Jillian Michaels, This is War

The weather here has been totally bizarre lately. It’s been raining like crazy the past couple weeks, but it’s always intermittent- we never just have a rainy day. And it’s not like it’ll be gray and drizzly with periodic showers- no, Mother Nature has a serious case of bipolarity these days. Literally eight times a day, the sky will flip-flop between gorgeous blue skies and sunshine, to torrential downpours. It adds a certain challenge to getting dressed in the morning.

Anyway, when it’s not sheeting rain, it’s unbearably muggy (lots of rain + hot pavement = sauna), thus making running outside even less appealing than usual- which, hey, who knew that was possible. So, in an effort to stay indoors as much as possible, last week I ordered Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred on a whim. This whim had more to do with the free 2-day shipping that comes with my Amazon Prime trial and less to do with a motivation to ‘get shredded’, but regardless, the DVD found its way into my mailbox, and frankly, I was a little excited when it arrived yesterday. It’s a twenty-minute workout- how hard could it be?

Um, it was the longest twenty minutes of my life. I’m pretty sure Jillian’s abilities extend beyond the realm of fitness and into the manipulation of the time-space continuum, because I felt like I was doing push-ups for hours. I KNOW HOW LONG 30-SECONDS IS, JILLIAN. It’s the time it takes to microwave one banana nut muffin. It’s how long I brush my teeth in the morning. It is NOT HOW LONG 200 PUSH-UPS LAST.

I mean, I wouldn’t describe my body as sculpted or anything, but I don’t think I’m a terribly unfit person, either. I run (mostly against my will) faithfully several times a week and I do some sort of crunches/push-ups/Pilate's pretty regularly. But honestly… I think I might have been dead for a little while last night.

Let’s just ignore (the irony, perhaps?) that I was using beer bottles instead of dumbbells. I’m too cheap to buy weights when I have a perfectly good case of Blue Moon’s summer brew sitting on my counter, okay? Let’s also, for my sake, ignore the fact that I was doing the easiest moves on the easiest level of the DVD. You know how on most workout tapes, the easiest levels are for people who literally have never raised their arms above their head before, and you, with a boost of self-confidence, because at least you’re not THAT guy, can skip to level three without breaking a sweat? Yeah, that’s not how Jillian rolls.

In any case, I’m feeling surprisingly undead this morning so maybe those jogs around the block were doing more than I thought. But now that I know the supposed "20 minutes" of shred is really a period of time long enough to comprise its own ERA, I'm not exactly looking forward to seeing Jillian, or any of her perky, six-packed compadres again.