I Passed!!!
 

I wanted to celebrate with all of my Beach Buddies!! :grouphug: I took the Air Force Fitness Assessment (they say, "It's not a test." Right -- tell it to the Marines!) I scored the full 100 points :cheer: Pushups (16 in < 1 min seconds), situps (30 in <1 min), abdominal girth (29.5, by the skin of my teeth and the generosity of the tester), and I ran my 1.5 miles in 14.20. I am thrilled!! I thought I was going to collapse, what with all the pollen and the heat -- I always run on the treadmill indoors. But I did it!

Way to go Natter! Congratulations!

Yay!!! Good For You!!!!

Congratulations! What a great accomplishment.

Wow way to go!!!

Michelle

Woo Hoo :dancer:

Wow that is SUCH an accomplishment and an inspiration to others. Way to go!!!

Congratulations! :hat:

Natter, that is awesome! I wish you lots of luck with your future career...I know my friend Grace (who is the mother of a couple adults and teenagers) feels so good when she gets through one of those tests (she's Army, but same idea ;) )!

So, the question now is....how did you train for this? I cannot even do one pushup! Can you suggest any exercise or steps to take to work up to doing that many pushups that quickly? :)

Congrats, NAtter! You are a veritable Amazon and I am in extreme awe!

You guys are so nice!!! Laurie, I trained starting last November. I began by doing 16 "girl" pushups, the ones on your knees. Also, I had broken my foot, so I couldn't do any other kind until 6 December. I also started on the recumbant bike 3-5 times a week for 20 minutes, which didn't bother my foot. In December, I started doing as many "guy" pushups as I could -- which was 1 the first week. :lol: Then I'd finish out the 16 with "girl" ones. As I added "guy" pushups, I decreased the others until after about six weeks I could do 16 real pushups. Then I started working to do them fast enough to finish within one minute. I found that I had to give myself a day in between pushup days to recover -- I was using brand new upper body muscles, and it was very easy to overtrain. I had started alternating power walking on the treadmill with the bike in December; in January, I started running on the treadmill verrrrry slooowly. It took three months of running 15 minutes (5 minute walk warmup) 2-3 times a week to build up to 1.5 miles in <14:24. The crunches never were a problem, so I just kept doing 30 in < 1 minute every time I did a pushup day. I gotta tell you, though, that losing 15 pounds before the test really helped :dancer:

Natter, that is all so very impressive! YGG!

Did you do any weight training as well for your arms? I can't even do girl pushups...my arms are these puny things that can barely hold an armful of books, let alone push up hundreds of pounds of body weight...though I would *love* to try! Something new to do at the gym tomorrow!

Thanks for sharing your plan!

I did do weight training, Laurie. On days that I ran, I did upper body work for strength and toning using the Life Fitness machines. On days that I biked or did the eliptical machine, I did lower body machines. I think that made the SB work even better -- I had improved my muscle tone by Easter -- it was just still covered with too much fluff :lol: