this was our senior year when Stacey and Sarah were engaged, so this was our idea of a pre-wedding workout. We decided we would do walking lunges down our block, turn right, turn right again, down the street behind our house, turn right, back to our place. It seemed fun and funny at the time. However, those walking lunges were the last walking we did for a few days…

Gosh, I have never been in so much pain. I could hardly walk for the next 2-3 days. I remember having to hold onto the roof of my car and gently lower myself into the driver’s seat. It was bad. Lesson learned: never go from doing no lunges to doing a 1/4 mile of lunges all in one night. It’s not pretty.


Here is a pic of my college roommates. We are the Greenhouse Girls. Clearly, we are not doing lunges here. We are getting Camille married off.

Last year, I made lunges a regular part of my workouts. And I must say I got pretty good at them. I did different types in the months before my own wedding and I was very happy with the results. I also lifted weights and did ab exercises daily. It got to the point where Micah told me to stop lifting such heavy weights on my arms, because he didn’t want me to get flabby later on! I was slightly offended that he would brush off my success in the weight room with such disdain (I am NOT known for my upper body strength, so this was quite a feat). But then my dad agreed with him! They said I should lower my weight and increase my reps for toning. Neither of them had confidence that I would maintain my lifting in the long run and they were right…

While I have been running a ton this first year of marriage (hello Phoenix half-marathon), I have NOT been toning. I know the truth – resistance training is just as important as cardio – but I have been turning a deaf ear for the past nine months. Well, summer is here and one of my summer goals is to add strength training and ab exercises back into my workouts. So this week, I made the attempt. I decided to do some lunges and abs after my run on Saturday. Since I haven’t been doing lunges lately, I tried to ease myself back into it. I did twelve walking lunges (six on each leg) and two other kinds of bench lunges like this…

These lunges are super hard. The first kind I do are the ones the lady is doing above (except I don’t look anything like the lady above and I will not provide pictures of my sweaty, gross self doing lunges for the first time in months). I didn’t even use weights on Saturday to help ease myself into it. The second type I do is exactly like the picture above, but intead of just lunging down and rising up, you jump up! Both of these lunges are pretty intense, so I only did three of each type per leg. I thought I was safe. That I would be a little sore, but due to the moderation of my workout I would be okay.

I am not okay.

I hurt.

I took a day off from working out and yesterday I tried to go running again. My legs felt heavy and achy. (Okay, the heavy part might have been caused by the SMASHBURGER I ate for lunch), but the achy part was due to the lunges. My legs are not recovering. I stretched on Sunday and yesterday but today I still hurt. I am trying to stretch in discreet ways while sittting in my workshop. Yes, I am blogging in my workshop about teaching online. See how savvy I am online? I can even blog during my workshop. Bam.

Anyway, the lunges are back. They are my worst enemy and my best friend. I will be popping some ibuprofen and doing them again this afternoon. Anything that hurts me this much must be good for me.