Exposure to new activities and skills

While trying to find an Activity Minor for CAS, I stumbled across an activity called "HIIT Rowing" on ESF Gateway. I had heard about HIIT before; it stood for High Intensity Interval Training. The concept of HIIT coupled with indoor rowing had never crossed my mind before, and thus I was intrigued - I hit the "enroll now" button the moment the system was live.

Being a fitness activity, I was daunted by the idea that everyone who was participating regularly worked out and did fitness circuits. I'm glad to say that this perspective was smashed when I came to know that students of varying levels of fitness were involved in the activity. This made me feel less apprehensive and more excited about what HIIT Rowing had to offer, and I very much welcomed the idea of improving my cardiovascular fitness.

I was fascinated by the equipment, fitness circuits and individual acitivities that worked different areas of the body. Aside from the commonly-known exercises such as burpees and planks, a multitude of others arose: medicine ball push-ups, jackknife (position), jumping lunges, and bear crawl.

At first, with the indoor rowing machine, I gained many blisters at the base of my fingers from chafing on the handle. The pain was a little discouraging, the combination of the school theme 'GRIT' and my aim to improve my fitness pushed through, and eventually I became familiarised with the pain and even found a different hand position that lessened the chance of chafing significantly.

Such intensive circuit training was also hard to adapt to initially. I often found myself tempted to skip a few reps of a certain exercise, though the guilt of doing so overpowered the temptation. Despite the exhaustion in my muscles after all the circuit trainings, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction and success knowing that I had made it through a HIIT circuit. Through these circuits, I learned new exercises and the skills that came with them. HIIT Rowing became more and more interesting through the sessions as there are always new combinations/sessions devised by Mr Cooke and Mike, who are in-charge of the activity.

I can say up until now that I really like HIIT Rowing, and look forward to continually improve my fitness through this activity!

CAS L.O. addressed: Developing New Skills + Showing Perseverance and Commitment

#HIITRowing