The first week of July has flown by and being that we’re starting month 2 of SOA I figured that this month will be fitness challenge month after last month’s time management challenge.  But, you’re still going to be using some of the time management tools for this month as well, so keep what you’ve learned handy!

Here are the challenges for this week:

1. Get back to time scheduling.  See if what you learned during your free week (last week’s goal week) can be implemented into your time schedule.  If you function better with goals than time scheduling, then continue with your daily goals.

2. Evaluate everything you’ve done in your first month.  Can you change some things around?  Are you eating too much food for lunch and not enough for dinner?  Perhaps you need to rework your workout schedule to fit better with your food schedule.  Figure this out this week.

3. Take a look at your current fitness level.  Are you where you want to be?  This week you’re going to be make goals of where you want to be.  Maybe you want to run a mile in under 12 minutes (hint: that’s one of my goals!).  Or perhaps you want to be able to do a complete un-assisted pull-up.  Assess where you are and make realistic goals of where you want to be.  Through the course of the month you will be building up your fitness level.  Each week I will also present a fitness challenge.  (If you are already in a routine/training schedule and don’t want to deter from it, I understand, but maybe make a goal to push an extra few minutes each time to challenge yourself).

This week’s fitness challenge:

- Evaluate how long you can do a bicycle crunch for.  Each day attempt to go an additional 10-15 seconds longer than the previous day.  When I first started I could barely do them for more than 30 seconds before giving up.  After 10 days of 30 Day Shred I was able to do the full count of bicycle crunches.  It’s the “all ab” workout that people look for when doing side crunches and middle crunches.

Here’s a mini-Cross Fit workout video (10 minutes long!) that demonstrates bicycle crunches as the 3rd move.  I might just do the whole video because the workout seems pretty cool!

**Note: I’m not a doctor, nor a certified fitness trainer, so make sure that your body can physically be active before taking on this month’s fitness challenge (I am trying to make the activities easy for all types of fitness levels).  Also be aware of the proper form so that you do not injure yourself.**