I was an exerciser in my pre-BHIP life, but now I question the quality and quantity of my efforts — in other words, how the hell did I ever call what I was doing a real workout?

For instance, I used to do a half-hour lunchtime run around campus now and then, feel really proud of myself, stretch, shower and be done with it. I didn’t run fast. Some people walk faster than I ran. But I got sweaty and tired, so I called it a workout.

 

Last summer, I'd go swimming once in awhile at the Student Activities Center pool with coworkers. I’m really a lame swimmer, totally dependent upon various floatation devices (while my swimmier coworkers did their Michael-Phelpsian nonstop laps). But I put in my 30 minutes and called it a workout.

 

Or I would go to the John Wooden Recreation Center and do two or three sets on a dozen pieces of resistance equipment. Or a half-dozen. Or three. And call it a workout.

 

The exercise was helping me feel good physically – better to exercise 30 minutes a few times a week and then plant my butt back in my office chair for another four hours than to sit there for eight hours straight). Exercise made me feel good emotionally and psychologically (“my Prozac,” I’ve long called the endorphin-releasing benefits of exercise). But the truth is, I wasn’t running fast, swimming well, or working out progressively with weights such that I’d actually get stronger. I was on the exercise version of cruise control.  

 

But cruise control was boring me out of my skull — so much so that I started skipping workouts and, eventually, just kind of gave up and started resigning myself to feeling shittily sedentary.

 

Then along came BHIP. I signed up with the big hope that BHIP would entertain me in its novelty and that accountability to coaches would make exercise a habit for me again. At the end of the program’s 12-week, four-days-a-week regimen, I hoped, I would be able to reclaim my routine of (slow) running, (lame) swimming and (half-assed) John Wooden Red Center weight-training.

 

But BHIP has opened me up to a whole new dimension of exercise. Every workout is HARD. Every workout requires that I do something that I never considered doing before. Every workout I've survived — and I’ve survived nine weeks’ worth now — has made me realize I can do a lot more than I ever thought possible.

 

As Cyndy Cordova writes in a recent BHIP blog, “Did you ever think that you could deadlift a barbell with weights? I think not.”

 

Did I ever think I could do 150 squats, alternated with evil burpees that combine the worst of pushups with jumping jacks, plus marching back-and-forth across the gym holding a 20-pound weight over my head — our coaches admonishing us the whole time, “Keep going! Don’t stop! Faster! Faster!” No way, I never thought I could do that.

 

Did I ever think I could run so fast and hard, as we did twice in Death by 10 Meters, or up the Drake Stadium steps multiple times, that I felt like my heart was about to jump out of my chest?  No way.

 

Did I ever think that scrawny little me could lift a Schwarzenneger-style barbell loaded with weight plates straight over my head, not just once but 30 times — and in good form? No way.

 

Last Friday on our BHIP furlough day before the July 4th weekend, I figured I’d go to the Wooden Center and do my old routine, which I hadn’t done in months. I decided to start with a little cardio, BHIP-warmup-style. Thirty minutes later, I’d sped on a treadmill, spun on a stationary bike, rowed like a maniac on a rowing machine and was ready for more. Then came three sets of 12-plus reps on a dozen machines — and I discovered I wanted to pile on more weight than previously and push myself through it.  After all of that, I picked up a barbell like the big guys and did a variety of lifts until I glanced at a clock, discovered I’d been at it for two hours straight and decided it was time to stop.

 

Now that’s what I call a workout. Read all of Judy's posts here.