And the Winner Is…

So the challenger for Round 1 of Joust the Jolly was…

***drumroll please*****

The Harry Potter workout!!!

First thing first I had to find which work out to do.  99% of the HP workouts online are for the first movie (and occasionally second movie), however the only movies I had up at my apartment were HP and the Half-Blood Prince and both Dealthly Hallows.  I do have all of the movies but the rest are back home.

Upon not being able to find a workout geared toward either of the Hallows movies (if you know the series, stuff like “points awarded” “points deducted” and “any time a ghost talks” is not gonna fly in the later films)

So I found this workout for the Half-Blood Prince:

(workout credit to http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com)

Let me start by saying that I did modify things a little bit and actucally did the workout over 2 days.  I didn’t realize when I started that the movie was over 2hrs long so at some point I got tired and went to bed (both from the workout and it was past my bed time).  I did however wake up at 5:30 to complete the last 45minutes of the movie.

I also modified some of the actual workouts.  The first one was by mistake. Instead of side lunges I read it wrong and did side step squats (didn’t realize this till the next morning).  I also shortened the plank time (plank a day is one of the July challenges more on that in a day or two) and since I am just starting with planks I did it for a minimal time (otherwise it would’ve been close to 7 minutes straight of planking!!) Finally I modified it towards the end of the movie by switching the situps to vertical crunches (my tailbone was sore and I don’t have enough core strength yet for all of those situps!!).

When I started this challenge I thought “oh this will be easy”, boy was I wrong! Its starts off pretty easy as the movie begins but as it gets going so does the workout! Several times I went from doing jumping jacks straight to squats then lunges and then situps. It was intense!

Of course the one thing I hate when working out it core/ab work (especially situps and burpees) and this comprised a ton of it!  While my pushups may have been baby ones (something I will work out) I did get them all done.

At one point I even tweeted Tom Felton (the actor who plays Malfoy) and told him that I loved him as he portrayed Malfoy but when I have to do 10 situps everytime you appear on screen I wish that you had a smaller role. And let me tell you throughout the movie he appeared a good bit (not as much as earlier movies but at 10 situps a piece it was a crazy amount).  My tailbone was plain sore by the end of them and it took a whole lot of effort to get everything done.

I kinda wished I was able to tally how much of everything I did (the blogger has an estimation on her website but I think it is way off) but considering that the first little bit of the movie had me quadruple checking what I had to do each time and some of them were so close together it would have tough.  Maybe next time since I am more familar with it now.

Overall this was surprisingly a really good workout.  It made it fun and different since I got to watch a movie will I was doing it.  The only downside is when there are really quick scenes with alot of different moves you have to do and little break in between.  This however it balanced out by some of lull period in between.

I would definitely recommend one of the movie work outs! And once I get a little more core strength going on I can step up the intensity without modificaitons.

My name is Holley and there ain’t no magic in the HP workout, its all sweat!