Monday morning is here and I’m ready for the new week, wondering how the plan is going to go and if I will still enjoy the exercising as much at the end of the week.

But there was an issue with last week’s plan in that I wasn’t able to do the walking on the spot exercise because the impact was too great for the tendons behind my knees, so a replacement for that was needed. My friend and I chatted about this and I said that my body was tight. I had noticed at work I wasn’t as supple and couldn’t flex or bend as much I used to and I would get frustrated about the fairly new limitations I found with my body. I recognised this at the time but I ignored it, I just worked around it and did things in a different way, kind of sweeping the issue under the carpet.

So, quite quickly we both thought the answer could be yoga, we had talked about doing it over the years but had never really tried it with any sort of goal in mind; I think this could be the time and my friend agreed. So, she added it to the plan, but not to replace the second bike session but in addition to it. The new plan I was given was yoga and then the bike in the morning and the same in the afternoon.

But to do a yoga session I would need a yoga class – so I looked for an app on my phone and found one called “Intro to yoga” with lots of likes, so I tried it and it’s really good and comes with a free trial. I looked at the classes and they were video based with really simple instructions and the routines looked fairly straightforward so I thought that would be perfect for me.

But before I first used it I decided two things, I would start at the beginner level and work into it gently as I didn’t want to stretch anything too far, and before I start the yoga class I would warm up for two minutes by doing some stretching. This in itself was a bit of an eye opener for me as I can’t remember the last time I stretched in an exercisey sort of a way. I was beginning to think this road might be a little longer than I had initially thought.

So, it was still Monday morning and time to exercise. I did the stretching and the first thing I noticed was that I was about 6 inches from my toes when I tried to touch them, I wasn’t expecting that but carried on. Then I started the yoga app and had my towel on the floor ready. The class I chose was floor-based exercises and would last 12 minutes each session. I think they are the most basic ones to get you into the groove and into the way of doing yoga and moving your body around. My body didn’t really appreciate it is the message it was giving to me, but I knew that I would carry on as I had already felt some benefits from last week and if I kept on going it would get easier – its only yoga afterall I thought to myself.

But I did get a surprise when I did the bike after the stretching and the yoga, it felt a whole lot easier which let me push on harder on it. I think this must be because I have stretched my muscles for the last 15 minutes which made the bike easier because my muscles were longer now and already had the blood pumping through them – but I’m only guessing thats the reason, whatever the reason though it made me happy and to be honest it felt like a bit of a break through, maybe I could do this exercise thing after all.

So, I carried on through the week with renewed vigour. I was enjoying the test of doing the yoga positions and then pushing on the bike straight after and feeling that I am doing my body good so making my mind feel better about myself. These are all positive things which to be honest I hadn’t really felt for a while.

Below is this week’s exercise plan. A few new lines have added to it for the stretching and the yoga, the line at the bottom is for walking as I decided that I would walk to the shops instead of driving, partly because it’s May and the sun is out and partly for the exercise, but each time I came back to my house I was happy that I had made the effort to walk instead of driving.

If you look at the figures on it you can see that my heartbeat had gone up, this is because I was able to go that bit harder because of the benefits of doing the stretching and yoga. If you also look at the mins and Borg test column that represents the number of minutes I did the exercise for and also the results of the Borg talk test; cc means can’t complete a sentence, this also gives an indication of the amount of effort I was putting in. It also shows that my breathing is not good as I was running out of breath before I was running out of legs, I’m not entirely sure but I think that should be the other way around when starting out. The number of minutes for the yoga is for both sessions, the lengths of the classes vary for the different sessions on the app.

My week was very positive. It began with a modified plan because of the exercise change and it worked out great, I really enjoy the yoga, I find it very frustrating at times that I can’t do the poses correctly but when I do get a part of the routine right that feels like a little victory which makes me happy and gives me energy to carry on and I’m looking forward to next week and more goals already.