Welcome to the inaugural event of Readers’ Workouts. This is meant to create an encouraging space for meeting our exercise goals, small and large. Everyone is welcome to participate. I hope that this will be a particularly comfortable place for people who think of themselves as more bookish than athletic.

Readers’ Workouts takes over, with Mari’s permission, a project started at Bookworm with a View called CHECKpoint!. The idea is that each Tuesday, we report our exercise progress for the previous week and state goals for the upcoming week. Setting and tracking goals as part of a community is great for both accountability and support. Set up your goals and reporting system in any way that works for you. Feel free to experiment, changing formats from week to week — it can take a while to figure out what works best.

Grab the logo to use on your own blog (or use the less bright version I made during Bloggiesta: Bloggiesta — Readers’ Workouts). When you’ve completed your progress report, link it using the Mr. Linky below. Then, be sure to visit the other participants to support their exercise goals.

If you don’t have a blog, or prefer not to post there, use the comments for reporting progress and expressing support.

Here’s my report. I didn’t meet my goal of 1400 minutes in March, missing it by over 200 minutes. I could offer excuses, but I think I’ll just move on….

I’m aiming for 1400 minutes again in April, anyway. I wouldn’t make that big of a leap in exercise minutes if I thought all the added minutes would be aerobic. I’m quite sure that I will be doing lots of lunges, squats, and hauling stuff in my garden.

My second goal is to do a total body video workout every other day — the odd days. I’ve been alternating the first phase of Slim in 6 (35 minutes) with the 45-minute Fat Burning Fusion (an Ellen Barrett video I featured in this post: Barefoot Workout). By the end of the month, I would like to have the second phase of Slim in 6 (55 minutes) in the rotation. I’m also reserving the right to use my 30 Day Shred video on the busiest days since it only takes 20 minutes.

This week’s links are closed. See the current Readers’ Workouts to post reports.