Barefoot Workout
I am not a barefoot kind of gal, for two very good reasons:
- My mother had a strict “children wear shoes” rule.
- The most memorable case I encountered as a 14-year-old candy striper in an emergency room was a toddler who stepped on glass in his basement. So much blood from such a tiny foot. And, an accident that could easily have been prevented by following my mother’s rule.
So, I wear crocs or slippers or shoes, even in the house. The fact that I have an affinity at all for working out in bare feet is a huge surprise to me. I blame yoga. My first class was about six years ago. It took awhile, but after a few weeks, I started liking the feel of moving on bare feet. Now, I deliberately look for forms of exercise and DVDs where the instructors are barefoot. The hula that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (Exercising in Virtual Hawaii) is one example. I have a couple of Nia DVDs, a couple of dance DVDs by Ellen Barrett, and a small stack of Qi Gong DVDs with Lee Holden — all performed without shoes.
What are your favorite barefoot workouts?
For a book tie-in, I requested a collection of essays called Barefoot Summers from the library. Author, Faith Andrews Bedford, writes the “Kids in the Country” column for Country Living magazine. I read the essay that gave the book its title and it turns out that Faith Andrews Bedford’s mother also had a wear shoes rule. But there was an exception — the month of August that they spent with her grandparents on Cape Cod.
That was one of our own “rules of August” — from the first day until the last, my sisters and I did not put on shoes.
That exception was enough to make the author, unlike me, a life-long fan of being barefoot.
Today is the last day of the month. I’m posting late so that I can count every exercise minute in January. My January goals were 1300 minutes of exercise and 8 video workouts. I overshot both — 1315 minutes of exercise and 13 video workouts!
Since I seem to have broken my resistance to workout videos (I even bought a new series of DVDs), I’m going to drop that from my goals and make things simple for February. My February exercise goal is 1300 minutes, averaging about 45 minutes a day.
Take a look at how other bloggers did with the exercise in the last week at the CHECKpoint! Jan 31 hosted by Mari at Bookworm with a View.
