Getting stronger - tomorrow ;)

Google verifies the weight lifting stat; not sure about the donut part ;)

It's that time of year again when it's dark both when I start work and when I finish work.  AND it's cold and often miserable outside.  Which means all of my general activity level, motivation for fitness, and options for any form of fitness I might enjoy all plummet at exactly the same time.  And I wasn't as fit as I'd like to be when it hit.  

So to ensure my fitness actually improves rather than slides this winter, I am once again on the hunt for an activity to help (piano, while challenging, is not likely to give me Apollo arms or a booty that makes my husband happy when I wear leggings).   I've decided this will be a two-pronged approach.  So for Cardio, I'm using VR fitness again, but this time I'm trying a rowing app called Holofit.  It technically works with a bike, an elliptical (which I don't have), a rower, or freestyle.   But I haven't figured out how to make it switch between (admittedly I've put zero effort into discovering that at this point) and it was designed for the rower so that's what I'm doing atm.

So let's see...  So far - while I don't have the fancy rower with the bluetooth computer that apparently connects and works brilliantly, I haven't had any problems using my old school non-tech computer so that's good.   I love that the app doesn't require controllers to function -- that was one of the down sides of the cycling app I used last year.   This one is fully reliant on where you look for controls.   Which is both very cool in a new-to-me-tech kinda way, and also useful when your hands are both needed to keep the rower going.

I enjoy the "explore" mode best, where you go at whatever pace and collect things...  Really random things...  But I don't get much of a workout from it so I *really* wish they'd combine that with the "train" mode.  I find the training actually effective and helpful -- but I want my things!  lol.  Training has multiple levels (I've been working on medium and seems about right; probably will go up in the next week or two), and different approaches (cardio, hitt, etc).  Alternately there's race mode which is literally a race.  I definitely get the best workout there, although currently I only race AIs as I suspect I'm too slow to be competitive with real people.   There is also a mode where you can race shadows of your past self to try to best your former times -- I know that mode exists, but I haven't found it yet to actually try.

You can tell that the designers are listening to user feedback, because if you go in any of the first couple worlds they designed, you row backwards.  As per real life, but not much fun when the whole point of the app is to be able to look around at stuff that's not your basement.  They took that feedback seriously and in all the newer worlds, you row facing forward :)   I do wish the graphics were a little more mature.  I am enjoying it for sure, but they are not nearly as impressive as other VR environments I've been in.  Although I will admit I did enjoy rowing at night under the northern lights.  That was pretty awesome.

The biggest downside for me is that I struggle with motion sickness using this app.  There was a little when I first started with the cycling app too, but this one is more so - especially in the cityscapes (when you're "rowing" an odd bike/land boat of sorts).  I know most of the tricks to combat it, so trying that for now, but ultimately it might make it so this one gets shelved.   The other thing is that once I've found all the "things" in each world, I'm not sure it'll hold my attention.  I've never been one for repeating myself.  The bike app I could ride literally anywhere in the world.  So after a couple months, I may switch back to that one.

So that's cardio, the other aspect is strength.  I've signed up for a 30 day strength training program that starts tomorrow (this is not me procrastinating, it's actually not available till tomorrow).  I've done both their ab program and their flexibility program and been super impressed with both.  So I have hope for this one.  And if it goes well, abs are next up.

Anyways - I have 30 day plans for both, so lets see how it ends up :).  I suspect next week by about Wed, moving will be a challenge!  lol but hopefully by Christmas I'll be feeling a lot more like myself again.