A couple weeks ago I came to a painful realization.  I was in a workout rut.  Day after day I was doing the same things, and getting painfully bored with it.  And of course, when you do the same thing day in, day out, your body stops responding because your muscles aren’t challenged anymore.

So, with that in mind I decided to do something completely unprecedented for me.  I bought an exercise video.  Now, I know what you’re thinking – how can a tape actually change things?  While I do have fond memories of jumping around in my living room with my dad while doing Tae Bo, I’ve usually considered exercise videos to be a complete and utter joke.  Ohhhh, how wrong I was.  So what was the video that so completely rocked my world?

It’s called the “Tracy Anderson Mat Workout”.  And it will kick your butt like you’ve never experienced before.  You may have heard of Tracy Anderson before.  She’s the trainer that has worked with Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna (see above).  And after watching Gwyneth slither in a catsuit on top of a piano at the Grammy’s, I figured, she must be doing something right because she has an absolutely rockin bod.

Ok so on to the tape.  While I don’t agree with all of Tracy Anderson’s theories (for example, she states that women shouldn’t lift anything greater than 3 lb weights or we will bulk up — which has NO scientific evidence whatsoever), the tape itself challenged me in a way that I had never experienced before.  It’s about a 50 minute workout using limited equipment – all you need is a chair, a mat, and two 3 lb weights – or two waterbottles filled with water if you don’t have weights in your house, followed by a short cooldown.  The tape itself is divided into several sections which work your legs, your arms, your butt and your abs.  It’s generally easy to follow, but the actual exercises are very challenging and DIFFERENT from anything I’ve ever tried.  Another plus is that many of the exercises focused on using your own body weight to lift yourself and work different muscle groups.  Literally there are muscles that hurt now that I didn’t even know were there in the first place!

Another plus to the tape is that I can do it in the comfort of my own home on my own schedule, and can easily pack it with me to do when I’m traveling.  Oh yea, and having D notice that my abs were looking particularly defined didn’t hurt either.  So while I definitely won’t be saying goodbye to the gym anytime soon, this is a great way to shake things up a bit and get a totally different kind of workout.  And that sounds just peachy to me.